C’MON C’MON

US 2021, 108 min Director Mike Mills 

One of the most tender and beautiful familial love stories we’ve seen in years, Mike Mills’s new drama is as aesthetically stunning as it is emotionally resonant. Joaquin Phoenix plays a radio journalist who interviews kids across the country about the future of the world, and supervises his 8-year-old nephew (Woody Norman, an astonishing discovery) while the boy’s mom (Gaby Hoffmann) helps his dad (Scoot McNairy) through a mental-health crisis. With its singular balance of scruffy humanity and sharp composition—DP Robbie Ryan’s gorgeous black-and-white imagery seems to embrace all that it beholds—C’Mon C’Mon has all of Mills’s hallmarks: intelligence, compassion, deep attunement to family dynamics, and outstanding style. Led by Phoenix at his most endearing and Hoffmann as radiantly intuitive as ever, the fine ensemble, also including Jaboukie Young-White and a lovely bunch of young non-actor interviewees, achieves a whole new standard of relatability. –Jonathan Kiefer

Our October 12 Centerpiece program features a screening of C’Mon C’Mon and an onstage conversation with writer-director Mike Mills.