Boyhood (Richard Linklater)

[EvilShoe]

[Pop Trash]

I'm a bit perplexed by the off-the-charts praise for this one (at least so far, I'm predicting some more critical analysis once it opens). Don't get me wrong; I still liked it a lot and will probably see it again outside of a film festival. Here's my review after it played at the San Francisco FF (with Linklater getting a -deserved imo- lifetime achievement award to boot):

The whole is more than the sum of its parts. The drunken stepfather stuff is creaky and dangerously approaches Lifetime movie dramatics. Plus what's up with nearly every adult male who isn't Ethan Hawke being a total dick? Is it that bad in Texas? Also, I'm not sure if she was always this way, but I just don't think Patricia Arquette is that good of an actress.

That said, the movie does have a mesmerizing verisimilitude with watching our young boy (and everyone else) grow up. It's just fascinating seeing what hot button issues are still relevant (the positivism of Obama turning into NSA pessimism by the end). A nice very Linklater ending too. I half expected the camera to start tumbling down the hill ala Slacker.

[Boner M]

Seen it twice; richer the second time around.

Also I interviewed Ellar Coltrane.

[Pop Trash]

I wouldn't be surprised if millennials' connection with this is insane.

[Watashi]

LOL at this movie being rated R.

[Gittes]

I'm looking forward to this. I love this excerpt from Manohla Dargis' review:

It’s no surprise that watching actors naturally age on camera without latex and digital effects makes for mesmerizing viewing. And at first it may be hard to notice much more than the creases etching Ethan Hawke’s face, the sexy swells of Patricia Arquette’s belly and Ellar Coltrane’s growth spurts. You may see your own face in those faces, your children’s, too. This kind of identification is familiar, as is the idea that movies preserve time. Andre Bazin wrote that art emerged from our desire to counter the passage of time and the inevitable decay it brings. But in Boyhood, Mr. Linklater’s masterpiece, he both captures moments in time and relinquishes them as he moves from year to year. He isn’t fighting time but embracing it in all its glorious and agonizingly fleeting beauty.

[Boner M]

LOL at this movie being rated R.

IFC to the rescue.

While the MPAA has assigned BOYHOOD a rating of R, recommending that no one under 17 be admitted without a parent or guardian, IFC Center feels that the film is appropriate viewing for mature adolescents. Accordingly, the theater will admit high school age patrons at its discretion.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I liked this movie, although I found its first half more interesting than its second. Oddly, the most moving part for me was the waiter talking to the mom at the end.

[Pop Trash]

Oddly, the most moving part for me was the waiter talking to the mom at the end.

I found that scene to be an epic groaner. He may as well have said "Hey, you might remember me from earlier in the movie when..."

[Weems]

Didn't work for me. It's a sprawl, it doesn't coalesce into anything, just mechanically unfurls more or less banal sequences in the life of an unexceptional, taciturn boy/teenager. Aside from Ethan Hawke, who's very lively initally, none of the performances were noteworthy (I like Arquette and she's always been a very underrated actress, but the praise she's getting isn't commensurate with what's onscreen; there's a nice scene of her dispatching her professorial duties, as well as a fine emotional outburst or two, but it's low-key, very reactive, largely unimpressive work, more attention-grabbing for the change in her physique 30 minutes or whatever into the film than for any kind of cumulative effect).

[Gittes]

I recently learned that Stanley Kubrick was going to adopt a similar approach while filming Napoleon. The plan allegedly entailed filming Al Pacino at various points throughout a number of years. On that note, since watching Boyhood, I've found myself wondering what someone like Terrence Malick or Paul Thomas Anderson would yield if they were to pursue a similar conceit.

[MadMan]

Boyhood is great but Linklater has done better. I should view his Before... trilogy. And Waking Life. I've only seen five of his movies.

[dreamdead]

I really like this nuanced take on gender roles and how societal expectations shape Mason and Samantha:

For the first half of the film, as Mason dreams, Samantha competes with him. She dominates, teases and outperforms her younger brother (in reality, the actors playing the brother and sister were born only months apart). When Samantha first appears, she whizzes by Mason on her bike, calling him home for dinner. She taunts him by singing a Britney Spears song, speaking pig Latin and reminding him that he flunked first grade.

Even in early adolescence, Samantha remains outspoken, challenging her controlling stepfather about the pointlessness of dusting, worrying about her stepsiblings when he turns abusive and her mother flees the house.

But in the film’s last hour, Samantha starts to fade. Her speech and voice start to disintegrate audibly: She speaks less, signals uncertainty with the constant use of the filler phrase “I mean” and punctuates many of her statements with a nervous laugh. At Mason’s high school graduation party, she makes a toast only after being prompted to do so.

[transmogrifier]

76/100

Quietly resonant collection of memories that accumulate emotional momentum as you come to realize that the film is merely interested in proving that life is the sum of every moment, large and small, rather than laying out some cliched origin story so beloved in the time of comic book movies.

I loved the fact that Mason remains a cipher throughout, and it is hard to truly get a read on his personality, because by the time the movie ends, he himself has no read on it either; he sees stretched before him the same possibilities and pitfalls he has personally seen his family and friends encounter. I've seen some people complain about Arquette's mini-meltdown near the end, claiming it is too neat, or too contrived for the naturalism that preceded it, but it is telling that it immediately cuts away and doesn't allow it to be resolved, and doesn't allow Mason a chance to placate his mother, because the movie comes to us directly from his eyes, and at that stage, he has nothing to say, and in fact, probably has no ability to empathize with his mother. To him, as presented by the movie, all the pieces still matter, the bathroom bullying, the night spent throwing saw blades at wood, the time all his hair got cut off; he can't sympathize with the mourning of the passing of milestones because that concept hasn't hit him yet. He is still of the moment.

(Interested to see so many people mezzo-mezzo on this here; remove the dialogue, cut the scenes down even further, make the cinematography showier, add pretentious, grating voiceovers, and you have The Tree of Life)

[Pop Trash]

76/100
(Interested to see so many people mezzo-mezzo on this here; remove the dialogue, cut the scenes down even further, make the cinematography showier, add pretentious, grating voiceovers, and you have The Tree of Life)

You forgot the goddamn dinosaurs!

[max314]

Boyhood (Linklater, 2014):

The time shifts are never broadcast and no egregious pretensions towards narrative drive are made. The result is a cascading river of life and love that pulls you into its flow and forces you to ask the most important questions...and reminds us to forget the petty ones.

★★★★★

[DavidSeven]

Linklater basically confirms his status as master of the American "slice-of-life" film. It actually reminds me most of Dazed and Confused. That film also had a young blank slate protagonist that Linklater doesn't do much with. Yet, Linklater has a special knack for putting these cardboard figures in everyday occurrences and making them enthralling anyway. I think it was Tarantino who commented that watching Dazed and Confused felt like "hanging out with friends." This film has a similar feel. Although it's less of a "hangout movie" than Linklater's earlier stoner tale, he still manages to make you feel as though you're in the room and living life with these characters. It's an intangible quality that he handles best.

While the accomplishment is great, I hesitate to put Boyhood on the same level as the last two installments of his Before series. There are elements here that aren't just bad; they're so bad that they stick out and reverberate. For example, the scene with the boys hanging out at the abandoned house is so poorly scripted, acted and staged that it borders on incompetence to keep it in. It was either that or hubris. The scene offers no necessary information and could have been cut rather easily. The drunk dick step-father was compelling the first time around; trite as a motif when it was extended to a second character. As with a lot of Linklater's work, you wish he had a little more to offer as a visual storyteller.

Still, a very compelling 3-hours.