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.

[Mal]

A good movie that your mother will tell her friends to see.

[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.

[Watashi]

Holy fuck this movie.

As someone who spent a majority of his youth growing up and moving from city to city in Texas, this was a wallop of emotion.

I was a teary mess on the car ride home. It's actually quite embarrassing.

[Skitch]

IFC to the rescue.

I like this move a lot. I wish theaters would distance themselves from the MPAA more.

[Watashi]

With 100 reviews in, this still holds a 100% tomatometer and an insane 9.2 average.

Also, WTF Melville.

[Melville]

Also, WTF Melville.

It felt very long and tedious to me. Emotionally and visually flat. The protagonist is a blank the whole time, and the movie doesn't delve into his experience in any interesting way; even after three hours of watching him grow up, I felt like I didn't know him more than superficially. The final scene tells us that each moment is important, but none of the moments had any particular weight. The story just runs through them and relies on their "universality". For a Linklater exploration of everyday relationships and experiences, I prefer both Before Sunset and Before Midnight.

[Pop Trash]

It felt very long and tedious to me. Emotionally and visually flat. The protagonist is a blank the whole time, and the movie doesn't delve into his experience in any interesting way; even after three hours of watching him grow up, I felt like I didn't know him more than superficially. The final scene tells us that each moment is important, but none of the moments had any particular weight. The story just runs through them and relies on their "universality". For a Linklater exploration of everyday relationships and experiences, I prefer both Before Sunset and Before Midnight.

While I liked it more than you, I'm glad somebody is pumping the breaks on this "masterpiece." I should note that I much prefer a blank than a character that's overly/poorly written.

[Watashi]

Yes, be glad that someone is disliking a movie that a lot of people love.

[eternity]

75% genuine bliss and 25% phony bullshit.

[Boner M]

Yes, be glad that someone is disliking a movie that a lot of people love.

What's wrong with appreciating a dissenting voice so that consensus opinion more accurately reflects one's own? I loved the film, and even I find the gushing unanimity of the critical response to be unhealthy and unflattering. Even you said above that the 9.2 RT rating is "insane".

[Gittes]

I do think there's some truth to some of Melville's criticisms. While watching, I was occasionally struck by the sense of something fading in and out of harmony with my expectations. Even so, I would like to revisit this before really settling on an opinion, as I suspect I will be even more receptive the second time around.

There is definitely something magical about this film; it's as if exposure to its images initiates a kind of delayed-action resonance, timed to activate hours after viewing, wherein you suddenly find yourself brought to tears by an overwhelming sense of years lived and time lost. Linklater has mounted a trove of well-observed, redolent details. Life, Boyhood reminds us, is a generous but often confounding wellspring of moments, and many of these are movingly and deceptively prosaic. In the film, this quotidian tapestry is occasionally punctuated by inevitable traumas and upheavals, but more emphasis is placed on a wider array of quieter developments and desultory periods of growth.

As in all films, the diversity of moments astound and elude us at once, but the familiar experience of receding images is of especial significance here. The details of Mason's life dissipate in accordance with the film's exceedingly natural rhythms, and much of the accrued power derives from the successful application of another of Linklater's inspired and elaborate filmmaking experiments. All of this generates a profound spectatorial ache. This finds a kind of correlate in Mason's thoughtful disposition, which is at once serene and melancholic, and therefore especially well-suited to a film that is so sensitive to the prodigious miracles and ravages of time.

[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.

[Gittes]

Also: one of the nice memories related to viewing this was noticing the older gentleman next to me discreetly wiping away some tears as the sequence set to Family of the Year's "Hero" played out. I prefer very sparsely occupied theatres -- empty, ideally, although I don't recall this ever happening -- but this was one of the touching benefits of seeing the film amidst a very substantial audience.

[Mysterious Dude]

The protagonist is a blank the whole time

Mason reminded me of the main character in Waking Life, another young man who spends most of the movie being talked at, rather than being engaged in the conversation, until close to the end. I don't know if this is significant.

[Ivan Drago]

Holy fuck this movie.

As someone who spent a majority of his youth growing up and moving from city to city in Texas, this was a wallop of emotion.

I thought you were from Minnesota?

[Ezee E]

The concept is good, and there are some good moments throughout. Maybe it's the point, but the adults mostly seem like caricatures outside of the actual parents, with the alcoholism being kind of hokey to me. I enjoyed it in the same vein as I enjoyed the Up Documentaries (clips of this were played before the movie).

The movie is at its absolute best when the parents are trying to understand their children, or connect with them on a further level.

I kind of wonder if Linklater will go through on a sequel with this into Adulthood. I'd be interested.