Boyhood

[Jinsai]

Since this movie has pretty much the highest Metacritic average ever I went and saw it today.

I've never seen a movie like it. I wasn't floored, I didn't turn into a weepy mess, oddly enough it rarely even made me feel really nostalgic.

It's powerful though, and there's a strange kind of honesty to it that is uniquely its own. It doesn't ham up the drama. More than anything, I feel strangely powerless to explain what I liked about it. If you were to give a linear narrative of the movie, from start to finish, it would sound tedious and maybe even devoid of any real "story."

That's part of the point though. It's a strange snapshot of life through the formative years, and when you think back on it, for many of us it wasn't an "epic story" that people would really want to hear. There's no arc, the highlights are things we've all gone through.

The unsettling effect of watching the actors age throughout the process is really something fascinating though, and the movie makes you think.

For anyone who hasn't heard of it, the film chronicles a boy growing into an adult. They started filming when he was 6, and finished twelve years later. More than anything else I've ever seen, it's something that you need to see to "get." I'd highly recommend seeing it, but I'd suggest going in without any expectations. It's best that it surprises you, I think.

[thefragile_jake]

I'd go on liberty to say it's probably the best film I've seen all year. I think it lives up to it's own hype.

[nobies]

Saw it last night. It's unlike anything I've ever seen. A true slice of American life. It completely eschews a traditional narrative in favor of a structure and focus that makes the film feel like something that is real. Characters aren't forced into anything by the writing, they just exist. Its a beautiful thing, and I'm genuinely surprised at how gripping the film really was, despite lacking anything that could even really be construed as a conflict. Well, the movie does have many conflicts, but not a traditional "conflict", if you take my meaning. The conflict in the film is fluid, ethereal, and in a constant state of flux.

Certain moments in the film had a chilling truth to them, which was only intensified by the voyeuristic aspects of watching a kid grow up right before your eyes. The scene where Spoiler: the stepdad loses his shit at dinner, for example, doesn't come off as having any deeper meaning other than to feel like something that could actually be happening to this family. It's chilling, because the character feels lonely and tormented, and not comically evil. In fact, almost every major character (and several peripheral characters) in the film are fully-realized and given adequate screen time.

I don't know if its the best film I've seen this year, certainly the most ambitious though, and far more deserving of its praise than other formulaic MOR shit that receives "critical acclaim".

[Millionaire]

Looking forward to this. Linklater is one of my favorite directors; he oddly seems to be perpetually sort of underrated. His films don't always hit me, but when they do, man. I could watch Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Waking Life, and especially the Before trilogy all day. I like him best when he does loose-narrative 'slice of life' stuff, which Boyhood seems to fall under, so this should be right up my alley.

[Jinsai]

Looking forward to this. Linklater is one of my favorite directors; he oddly seems to be perpetually sort of underrated. His films don't always hit me, but when they do, man. I could watch Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Waking Life, and especially the Before trilogy all day. I like him best when he does loose-narrative 'slice of life' stuff, which Boyhood seems to fall under, so this should be right up my alley.

That will change with this movie. Whatever accolades this movie accrues, it's definitely going to get Linklater all of the 'director' awards.

and yeah... summing this up as "loose narrative / slice of life" is pretty accurate. It's Linklater at his best at what he does best. When I watched the movie, it felt so long, and at one point I remembered thinking to myself "this is pretty amazing, but I don't know if I ever need to see this movie again." Oddly enough, lately, I've been constantly thinking about it, and I want to see it again. It lingers with you, like a memory that belongs to you, and not just another movie that you saw.

[GoodSoldier333]

Oh my God, this was terrific guys.

[elevenism]

Time for the inevitable oscar season thread bump.

“You know how everyone’s always saying seize the moment? I don’t know, I’m kind of thinking it’s the other way around, you know, the moment seizes us.”

That's a quote from one of the characters, and i thought it summed up the movie pretty damn well. To be honest, i didn't just immediately decide that this film was one of the best of all time, like rotten tomatoes and such seemed to predict that i would.
But i liked it A LOT. And it DEFINITELY deserves attention for the way it was made. To my knowledge, no one has ever made a movie like this. And i loved the theme, or rather, what my wife and i perceived the theme to me. It reminded me of something that my dad laid on me. It's the idea that we are always getting ready for life...preparing for some future when "life" begins.
But the thing is, we're living! We are living right now, and there IS no "future." It's just an endless stream of now. (NOT tomorrow. It's happening now...not tom...never mind )

By the way, i remember my parents coming home from dazed and confused just blown away, saying ZOMG That's EXACTLY what it was like when we were in school! I can't BELIEVE that this director pulled this off! Keep in mind that we're from texas, so that probably added to it a bit.
They were so fucking tickled. Well, if Linklater was able to do it for the youngest boomers/oldest gen x'ers, i wonder if he could do it for us youngest gen x folk/oldest millennials. I was born in 80.

I wonder if he'd do it?

Also, you may think i'm nuts, but i kinda felt that boyhood was a bit of a spiritual sequel to DaC.
In both films, things just happened. Life happened. Dazed felt so real.

Boyhood was set in a different era, tackled a much longer stretch, benefited from that INCREDIBLE gimmick, and lacked the heavy reliance on a decade itself as a character, but at the end of the day, i felt that Boyhood definitely expounded on the theme of Dazed and Confused.

[Kodiak33]

That will change with this movie. Whatever accolades this movie accrues, it's definitely going to get Linklater all of the 'director' awards.

and yeah... summing this up as "loose narrative / slice of life" is pretty accurate. It's Linklater at his best at what he does best. When I watched the movie, it felt so long, and at one point I remembered thinking to myself "this is pretty amazing, but I don't know if I ever need to see this movie again." Oddly enough, lately, I've been constantly thinking about it, and I want to see it again. It lingers with you, like a memory that belongs to you, and not just another movie that you saw.

Just saw it this weekend, totally agree. I loved it.