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.