Boyhood

Phenomenal

When you think back to Slackers you remember how easy that movie flowed. How comfortably it drifted. Just go with it. Let it happen, live in the moment. Then there's the Before trilogy which again seemed effortless and free-flowing yet constructed with so much care that you knew this filmmaker was not only unusual, but acutely human. That he cherished experience and learning and submitted to the eternal present, surrendering to and tinkering with fate, while tending to the perpetually immediate situation with enormous sensitivity and regard.

But nothing could prepare you for Boyhood. You can't overstate the fact that it's a grand free-flowing time-lapse experiment and that most of the actors--no not actors, not p...

Richard Linklater's 'Boyhood' is a brilliant film about life and the struggle to find meaning. It follows a family through a twelve year period as they endure situations and tackle obstacles together. The main technical aspect of the film is a very controversial and memorable one as Linklater hired his main actors and continued to follow them for twelve years thus adding to the realism of the feature adding much poignancy to the themes. The overall direction can be considered very naturalistic and simple but there are wonderful shots of natural environments such as the beautiful river that Mason and his father visit representing the beauty of life whilst underlining the insignificance of man's role in the world.

The screenplay is a touch...

Boyhood organically condenses twelve years of upbringing into an undramatic three hour behemoth. The journey of adolescence is one personality-altering experience that each of us inevitably undertakes. An existential life step that physically and personably transforms our very bodies, from innocent child to independent adult. Parents forced to release their protective talons and enable their children to venture out into the harsh world, justifiably falling down the pitfalls of life and picking themselves back up again. But whats the point of it all? We grow up. We attend school. We work. We live, love and lie. Only to see ourselves never progress on a personal level. Life is valuable. It is a finite amount of time that rapidly ticks by at t...