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Boyhood (2014)

Boyhood (2014)  

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  1. 1. Boyhood (2014)



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Going into Boyhood I didn't know exactly what to expect. I mean, I knew it would likely be a brilliant and unique experience, and it would be presented in that understated way that Linklater films are always presented, but beyond that I was uncertain.
 
What I got was... everything.
 
Boyhood was boring. It was exasperating. It was discomforting. It was banal. It was funny. It was profound. It was - now I try to put the experience into words - just exactly like life.
 
Linklater has always pursued a naturalistic, faux-documentary style, but by marrying that style to this simple concept he's struck gold. Showing a family grow before our eyes inevitably reminds us of our own childhood. It inevitably makes Boyhood a nostalgic and emotional experience. An experience that cuts right to the bone. And just like our own childhood, Boyhood is sometimes boring and difficult and slow, and yet all over far too quickly. 
 
Perhaps that's why this film is resonating with so many people. It's impossible to watch Boyhood and not remember comparable moments in your own upbringing. Everyone watching this film is either Mason or Samantha or one of their parents. Everyone has lived these moments and felt these feelings. 
 
And Linklater maximises this innate relatability with his approach to the material. His technique is so invisible, and he elicts performances that are so natural and authentic, that we're pulled right into the world. We can't not be. And being fully immersed in this world where we watch these people age and grow and change is a deeply moving, soul feeding experience.
 
Central to Linklater's brilliance is the way he knows which snapshots to film. Although Boyhood is relatively long it can only ever show a tiny amount of these twelve years, for fairly obvious reasons. Which snapshots should be included? Here, Linklater makes an interesting and brilliant choice. He eschews the obvious "big" moments that any other filmmaker would have built the movie around. Instead Linklater focuses almost exclusively on the seemingly trivial - moments that feel unspecial as they're being lived. Yet, Boyhood teaches us that when all these unspecial moments are collected together they add up to something special and life affirming and essential.
 
After all, isn't it often the small, insignificant moments that end up being stored in our minds? We can't explain why, but somehow they're the moments we keep with us during our lifetime. Linklater has obviously made the same observation and he's built his film around such moments. Indeed the only times the film slips up are the occasional attempts to go bigger - most notably a plotline involving an abusive husband which veers off into melodrama.
 
More generally, there were moments during the first hour of Boyhood when I became concerned. This wasn't the peerless masterpiece I had been reading about. In fact it was often messy and clumsy, with scenes that felt awkward and unnecessary. However, looking back on the film several hours later, those clumsy and awkward moments feel every bit as pivotal as anything else. Boyhood is a celebration of life, of each moment lived, of the clumsy and awkward as well as the profound and beautiful. Life is a miracle, all of it, and this miracle of a film exists to remind us of that indisputable, higher truth.
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Wow this movie is really bad, like really really bad. Its beyond long and boring plus no story. I had to hold my laughter a couple times.

 

To sum it up why this movie is shitty I only need to explain one thing. We see him at like 8 - 12 years old with an abusive alcoholic father. Thats 45 minutes of the movie. Its cheesy and over done of course but thats not the problem. This movie is so pointless guess what!? The mom's second husband who seems fine also has a drinking problem we find out, our lead is  just 5 years older. We covered the exact same thing already, its pointless and the movie goes no where. Like fuck, it couldn't have been gambling? Or hookers? Fucking a Scrabble addiction but to use Drinking again is redundant. Not to mention we actually never really see how it affects him as a person. 

 

The acting in this film is also really really bad. The only positives are the concept  and Ethan Hawke.

 

C- (72)

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I was pretty drunk Saturday (hence my ridiculously over the top review) but I honestly didn't think any of the main actors were bad. Maybe Samantha in her early scenes... but she was about 7. And I thought Patricia Arquette was fantastic.

 

There's that scene with the older kids drinking beer and swearing a lot that had some dodgy acting I guess, but otherwise I can't see what you mean.

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Wow this movie is really bad, like really really bad. Its beyond long and boring plus no story. I had to hold my laughter a couple times.

 

To sum it up why this movie is shitty I only need to explain one thing. We see him at like 8 - 12 years old with an abusive alcoholic father. Thats 45 minutes of the movie. Its cheesy and over done of course but thats not the problem. This movie is so pointless guess what!? The mom's second husband who seems fine also has a drinking problem we find out, our lead is  just 5 years older. We covered the exact same thing already, its pointless and the movie goes no where. Like fuck, it couldn't have been gambling? Or hookers? Fucking a Scrabble addiction but to use Drinking again is redundant. Not to mention we actually never really see how it affects him as a person. 

 

The acting in this film is also really really bad. The only positives are the concept  and Ethan Hawke.

 

C- (72)

 

Yeah, that is what I was thinking.

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Like straight up, The kid likes photography, but we never saw him once express that. All of a sudden he just likes it no discovery.

 

His girlfriend breaks up with him but we don't see it, we see after they broke up. We never see him confronting his step fathers about anything, or even his dad who was absent.

 

We never see him cry. We never see him so happy he can run 1,000 miles. We actually never do anything with him. I never feel with him, there is not plot ever. Not even for a scene, is there one time in the movie where there was an objective of any sort that needed to be solved. 

 

I had no attachment to him, I just watched a kid literally grow up from age 5 to age 18 yet I could care less about him and I feel like I don't even really know him. Its a surface movie with a gimmick. 

 

If the movie was 2 hours or 105 minutes it may have been good but its just keeps going and going for no reason. And the dialogue is straight up laughable. The drunkin father stuff is word for word what you would expect just straight over the top hammy Alcoholic over done father shit and we have to sit through that twice. 

 

This movie makes me so angry I can't even focus my thoughts. Surprisingly to me this could be the most overrated movie ever.

 

No joke I feel like some 19 year old kid wrote this. It seems that they never had a script and just meet up once a year and filmed random shit hoping it would piece together and make a movie someday. 

Edited by Jay Hollywood
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Our characters also have 0 arcs, expect for Ethan Hawke, besides that NOTHING and by nothing I mean nothing. The movie should have been 2 hours of Ethan Hawke learning to become a real man and a good father instead

 

We also never see our lead dream? We have no idea what his hopes for the future are, like none. 

Edited by Jay Hollywood
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Like straight up, The kid likes photography, but we never saw him once express that. All of a sudden he just likes it no discovery.

 

But there aren't any real "eureka," moments in real life.  I don't know what you were expecting, but that's all I can imagine.

You try something out you either don't enjoy it or you do.  In this case, he obviously took an interest in photography.  Did we have to see him pick up a camera for the first time, not at all.  

 

Do you remember the exact moment you knew you wanted to do whatever it is you do?  Most people don't.  

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But there aren't any real "eureka," moments in real life.  I don't know what you were expecting, but that's all I can imagine.

You try something out you either don't enjoy it or you do.  In this case, he obviously took an interest in photography.  Did we have to see him pick up a camera for the first time, not at all.  

 

Do you remember the exact moment you knew you wanted to do whatever it is you do?  Most people don't.  

 

I had a Eureka moment. But the point is he never once says why he even likes photography to anyone. I want to feel with the character, I want to connect, I want to be happy when he is happy and sad when he is sad. I wasn't. 

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Would you mind sharing it with us?

 

Long story short after having gone through quite a rough couple of younger years in 4th grade I watched Jurassic Park again for the first time in years. It had been my favorite movie along with Star Wars when I was 3 -  6. I was wowed all over again, that weekend we got a DVD player and I bought Jurassic Park on DVD after watching the movie again I saw they had a making of. I watched it and it changed everything for me. I was blown away by all the different departments, people and work it took to create something that could only exist in the movies and in my imagination. Right when it ended I walked up to my mom and said thats what I want to do. I want to make movies. Ever since then thats all I've wanted to do. 

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Long story short after having gone through quite a rough couple of younger years in 4th grade I watched Jurassic Park again for the first time in years. It had been my favorite movie along with Star Wars when I was 3 -  6. I was wowed all over again, that weekend we got a DVD player and I bought Jurassic Park on DVD after watching the movie again I saw they had a making of. I watched it and it changed everything for me. I was blown away by all the different departments, people and work it took to create something that could only exist in the movies and in my imagination. Right when it ended I walked up to my mom and said thats what I want to do. I want to make movies. Ever since then thats all I've wanted to do. 

 

Okay, that's cool.  

 

But that's you.  Do you know how many people toil with finding something to do?  Especially creative types like photographers/artists.  It sometimes starts as a hobby, just something they enjoy doing to pass the time.  Then it becomes something more, something they want to do all the time.  

 

I mean yes, they could have just had him pick up a camera at one point and snap a picture.  But they didn't and it doesn't bother me one bit.

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