Boyhood (film)

[TownieDeac]

Great film. Not terribly uplifting, but very well done.

Not sure why the Arquette character had to end on such a downer.

Hawke was outstanding. Seemed like a character he's done over and over, but still excellent.

The Hawke-Linklater team has produced some pretty great films.

 

[myDeaconmyhand]

Saw it Sunday, thought it was pretty great. I agree that the stepdads were written poorly, especially military step dad. I was glad that the children matured at a natural pace - seems like hollywood always casts and writes childrens characters as 3 years older than they are.

 

[Say Hey Deac]

As a parent of young children, this movie sort of terrifies me. My little dude and gal are going to grow up and it's going to happen fast. The movie makes me want to go watch them while they sleep.

 

[Say Hey Deac]

In the podcast RL explains that IFC greenlighted the film and gave him around a $200,000.00 per year budget. He said that really the only thing that kept the film going was that the same producer that greenlit the film at IFC kept the same job for all 12 years and stood up in the budget meetings to defend the yearly 200K suck on on the bottom line with no results to show. There were other people at IFC that tried to scrap it multiple times.

Basically no one in the film industry (or really any industry) keeps the same job for 12 years anymore. That coupled with the changes we've had in the film and content industry since like 2002, made it a miracle the film ended up in its current form. IFC went through financial ups and downs and they really do not have any money to produce content anymore. If it werent for the one guy who kept their funding pipeline open and consistent, then it is very unlikely that the film would have made it to the public in its current state.

Thanks for this. Went back and listened to that podcast today, and also listened to Linklater's interview on WTF which actually just came out Thursday. What an interesting dude. I had no idea he was so old (52!). Nor did I know it was his daughter who plays the older sister in Boyhood.

Anyway, I thought the movie was brilliant -- really made me think about and feel the passage of time in a way I can't recall a movie ever doing to me. I haven't seen a ton of movies this year (kids FTL), but this one is easily the best one I've seen, and is probably the best film I've seen of the past few years. I have a feeling it'll stick with me for a long time. New appreciation for Linklater as well.

 

[DeacHead]

This won the Golden Globe for best picture, whatever that's worth. I don't object to it winning.

As for Linklater being old, Slacker came out in 91. Anyone that saw this when it came out... well you're old too (I'm including myself here).

 

[Ralph Medlin]

I was so super psyched from this and came away thinking that it was good but not great. Not really worthy of all the heaping praise.

Certainly I admire the ambition of the film, and RL's ability to finance it and pull it off as a coherent story is an immense success in and of itself.

However, I thought some of the acting from and writing surrounding the stepdad characters was pretty weak. Like I felt like I was in an after school special. Also, didn't think that Arquette really did a great job as the single mom. She brought it in some scenes, but felt sort of cardboard in others.

The scenes with Hawke and Coltrane were the best for me. Wish they had explored that a little more. The sister, Linklater's kid, was also pretty great. Sort of reminds me of a young Maggie Gyllenhaal. She has a bright future.

For me, the last half of the movie was way more interesting than the first half. I would much rather see age 10-22 than 6-18.


Also, dont really think it is a 'monumental shift in the way movies are made' since I dont think that in today's environment that it will be extremely difficult to fund projects like these. Linklater did an interview for grantland talking about his relationship with IFC and how lucky he was to keep funding for the movie over the years.

Saw it last night, pretty much agree with this assessment. I understand the difficulty in the logistics of this project but some of the scenes/characters were really underdeveloped. I gotta admit I'll probably steal some of Mason Sr.'s advice with my own boys.