"Boyhood" review by Ross Smirnoff

Boyhood, a new feature film by Richard Linklater takes us on a journey through one boys life growing up in Texas over a twelve year period.   From the opening sequence we watch a little boy no older than seven years old looking up in to the sky while he lies sprawled out on the grass. 

The film is a sequence of events taking place over the course of the next twelve years where viewed from the filmmakers unique perspective, we experience the life of this boy as he grows into a man.   We experience events that every child brought up in America knows with well-developed intimacy.  Baseball games, birthday parties, frequent trips to the bowling alley, camping outings, and the occasional flirt with the opposite sex.   But what makes the sequence so spellbindingly addictive in our evisceration of its contents is that we watch this boy change and develop both mentally in physically.

If you are a fan of Richard Linklater’s other films such as Dazed and Confused, Slacker, and Waking Life, then you will appreciate the dialogue of this film as well.  The director continues to be fascinated with philosophical anecdotes about ideas that fascinate him, such as the state of our society in the digital world, and how much free-will do we really have when they can perfectly match us with our college roommates via our likes on facebook?   Also the isolation of a single-mother who raises her children the best she can only to realize that her life has been a series of milestones, ultimately resulting in the biggest milestone of all, death. 

This all may seem that the movie is a downer, but it's not.  If anything it’s a life-affirming quest that we all experience, growing up with relative degrees of differences. The best sequences in the film are when the father (Ethan Hawke), picks up his two kids from his ex-girlfriend mother (Patricia Arquette), to take the kids on adventures.  He speaks to them as if they are adults, subtly begging them to call him on his distorted and jaded rhetoric. 

All the while we watch the young boy, played to perfection by Ellar Coltrane, grow up on the screen in a little less than three hours.  

The soundtrack plays a pivotal role in the film with big hits such as “Deep Blue” by Arcade Fire, and a songs of the last 12 years by artists Gnarls Barkley, Wilco, and The Black Keys to name a few.  We all identify with these songs because they’ve been playlist of indie rock over the past decade.

This film has an addictive and playful fun going vibe with many laugh out loud moments.  These bring the theater goers together to collectively experience the life of a child growing into an adult.  He will have to carve out his own path in an ever disagreeable world, using all the tools he has to make the best life possible given the circumstances of his existence.  

 http://www.classicalite.com/articles/10373/20140806/review-ellar-coltrane-patricia-arquette-and-richard-linklater-of-course-make-boyhood-well-worth-your-time.htm