Haven't seen BOYHOOD yet but the magnitude with which HER steamrolled me and apparently did....nothing to you, is fascinating to me.

You know who else didn't like Boyhood?

whatarewegonnado? google all them german wrods?

By "typical Linklater" do you mean long philosophical conversations or offbeat humor?

I commend Linklater's gaul for getting it done more than anything.  The movie is great, but it's not great because it's particularly moving - it's great because it demagnifies the movie-going experience and forces you to experience the movie differently than other films.  You're aware you're watching something that took years to craft and I'd argue it asks the viewer to consider the film existentially, because now, instead of watching a movie, you're having to experience legitimate aging of the people you're watching on screen.

If you were to re-cast "Boyhood" and re-shoot the whole thing with the exact same "script", but with only a 20-day shooting schedule, you'd have a rather blah film about a bunch of people that make odd life choices.  Really, nothing happens other than 'they all grow up'.

To that end, one of the key scenes in the film is

The word "gimmick" has a negative connotation because so many movies that employ a gimmick do it poorly or, in the truest sense of a gimmick, merely to attract attention/buzz. But some of the best movies I've ever seen are extremely gimmicky. They just do it well.

In the case of Boyhood, its central "gimmick" actually is integral to its conceit. IOW, I don't think it was motivated by "Oh let's do this. No one's ever done this before. This'll get people talking." Rather, the specific effect Linklater was looking to produce in the audience required him to do something like what he did (casting a kid at 10, filming every summer for nearly 12 years, cutting it all together). It doesn't seem like an add-on of a gimmick so much as the thing the had to do to get the film he got. IMHO, the point that says, "Well if he didn't do that, then it's just kind of a mundane story" is completely true, but somewhat trivial--because most of what makes the movie so effective is that he did do that. It's like saying, "Well, if you remove the thing that's most compelling about X story, then it's not as compelling." I mean, yeah, that's true.

If someone gave you an outstanding glass of lemonade, you wouldn't say "Wow, that's really good, but we both know that if you hadn't included lemons in the recipe I'd be drinking plain, boring water right now."

I think what interested Linklater in the story is in not knowing what the story would be. He was making it up on the fly as the actors aged in real time. All he knew is he wanted to explore a character's life via an approach nobody else ever had.

It's not a typical Hollywood movie -- it's more of a French movie taken to the extreme. Not to get all "it's about the notes they don't play," but I think Linklater made deliberate choices NOT to go for the drama and just to show a fairly mundane boyhood. There's no tearful Lifetime blowout when Mason comes home drunk/high in his late teens (I liked the "Hey buddy, what time is it" fakeout from the stepfather a lot there); there's no horrific accident when the kids are throwing saw blades with a buzz on, or awkward losing-virginity-to-a-hooker scene. I feel like he clearly set up "This is the way movies tell you a kid's life would go -- this is the way it would probably go, though."

Yes, the form is largely the substance. As we have often said on the show, I don't want all movies to be like this, but I'm glad this one is.

And Redlettermedia...

Finally caught up with this one, and I'm sad to say it fell kinda flat for me.  I definitely plan on revisiting it, I am hoping it will grow on me after repeat viewings.

But as for my theater experience, I really wasn't into it.  I get the whole only show the "mundane-day-to-day snippets" approach, I get this is supposed to be real life.  I was expecting and looking forward to that.  But shit, my own childhood was pretty uneventful...and what I did on the day-to-day was wayyyyyy more interesting than Mason.

It seems silly to break out the screenwriting book for a film like this, but he was just too inactive of a protagonist to keep my attention.  For the first half, I felt like I was watching Warhorse.  Mason just wanders from vignette to vignette, all cute, and big-eyed, and blank-slatey.  There were some quiet, interesting moments happening around him for sure, but it wasn't enough. 

I'm not asking for him and his buddies to uncover a dead body on a camping trip, but for heaven's sake make a decision Mason!  Do something stupid, pick on a kid at the playground and then learn and feel shitty about it.  Fight with your mom about making you a healthy dinner.  Just do or say something.

As far as the high school years and the psychology-babble, I haven't seen a lot of Linklater, so this may be a taste thing.  I am just less partial to movies where characters talk about stuff they are gonna do or that they did.  I'd rather see them do the stuff.  Again, probably just a taste thing.

I do want to check this out again, because there was a good amount that I enjoyed...particularly the adult characters, and the sibling interaction in the earliest scenes.  But boy are millennials uninteresting people sometimes.  I am just a few years older than Mason, and this makes me a little weary of my generation.  Is this what happens when you make a movie about us?  I'm starting to get the too-many-video games thing.

That's definitely a fair reading, I hadn't framed it that way.  I was hoping this wasn't the case, but I think a big part of why this did not connect with me is because my childhood was so vastly different from Mason's. There's an interesting article on relatability that refers to Boyhood.  I might use kinder words, but I think she's onto something: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultur … latability

All that being said though, I didn't have Mason's childhood.  But I also wasn't an orphan who lived in a cupboard and I'm still able to have empathy for Harry Potter.  You say Mason is doing everything to keep his head above water.  Is he really?  With some exception, he just seems kind of passively okay with everything around him.  None of us take action of any real consequence as children, but everything we do FEELS like the most important thing in the world at the time.  Today's soccer game, tomorrow's spelling test. Those all meant something to me growing up, but I didn't feel those stakes while watching this film.  Again maybe Mason is just a different person but I really don't think we're built all that differently.

I recently watched David Chase's Not Fade Away, and the coming of age stuff rang true for me a lot harder.  Chase is known for his small conversations and plot threads that go nowhere, but I still felt the material was handled better.  Granted I am from New Jersey,  so yeah...relatability