Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

HomeyTao For having a relatively low budget, the film's style and overall art direction are immensely impressive.

toonyjakes Boyhood gets alot of praise, which in turn can heighten your expectations, and maybe it wont seem so great. I was wrong about that. This is a classic. Plot- Its genius and as simplistic as can be. It's life. You will quite literally watch a little boy grow up and face those trivial, life changing moments (each year of his life being 15 minutes run time) I related to alot of content in the film, so maybe I'm a bit biased here, but it just seemed so potent watching everything change, seeing every actor get older. Writing- Beautiful. Naturally written, with no forced moments. Never tries too hard to be profound, it always exemplifies those points subtly. Its not entirely quotable, yet the moments had are very memorable and sweet. Acting/Characters- These actors had to maintain an obligation to this film for 12 years, and they stay in character through it all. You can tell it was a very personal experience, for the actors are so natural in their roles (perhaps discredit Richard Linklaters daughter slightly) and every moment feel genuine, no cardboard melodrama at all. Quality-They took 12 years of change, and still made an important film out of it accordingly. The music is great, the scenery and straight forward cinematography was necessary to make it feel lifelike. It's a film that does what no other has done. Overall, Boyhood is fantastic, unless you cannot handle movies that are realistic and sentimental. It made me tear up, and as it went along I quite literally said "they grew up so fast" by the end of it. The ending alone was enough to make me sit there and contemplate hard. I think everyone and anyone should watch it. We all grew up, didn't we?

Omer Levent It's a beautiful movie. It's a privilege to be drawn in 12 years. It was so beautiful to see it. It's a different experiment. Although it lasted for 2 hours and 40 minutes and went to an ordinary drama consistency, it was not boring. It was even fun and nice. It's a long film I wonder. I did not regret it. The characters could not be emphasized much. Apart from that everything was nice.

john robinson (Fizzle_Talks) My biggest focus in a film tends to be the characters and interactions, and that is a huge problem in this film, and a big reason why I don't tend to like gimmick films in general. This film seems to be more infatuated with its gimmick than telling an intriguing story.Production started from 2002 and finished in 2013, and covers a family, focusing on a boy named Mason as he grows up. Reportedly, the script hadn't been completed by the time filming started beyond basic plot points and an ending, and it unfortunately shows badly in the final product. The most basic elements of storytelling are blatantly mishandled as the film chugs along at a snail's pace through its nearly three hour runtime seeming to make things up as it goes, which is likely what happened given the gimmick. It's essentially a slice of life story with a few plot devices placed to try to give the film some narrative to follow. It doesn't push any boundaries or try to be creative in any way other than in taking ten years to film, which is hardly a matter of talent rather than one of patience.The film starts off with its strongest conflicts right at the start, as the mother, Olivia, is recently divorced and falls for her teacher, Bill, who becomes an abusive alcoholic. This feels like one of the few elements that was placed in the story from the beginning, but even it didn't grip me. I grew up with an abusive alcoholic father, and Marco Perella's performance as Bill didn't convince me, as the subtleties seemed off. While it seemed right on paper, the execution felt like he was saying his lines off a teleprompter. Anyways, the movie shortly moves past that and goes on to focus on the family as Mason and Samantha who are now in high school, and it's nothing we haven't seen a million times before, and experienced at some point in our lives, which I suppose is the point, but it seems counter-intuitive to go to the movies to experience the worst part of your life over again. As Mason grows up throughout the movie, I find him less and less likeable as he gets extremely pretentious and depressing, to which point I agree with all those who antagonize him and call him out on his teenage melodrama. Samantha is not much better as she is unreasonably rude to her mother, who is by far the most likeable character in the entire movie. Mason Sr. is alright, and he gets a nice positive arc from being a loser to getting his life together and being a more active father throughout their lives, but I don't feel Mason Jr. quite follows along the same lines. He's simply not matured by the end of the film and it left me very disappointed. The real climax of the film involves Olivia having a mental breakdown about how her life has turned out, and it's actually quite effective, but short-lived, as the movie feels it more important to end with an artsy-fartsy yet cliche scene with teens blabbing about life while watching the sunset at the beach. Seriously, teenagers are just awful.In other words, this film is basically my life with a whole lot less conflict and an even worse teenager than myself. If this concept had worked out to make an entertaining film, it would have been an incredibly lucky lightning in a bottle scenario, and unfortunately that didn't happen. The family didn't have much chemistry, and the children didn't grow into as strong of actors as the parents were from the start. I understand the attempt at becoming a cultural phenomenon, but the excruciating runtime is ultimately undeserved. It can be an interesting diversion for some people, but I'm not entirely surprised it didn't resonate as well as may have been expected through its lengthy production.

vesil_vesalier I have to balance out the difference between the magnificence of the achievement, and its overall flow as a film, and in doing this, I find myself conflicted in ways I haven't been before, when reviewing a film. BOYHOOD is a fantastic work, with regards to what it is you are watching when you view the film. A time capsule in motion, centered around Ellar Coltrane, the boy in question, playing Mason, the titular character. Watching him grow from a boy to a young man is the meat of this movie, and it delivers, once you step back and really take in what it is you are absorbing. But the conflict, for me, is in the flow of the film. There are scenes that I find to be unnecessary, at least with respect to plot. There are scenes that are in the film purely for the sake of the overall experiment, instead of the narrative, and although I don't find them too distracting, it does linger in my mind when a scene is presented that has no overall impact on the film itself. Characters are introduced and discarded as quickly as they come in, representing a mere fragment in Mason's life. Don't get me wrong--there is value in what you see, but its impact on the overall film is lacking, and sometimes distracting when it leads nowhere.Thank goodness this is not the case for the overall film's quality, in which there were many moments of sweeping excellence to make up for its minor flaws. I have to give the film an 8, against the swarm of critics who gave it full marks, because I think the experiment got in the way of the narrative. That being said, BOYHOOD is CERTAINLY is a film I would recommend that everyone see, if for no other reason than to witness the spectacle of so many excellent actors and creators moving through time in real-time, with the reflections of America's ever-changing landscape in the background of every scene. Nobody delivers a poor performance here, from Linklater's daughter playing Mason's sister, to Ethan Hawke playing their father. The music was well done, save for some of the lyrics of songs written by Ethan Hawke for the film, since he plays an overly ambitious but ultimately unfulfilled musician, which I hope was the point of his relatively average music. Touching in its placement and purpose, but lacking in the kind of delivery normally associated with films and their powerful moments.I struggled for a long time trying to rate this film, and wish I could give it at least a 9, for the impressive achievement that it is, in that something like this has never been attempted before. But as it happens with new ground, you don't always shine absolutely brilliant when you first blaze the trail. It's filled with dangers, misfortunes, and mistakes, and ultimately learning about what to do and what not to do in the future. It will be interesting to see what the impact of such a film will have on the world of film, as time goes on.