Within the confines of Hollywood movie themes and storytelling patterns, many movies these days seem to fall short of our expectations. The trailers look so juicy but the movie doesn’t live up to expectation.
So when a movie comes along that strays from the paths of those from the past, it can be either horrific or beautiful.
Lucky for Richard Linklater, his new film “Boyhood” aligned with the latter.
The film follows Mason Evans, Jr. (Ellar Coltrane), initially showing him at age six. Throughout the movie he gets older and the movie documents events in his life.
While it may sound like a typical coming-of-age Hollywood story, “Boyhood” is anything but.
Linklater initially found Coltrane back in 2002 when he was actually six years old. They have been filming the movie alongside his costars up until October of 2013.
The characters literally grow up on screen and people certainly are talking about it.
It premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, but on its select theater release back in July, it grossed $387,618, yet was only shown in five theaters.
Currently it is showing in a wider range of theaters and has made $22,666,000.
Salon.com called it “a moving and memorable 12-year epic of family life that isn’t quite like anything else in the history of cinema.”
“Watching these characters orbit in and out of one another's lives gives a sense of actually watching people -- not canned archetypes, but fully formed people -- get older,” said Maclean’s Magazine.
In fact, movie critics everywhere are raving over “Boyhood,” earning it an almost unheard of 99 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and an astonishing 100 percent on Metacritic.
If the idea and execution weren’t good enough, it has some pretty heavy star power as well.
While Coltrane is making his Hollywood debut in the film, it also features big names like Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, who also had a major part in the writing process as well.
According to Linklater, they took their time to write the film in order to accurately depict the pop-culture of the year in which the film took place. Sometimes the script wasn’t even written until the night before it was to be shot.
The crew came together at least once a year to film the movie, with a budget of $200,000 per year.
Through that may not be considered a very large budget in today’s Hollywood standards, it seems to already be making a splash at both the box offices, as well as racking up some big time awards.
During the 64th Berlin International Film Festival, Linklater received the award for best director.
It would certainly not be surprising if we see him getting some even bigger awards for it in the future, possibly even the Oscars considering it’s already astounding reception.
While it doesn’t seem likely that Ashley Square Cinema will be getting “Boyhood” anytime soon, bigger cities surrounding Greencastle are now showing it. But it is only on release for limited time, so catch it while you can.