Boyhood

Richard Linklater’s remarkable film, shot sporadically over 12 years, has little drama to speak of and a “hero” who’s decidedly passive, but it works because of the scope of its true subject: life itself. The boy is Mason (Ellar Coltrane), whose journey from six-year-old innocent to 18-year-old on his first day at college we follow, but the film is just as much about the grown-ups who attempt to deliver him safely into adulthood. Ethan Hawke is great as the dad who goes from deadbeat to devoted, even if that means losing a bit of himself along the way, but Patricia Arquette is even better. Her mother is fierce, funny, frank and occasionally furious, but never a saint (check her poor choice in husbands for proof). Special mention too for the director’s daughter, Lorelei Linklater; her embarrassment at being lectured on contraception by her screen dad would count as bravura acting, except for the fact that with her real father behind the camera the squirming can only be for real.