Boyhood

Let's get the bad part of the review out of the way first. I didn't love Boyhood. I sure did like it a lot at times, but I'm not jumping up and down about the way everyone else is. I'm not ready to proclaim it the best movie of all time, or even of this year. All of the things I worried about going into it proved true. It's a bit on the pretentious side. At nearly 3 hours long, it gets to be a tad boring at points. In an especially boring part, I'll admit, I just wanted to leave already and be over with the movie. Without any real plot (other than, you know, growing up), the movie meanders at time and gets lost inside itself. The performance by the titular boy is a little hit or miss for me. I realize that this is a movie about life, but I just have to say it, you guys. Absolutely nothing happens in this movie. (And, yet, everything happens.... do you see my dilemma??). This isn't a dramatic film. It's the opposite of drama - a very slow moving, document of a boy growing up. It's not artistic enough to be an art house film, and it's not broad enough to be a crowd-pleasing film. So, it's stuck somewhere in between. The sort of critical darling that people think they have to love. It will probably win all kinds of awards and maybe it will get better with age.

Okay, now that the unpopular part of my opinion is over with, allow me to praise the film a bit. Boyhood is definitely an experimental film, and like all experimental films, it's flawed at best. But, somehow, despite having no plot and no direction, Boyhood manages to have charm in spades. You have probably heard that this movie was made over a 12 year span, filming for a week or so every year, allowing it's actors to age and grow. It's a radical approach to film making from a director (Richard Linklater) who knows a thing or two about unique approaches (he is the man who brought us the nearly perfect trilogy of Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight, three movies spaced years apart that follow the same characters and their relationship). Could you imagine what the meetings must have been like to get financing for this film? "Well, I want to make the ultimate coming of age movie, but I'm not going to have a finished product for 12 years. Give me your money!" You have got to applaud a man like this, who thinks outside the box and who is willing to dedicate part of his life to a project like this. In a world where there are now 4 Transformers movies and a movie about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, you have got to celebrate something this unique and ground-breaking and innovative. Just because I didn't love Boyhood, doesn't mean I didn't like it. It's got so much charm. It feels like real life - the first loves, the first heartbreaks, the parade of your mom's idiot boyfriends, the father who means well but is never around, the bullies, the lazy summer days and nights with friends. There were certain moments in this movie, where I couldn't help but smile - playing hide and seek/tag around a monument in the park, a family sing-a-long, talking about girls with your dad while camping. When this movie is good, it's really damn good. It's moving and raw and compelling. You want to see the evolution of a character? This is the evolution of a character like you've never seen before. We literally get to see a child grow up before our eyes, every fifteen minutes or so, the movie jumps forward a year without telling us and we notice small changes like a different hair cut. One of the things I loved most about the movie was how it managed to stay away from all the cliched moments. Instead, we get the small moments, the moments that really matter (like the few I listed above). We don't actually see him turn 16, but there he is driving. We never see a graduation ceremony, but he's heading off to college. It's this focus on the life and not the moments that makes Boyhood feel like something special.

The performances are mostly fantastic. I mean, Patricia Arquette, am I right? She kills it as Mason's mom, the put-upon single mother, putting herself through college, making poor life decisions, saying things like, "I'm a poor whore with a big house!" I love Arquette in this movie, and I hope she's remembered come awards season. Ethan Hawke as the well-meaning father is pretty great too, and his moments with Mason seem the most true and have the most charm. They have a great chemistry together and their interactions are among my favorite. Then there is Ellar Coltrane as our star Mason, the boy we watch grow from age 6 to 18. Casting this role must have been a huge challenge and gamble. You can easily pick a child who is comfortable in front of the camera as a 6 year old, adorable and charming, and he could grow up to be awkward and off-putting. But Linklater lucked out. Coltrane is mostly a success here. There were a few years in the middle, where it seems like, maybe, he forgot how to act, but for the most part he is compelling to watch. I'd say he gives a good performance for about 9 of the 12 years, and that's pretty great. Like the movie, he is more interesting to watch as a child. The movie loses some of its charm as Mason grows older, and I definitely liked the first half of the movie most.

The greatest thing about Boyhood is that we learn to really love these characters and cheer for them. I wonder what happens to Mason next? I like to think he graduates college and in a fit of artistic rebellion, changes his name to Jesse. Then he heads to Europe where the jumps on a train and meets a fascinating, dynamic, scary intelligent French girl named Celine and they share a night that will change their lives forever.

Grade: B

Guardians of the Galaxy

Here is the biggest problem with any movie in general and Guardians of the Galaxy in particular - when the character you relate most to on a humane level is a giant, talking tree.

Guardians of the Galaxy is sort of the boozy, rowdy, more rough and tumble version of The Avengers. They are led by Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), who calls himself Star Lord, and he's sort of like a poor man's Han Solo - a bad ass, cool, ladies man in space. He was abducted from Earth when he was 8 and has spent his formative years as a planet jumping scavenger. When he happens upon an orb that may or may not have the power to destroy the world, he must team up with a rag tag group of misfits in order to defeat evil and save the world. It's pretty much the plot of the Avengers, or any Marvel movie, really, but with different characters. This time around we've got Gamora (Zoe Saldana, who somehow has managed to get a part in just about every franchise or big budget movie of the last 8 years or so without really demonstrating any talent), a green skinned assassin, Draxx (wrestler Bautista), a red skinned, hugely muscled, very literal tough guy, Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), a foul mouthed, machine gun wielding raccoon, and Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), the aforementioned tree who can only say "I am Groot" and is also, hands down, the best part of the movie. The rest of the highly eclectic cast includes Oscar winners Glenn Close (as the leader of a planet, or something) and Benicio Del Toro (as The Collector), and TV stars like Michael Rooker (as an interplanetary bad ass, obviously), and Lee Pace (whose otherworldly beauty is wasted, hidden behind make up and giant head dresses).

Now, I'm not saying Guardians of the Galaxy is bad, per se, but it's also not really all that good. I saw the movie a week later than everyone else and the hype was already fully formed. I'd read the reviews, saw my friends raves on Facebook and Twitter, saw all the commercials announcing it as the best movie of the summer. I have to say, I was thoroughly disappointed. I was expecting a non-stop thrill ride, a funny, exciting, non-stop comic/action movie. I didn't get any of that. The funniest parts of the movie were in the trailer, and the action is fine, if not terribly jumbled (it's possible to make a movie where you can film action scenes and still know what is happening - just ask the guy that directed The Winter Soldier). The movie takes quite a while to even get started, but there are fun moments, and Pratt is definitely deserving of his sudden thrust onto the A-List. Dude has great charisma and is charming as hell (also, those abs). But, like I said, we don't care about any of these characters, except for a giant, CGI tree who can only say three words. The soundtrack is fun and parts of the movie are enjoyable, but for the most part this movie just falls into the realm of so many other Marvel movies for me - a giant disappointment. This movie surely seems like a wasted opportunity for me and like I've said, the bar has been raised this summer. There are far better movies than this, which is merely mediocre, at best.

Grade: C