Hacker Cinema
Boyhood
2014 · Film · 165 min
Directed by Richard Linklater
The film tells a story of a divorced couple trying to raise their young son. The story follows the boy for twelve years, from first grade at age 6 through 12th grade at age 17-18, and examines his relationship with his parents as he grows.
4 positive1 negative8 neutralfrom 13 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
13 comments on Hacker News
Classic Thing, Japan. There are plenty of western movies that don't follow the three-act structure (off the top of my head, Apocalypse Now, Mulholland Drive (and probably most Lynch), Boyhood (and other Linklaters), basically any Robert Altman) and plenty of foreign films that do.
Waking Life is amazing, watching it was one of life-altering events for me. After watching it several times I became curious about the director - Richard Linklater (he's staring as a guy at the Pinball machine in the end of the movie). Apparently he made some other nice movies after Waking Life. I really liked "Boyhood" - there's also really nice story behind shooting the movie - it was shot for 11 year with the same actors showing them growing up / aging.
This Hoover Dam trivia appears in the 2014 Richard Linklater film "Boyhood". From the script:
MASON Yeah, in just a few years that's you
(Indicates girls) And that's gonna be me
He subtly indicates the Man Alone guy, stil1 sitting at his booth, giving a lecture of some kind, with data, etc.
MAN ALONE IN BOOTH ...Also inlaid into the terrazzo floors was a star map, a celestial map of heavenly bodies so accurately displayed that one could chart the procession of the Pole Star fourteen thousand years into the future, such that future generations upon...(Continuing Indistinct Under)
SHEENA (O.S.) I wonder what his deal is. I mean, he obviously has money to eat here.
MASON (O.S.) He just said. He's a UT professor, tenure and everything.
Boyhood took 12 years to make, but no one likes it.
The Werner Herzog movie where they moved a steam boat over a mountain was incredibly difficult, but most people haven't seen it.
Sounds similar in concept to the Black Album featured in the film Boyhood:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Album_(compilation_album)
I don't buy this article's premise (that there is too much recycled, unoriginal content).
You could make this same argument for all forms of art (music, TV, theater). They can all be explained the same way: the barrier for entry has decreased.
Anyone can upload music to Soundcloud or a video to Youtube. Now there are whole albums/TV series/movies being produced on these content networks as a result of a kind of indie discovery that never existed before. This is wonderful!
The benefit of all of that discovery is the same drawback: that anyone (good or bad) can enter the market. That means in order to capture the "average" audience you have to water down and dilute what is popular to appease everyone. Most pop music is unmemorable. Most pop movies are unmemorable. BUT, they are good enough to capture a wide enough audience to convince them to pay for it.
That doesn't mean there isn't great film to be found. Or music. It just requires a bit more discovery than your local pop Top 40 radio station or whatever they're peddling in the box office.
There have been so many great films in the last 20 years with original stories. Here's a bunch that I just rattled off the top of my head without much thought:
Boyhood, Interstellar, Inception, Spirited Away, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, Wall-E, The Intouchables (now called The Upside), Pan's Labyrinth, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Amelie, Slumdog Millionaire
Though not a film, Breaking Bad has I think been exemplary in its treatment of this subject.
By and large now it’s a topic that sees much more treatment in TV than in movies.
“Boyhood” comes to mind.
>A movie designed to do well on a RT score needs to please everyone. The end result is something that tries to be bland, uninteresting, and inoffensive.
This is demonstrably untrue. Here is a link (along the left column) of the top RT movies for each year from 2014-2016:
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/
Sure there are some blockbusters, but there are also many excellent, interesting, engaging, even daring films like Moonlight, Hell or Highwater, Manchester by the Sea, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, It Follows, Boyhood, Nightcrawler, and Birdman. And those are just among the top 10 scores for each year; if you expanded to movies in the 90% range of each year you'd have a large number of excellent choices.
I couldn't find a list of the top-rated RT movies for 2017, but (I think) currently the highest-rated among them is Get Out, a film specifically made to be the precise opposite of "bland, uninteresting, and inoffensive".
I submit that you simply choose to watch bad movies.
Also, please watch Moonlight, if you have not. It's more about the age old question of identity and growing up than any movie in recent history (including Boyhood).
There's a school of thought that says that people use apps like this not to follow the pleasure principal, but that these platforms provide a brief escape from the neurotransmitters asdociated with anxiety that make us feel bad (1). This actually okay Buzzfeed article (who knew?) pretty much confirms that, only the thesis is distorted by the sample group being excitable teenage girls.
Seeing the film Boyhood reminded me of how fluid your identity is at this age. I think these teens will discard Snapchat forms of communication in a few years, as you change so much in this window. (1) http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/15708/addicting-apps-mobile-technology-health/
Just real quick here. Box Office Mojo has data on 702 movies released in 2014 (I only wanted to do one year because there's no API I know of for this and I was doing it quickly, I chose 2014 instead of 2015 because there's still many 2015 releases that are still earning money and so I wanted the most recent "complete" year). The correlation between total box office gross and theaters shown in is very robust, at .79. So if you look at the top Metacritic movie from 2014, Boyhood, you can see it has a low gross, ranked 100th on Box Office Mojo's data. But if you look at the theaters shown in, it was only in 775 theaters. Mr. Turner, the second movie on Metacritic's rankings for 2014, was only shown in 120 theaters. Birdman, the Best Picture winner and the 16th ranked movie on Metacritic's list, was in 1213 theaters. Meanwhile, you have to go to the 21st movie on the top grossing list to find a film that was in fewer than 3,000 theaters. It's a classic example of Simpson's paradox[1]. You have two populations, wide-release movies and small-release pictures, and within each population, there's a positive correlation between critical approval (as measured by Metacritic) and box office gross, which is picked up by the contour maps. But because the highest Metacritic scores go to the movies released in 2000 theaters or less, without controlling for the number of theaters a movie shows in, it looks like there's a negative relationship between critical acclaim and box office totals.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
I'm not sure I'm able to visualize this correctly. Let's say we have an array of strings containing the top 20 movies from Rotten Tomatoes:
The Wizard of Oz The Third Man Citizen Kane All About Eve Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) Modern Times A Hard Day's Night The Godfather E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial Metropolis It Happened One Night Singin' in the Rain Laura The Adventures of Robin Hood Inside Out Repulsion Boyhood North by Northwest King Kong Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
What would this data structure look like?
I just saw _Boyhood_ over the weekend (fantastic movie, btw), and there was a scene in there that sums up my approach to socialization. The main character is talking to his dad about how he kinda has a girlfriend but it's awkward because when they're at school they've got a ton to talk about, but when they're on the phone at home they're completely different.
The dad drops this little bit of thought-technology his way (and apologies for the mangling of the quote):
"Here's what you do, alright? First off, you gotta ask her a lot of questions. Then you have to listen to the answers, alright? Actually be INTERESTED in her, alright? If you can do those things, you'll be LIGHT YEARS ahead of those other guys."
Ask a lot of questions and be interested in the answers - that'll go a really long way. Remember, everyone's got a story and I think everyone (in some way, shape or form) wants to tell it.
Also, practice socializing. This stuff comes really naturally to some folks and really NOT naturally to others. If you're in the latter camp, practice like you'd practice anything else you want to get good at. One of the local user groups I frequent has what it calls 'socialization practice' after each meetup. It's just everyone heading to a pub and hanging out, but it's a pretty good way to get to know people and practice some of these softer skills.
Best of luck - you can do it :).