Tag Archives: film

One Additional Thought on “Boyhood”

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Boyhood is a landmark achievement in filmmaking, and it deserves a place in history. Its actors, director, and others who put so much time and effort into it deserve all the accolades in the world. I thought I had a criticism of the film, but really it’s a criticism of what comes next. As brilliant and compelling and wonderful as Boyhood was, I’m wondering about the potential for future films. Obviously the movie resonated with me, but once the credits ended and I’d had time to think about it, I realized that it hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know.

Mason’s childhood was different from mine in many critical ways, but it was very much alike in many others. We both grew up in Texas, yes, but we also both grew up in the United States, and in a particular version of this country. In additional to nationality, Mason and I share features like race, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation. I may have had a more affluent upbringing than Mason, but his was still reasonably comfortable.

Again, these are not intended as criticisms. This was an extremely ambitious project, and Linklater had to make the film at least somewhat autobiographical, if only in the sense that this unprecedented type of film took place in a world that was accessible to the filmmaker. I am hopeful that something like this is possible for other settings, be it on the basis of race, geography, or whatever. I don’t know of any projects like that in development, and anything that got greenlit today wouldn’t be in theaters until at least 2027, but I still hold out hope.

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“It’s always right now”: A Few Thoughts on “Boyhood”

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About three days into my college orientation, one of our advisors (a sophomore who had the perhaps unenviable task of shepherding about fifteen of us into university life) suggested we make a run to Target to get any supplies we might need for our dorm rooms. This event sticks out in my memory because it marked a “moment of realization” that might be common for college freshmen, and young adults in general. Or it might not—I’ve never asked anybody. I have now lived more years since that evening than I had lived up to that point, so the moment may seem sort of pithy now.

Kelly Martin (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

Oh, the places we went! (Actual store we went to not pictured.)

As we piled into the advisor’s car at around 9 p.m., though, I had this sudden realization that I never could quite describe. It wasn’t freedom, exactly, even though part of the realization was that I hadn’t had to ask anyone’s permission to go to Target late in the evening, and that no one was monitoring my bedtime (aside from basic social conventions between roommates). A better word might be possibility. If nothing was stopping me from going to Target at 9 p.m.—aside from not having a car and living in an unfamiliar city with spotty public transportation—what else was possible for me? Like I said, it seems pithy from the perspective of being 40 years old, but to an 18 year old from the quasi-suburbs who had never been away from adult supervision, the possibilities seemed endless. This brings me to the movie Boyhood.

Via 365filmsbyauroranocte.tumblr.com

I saw Boyhood in the theater about six months ago, and like most people, I was astonished by the ambition of the project and the story that it told. As you probably know, director Richard Linklater shot the movie a few weeks at a time over the course of twelve years, from 2002 to 2014. The movie follows the life of Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from elementary school to his first moments of college. The final scene of the movie is what really stuck in my mind, because it captured that feeling of possibility better than I could ever describe it with words. Spoilers ahead… Continue reading →

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Eight Short Rants about Foxcatcher

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I saw Foxcatcher this past weekend, and I would now like to present a few spoiler-filled rants about the film.

1. The accolades miss some incredible performances.

All the buzz is about Steve Carrell  who portrays John du Pont as perhaps the quintessential “eccentric, lonely rich guy,” surrounded by toadies but devoid of any friends. We’ve already seen Carrell’s potential to play both a serious and villainous character in 2013’s underrated The Way Way Back, but here he is literally transformed into a sort of monster. He absolutely deserves the accolades.

Mark Ruffalo is incredible as wrestler Dave Schultz. I never would’ve thought of Ruffalo playing a world-class athlete. I don’t mean that as a slight, but rather that his roles, even as the Incredible Hulk, tend to be more cerebral than physical. Here, though, he adopts all of the physicality and mannerisms of a lifelong wrestler, while still showing incredible depth and complexity. The scene where he is asked to say into the camera, for a du Pont-funded documentary, that John du Pont is his “mentor,” is utterly brilliant. Both he and Carrell deserve the Oscar nominations and praise they have received.

I dare say, however, that Channing Tatum deserves more praise than he has received, but that the structure of the final act of the film did him no favors. The movie begins with him as the central character (something I’ll get to more in a moment), but by the end he has largely faded from view without much explanation (I’ll get to that, too.) Carrell or Ruffalo essentially played characters frozen in time, with Tatum’s character responding and adapting to his circumstances. Again, this is not to take anything away from those two phenomenal performances, but Tatum came closest to the archetypal “hero’s journey.” He offers an amazing display of the pressure that star athletes feel, much of which they put on themselves. He embodies the physicality of the sport even more than Ruffalo, although I don’t know if that was too much or not. Sometimes it seems like Hollywood wants to typecast him as the “handsome guy who can act,” but this movie allowed him to do more than that.

2. The film is interesting, but once you realize what it is actually about, it is frustrating and disappointing.

Continue reading →

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The Greatest Year in Film History

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2014 is almost at an end, and I still haven’t gotten around to writing anything about the 30th anniversary of the greatest year of movies in the history of the medium. (That I was around 10 years old in 1984, and that it was therefore perhaps one of the first years for which I might have clear and relatively unfiltered memories, is surely coincidental.) It’s not like I can’t finally get around to posing about certain 1984 movies in 2015, when they’ll be 31 years old, but I do feel like I should at least say something about the excellent, historic, iconic, or just plain memorable films of 1984, as I see them. Continue reading →

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SXSW is nearly upon us! Some advice for the hipsters…

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State Theater, Austin, TXFor the first time in my 12 years, 6 months, and 15 days as an Austin resident (I wasn’t counting, I just remember the date I moved in), I have purchased a badge. It’s only for the Interactive festival, but dammit, I’m going to be one of those cool kidz strutting around downtown with that icon of cool, the SXSW badge.

Let me say up front, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve sashayed around the fringes of the ever-growing conference for over a decade, only now jumping partway in. My effort last year to watch the free Strokes show at Auditorium Shores without actually entering the park is a good representation of my level of commitment up to this point. I have mostly come to view SXSW as an invasion. A bunch of LA/NY types who espouse styles that have not yet reached Austin (and will never matter to me) descend on my city for two weeks and turn it into a sea of tight jeans, ironic sunglasses, and (largely) unearned self-importance.

Open RoomThis year, y’all are going to have to deal with me. And I will be saying “y’all” a lot, because it’s provincial, bitches.

I think the interactive festival is a bit different. There will still be a big hipster contingent, but we’re also all nerds (or geeks). There is a meetup session for Game of Thrones fans, for crying out loud!

I spent several hours yesterday creating a schedule on the SXSW website. Just doing that made me tired. I’m boarding my dog for a whole week (in luxury, fear not) and buying a bus pass so I can avoid parking and worrying about making it home at a certain time for feeding and peeing (the dog, not me). This will be an interesting week. When it is all said and done, there will still be five days of music. And I only slept four hours last night. I am in way over my head.

The bloggings of people I know and/or read and/or grudgingly respect have been invaluable. Here are two good primers:

With no further ado, here is my unsolicited advice to those of you who will be gracing my fair city with your presence for the next few weeks. These are in no particular order.

Downtown Austin from Lady Bird Lake1. Austin is not like the rest of Texas. All the stuff you read about in the news that’s so embarrassing for all Americans, nay, humans? Aside from shenanigans at the State Capitol, that all happens elsewhere in the state. The Capitol building is actually protected by a force field that keeps the crazy contained to a roughly three-block radius while the Legislature is in session.

2. Austin is not just like the West/East Coast. So stop trying to make it that way, please.

3. We get it. You’re cool. I’d really like to see you wear that wool hat, sweater, and skintight jeans ensemble here in August, though. One great thing about this town is that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re going to extend that same courtesy to you.

4. Pedestrians may have the legal right of way, but cars are still bigger than you. When you enter a crosswalk in downtown Austin at 5:00 in the afternoon, please try to remember that thousands of people work there, have no connection to SXSW, and are just trying to get home to their families in peace and without developing the nickname “Hipster Slayer.” If they have the green light, don’t try to cross in front of them.

5. If you’ve never used “Texas” phrases before in your life, do not start now. It hurts our ears. This includes “y’all,” “fixin’ to,” “might could,” and “that dog won’t hunt.”

5. Welcome to Austin. This town is fucking awesome, so enjoy it.

6. Chill the fuck out. The six hours you’re spending waiting in line for the Perez Hilton party? You could have spent that time doing things you couldn’t also do in Los Angeles. The organizers of SXSW work very, very hard to put on a kick-ass conference. The people of Austin work year-round to create a kick-ass city.

Photo credit: All photos by author.

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