This weekend I finally got around to seeing one of the movies I've been most excited to see in 2014, Richard Linklater's Boyhood.
The premise of the film is deceptively simple, it creates a drama following a boy from age six to eighteen, by creating a series of short vignettes, one for every year or so of his life, and filming in real time, over 12 years so that when the audience sees the film, they literally watch this boy (and his sister, and their parents) grow and age over the course of a dozen years.
Very much as with Michael Apted's Up Series the film works best over time, and as with that series I was mesmerized by the film as it's lead Mason (Ellar Coltrane), slowly but surely grows from an uncertain little boy into a young man on the cusp of adulthood.
If you can see it do so, I loved it in the theatre and will be sure to get it once it's available on DVD or Blu-Ray as it is really unlike anything else I've seen in a long time.
Simply Wonderful.
All right, I'll be the first to admit it, although I am usually interested in Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction, I am a huge fan of documentaries.
Hello? Is anyone still there?
Cool - so about eight and a half years ago I read an article in my local paper about an upcoming documentary called 49 Up, which followed the lives of a bunch of 49-year-olds in Britain and basically asked them about their lives, life in general and anything else that came up. The interesting thing to me was that this was in fact the seventh film featuring this group of people, that in fact they had been interviewed at the age of seven asking them the same questions and then had been followed up with every seven years since then.
This I had to see, but being the kind of guy who hates starting in the middle, I bought a boxed set of the first six films, sat down with my wife and over the course of six Saturdays watched them all.
Directed by Michael Apted (who directed all but the first, which he did work on) these movies are amazing. Honestly there are some things film is best for as a medium and longitudinal studies (where a subject is followed for a long period of time) is definitely one of them.
The films have no flying cars, no horrible monsters and very little technology, but despite my love of all those things I just got sucked into this series of films and have been waiting for seven years to see the newest one, 56 Up.
Check out the trailer here - honestly, it is quite different than a lot of what I watch/read/play, but I would honestly put this series of films in my top ten list of favourite movies - no question.
