What makes Boyhood this extraordinary experience and achievement is the opposite of that adjective: the ordinary. Linklater and company sought to deliver a genuine interpretation of a life experience without flashy movie bells and whistles.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 16, 2024

Boyhood captures the importance of the commonplace and how it’s the endless procession of relatively inconsequential events that most shape our lives.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

Boyhood is, logistically speaking, a bit of a miracle.

Full Review | Apr 19, 2023

I’m happy to be basically all in for the film, but that’s turned out to, predictably, be a little prickly...

Full Review | Jan 23, 2023

...it’s hyperbolic in its minimalism and boring in spots and its overall narrative reach often exceeds its grasp. Even still, it’s one of the most important movies of the decade so far and you should experience it just to say you did.

Full Review | Sep 15, 2022

The film had me looking back on my own childhood, but also thinking about my 13-year old son and the life he is living. Walking out of the theater I wanted to hurry home, give him a hug, and tell him that I loved him.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 19, 2022

Inside this beautiful, simple, and ambitious film is an almost documentary quality to truth that, despite the film's lack of traditional plotting, engages the viewer in an indescribable way.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 5, 2022

Linklater did the unthinkable, which is to capture our collective youth on film so that we may be able to relive it over and over again.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | May 17, 2022

The best feature of Boyhood is that it derives beauty, joy, and emotion out of the ordinary lives of people.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 25, 2022

It's a beautiful coming-of-age tale that boasts as strong an ensemble as can be and completely nails what it meant to grow up over the past decade or so.

Full Review | Feb 11, 2022

The magnum opus of one of the most creative directors of the past three decades is also perhaps the ultimate coming-of-age story.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 6, 2022

It's not you, Richard, it's me - we'll more specifically it's us. We clash. We're like an acoustic guitar dipped in peanut butter, you and me, Richard Linklater.

Full Review | Jul 2, 2021

Boyhood exudes a verisimilitude seldom seen in cinema, an open-ended, fly-on-the-wall naturalness that appears unscripted.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 25, 2021

Still, Linklater's optimism is still very much American and it annoys me sometimes for a fact that we never see Mason cry or having a real tragedy in life. But I also understand it's called Boyhood, not Boyz 'n' da Hood.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2021

The production of the film was something of an experiment, and it is a tribute to Linklater's strong feelings about human beings and the essential humaneness of the project that it succeeded.

Full Review | Feb 12, 2021

A remarkable film but not a perfect one. At almost three hours it occasionally feels aimless, but as a chronicle of life it's an ambitious undertaking, a moving experience about the individual moments that make a life.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 1, 2021

Boyhood is a moment of cinema that cannot be duplicated.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 31, 2021

By the end, it's basically just a documentary.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 4, 2020

It is most certainly a rarity when ambition is met by remarkable achievement.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.0/4.0 | Sep 4, 2020

The simplicity of story in Linklater's Boyhood, following the not-overly eventful life of six-year-old Mason till he leaves home for college as a teen, is an incredible cinematic achievement.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 26, 2020