Boyhood: Richard Linklater's Battle Against Alcoholic Stepfathers.

Dear Richard Linklater,

You worked wonders with Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight.  Every nine years, you gave us another great movie focused on the same two people in various stages of their relationship.  The series evolved with its characters; what began as a starry-eyed romance ended as an explosive bout within a long term relationship.  With only two hours every nine years, you created a believable relationship between two very real characters that easily produced empathy.

With Boyhood, you've attempted the opposite.  Instead of giving us the snapshots and letting us fill in the blanks, you've provided a full twelve years in one character's life.  We watch as Mason, the boy in question, grows from a child into a young man.  Unfortunately, the effect is not the same.  There isn't enough time for both Mason's life story and the emotions that accompany it; and at times, Mason seems more of a peripheral figure than a protagonist.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower: Sophomore Year Must Have Sucked.

Ten points for Gryffindor.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower will resonate with anyone who remembers feeling like an outsider in high school, which as one eventually discovers, is pretty much everyone.  It's a well-crafted, capsule of nostalgia focused around an incredibly dull, yet invariably scarred, loner named Charlie who finds himself befriended by an intriguing band of misfit youths.

The film manages to capture the mood of youthful insecurity and the transitory sense of entering and leaving high school, all the while reminding us, perhaps a little too often, of the ignorance inherent in children's ploys at maturity.  Charlie seems to be the only real wallflower of the bunch; he acts as narrator, and would be a completely vapid character if not for a tragic past and a crush on Hermione Granger.

It is the friends Charlie makes that drive the plot.  Sam (Emma Watson) and Patrick (Ezra Miller) are step-siblings whom, after the realization that Charlie has no real friends, adopt him as their own.  Charlie seems to contribute little to this friendship, apart from being a virginal target for corruption and a fresh face to talk to.  I suppose that's more than most friendships are based on, but I think I harbored a small grudge for Charlie's uninteresting personality.  I mean, sure he reads books, but he's not that cool.  And he has a stupid trapper keeper.

Like Crazy: Your Annual Deteriorating Relationship.

Last year, Ryan Gosling demonstrated that love and ukulele skills aren't always enough to sustain a relationship.  In 2009, Colin Firth showed us the absolute heartbreak of losing a lover.  We tend to get about one accurate relationship drama a year, and 2011's offering appears to be Like Crazy.  

Like Crazy's accuracy on the highs and lows of young love, as well as the difficulty of long-distance relationships is hard to deny, and while the film's emotional instances serve up quite a few high points, they tend to get muddled in the simplicity of the film's composition, which serves as a detriment to the overall quality of the film.

Art House Roundup: The UK Invasion and Will Ferrell.

I've been catching up on some harder to find films that came out this year, and if I don't post all of them in one entry, I probably won't post about them at all.  Everything Must Go, Submarine, Attack the Block, and The Trip have all been pretty difficult to see in Michigan, but I'm a magician, so I manage.  Reviews of the previously mentioned follow the break.