Boyhood (2014)

It's a brilliant gimmick--watching a group of actors, especially the kids, literally age over 12 years--but even without the gimmick this is a wonderful coming of age story which we loved, most people loved, and I doubt anyone will hate. Ellar Coltrane, who will be 20 on August 27, was six when the cameras started rolling in 2002 and is perfectly believable as he navigates a world with his here-today-gone-tomorrow father, his mother's choices of relationships, his moody older sister, and growing up. The director/writer's daughter Lorelei Linklater, who is actually only three months older than Coltrane, apparently insisted on being in the movie, and she's a hoot in her live-action screen debut (she had a small part in her father's animated Waking Life (2001)--here's a publicity photo from that year of Ethan Hawke with Richard and Lorelei Linklater). After a few years Lorelei became bored with the project and asked her father to kill off her character but he declined, saying it wasn't that kind of movie. She regained her enthusiasm eventually. 

Richard Linklater (last blogged in Before Midnight) frequently works with Hawke (ditto), and wrote the parents' divorce because Hawke wouldn't be available every year for production. Patricia Arquette (she first came to my attention in the wonderful True Romance (1993), then co-starred in one of my all-time favorites Flirting with Disaster (1993). I also liked her in David Lynch's crazy Lost Highway (1997), Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman's crazy Human Nature (2001), Linklater's Fast Food Nation (2006), and seven episodes of Boardwalk Empire. I didn't see Medium) was more available and she shows up every year, with various hairstyles (though most often the pageboy from Medium). They are far from perfect parents, making it all seem real. There are dozens of other actors in the movie and it's all good.

It's fun to see the technology evolve (video games, for example) and know that there aren't anachronism errors based on the filmmakers' faulty memories because they were actually shooting during the years depicted.

There are 11 songs listed on imdb, and 16 on the CD, which you can stream for free from this link. No composer is credited for anything else.

I don't know if it's unprecedented, but metacritic (47 reviewers) has given Boyhood a perfect 100, and my usual reference, Rotten Tomatoes, averages 99% from critics and 91 from audiences. Try it, you'll like it.