I really liked this unusual conceit of a film from Richard Linklater shot over 12 years using actors as they aged. So much could have happened to short circuit this project, but it came to fruition and produced a film that has everyday life, real tensions and personal evolution at its core. Some of my friends hated this and found it boring I found myself swept along into different phases over the main character’s (Ellar Coltrane as Mason) boyhood, his sister’s (Lorelei Linklater as Samantha) girlhood, his single mom’s difficult adulthood and failed marriages (Patricia Arquette, Oscar for Best Supporting Actress), his father’s (Linklater stalwart Ethan Hawke in a fine role) difficult journey to responsible and boring adulthood, and so much more. It’s a film that turns on thoughts and feelings and character and not some grand climactic struggle to overcome catastrophe. It shows you what might happen and doesn’t. It is, in that sense, like so many lives we ourselves live, with close misses to disaster, horrible relationships that could have been worse, and confused if genuine change. Growth?. Yes and no. Happiness?. Yes and no. Possibilities? Yes although not always understood in the moment. It’s a very rich and thoughtful film. It also makes some weird leaps, the mom’s full-time academic position garnered in the 21st century at a university with only an MA (sorry, occupational goof here). Finally, and this is minor but a bothersome element for me, the main character’s artistic excellence is gratuitous and really unnecessary but Linklater focuses on protagonists like that too often (his “Before” trilogy). On the other hand, bravo to his continuing willingness to bore deep into realities of time, place, personality and ideas that most writers and directors run away from like the plague. This is one to see and mull over. It is, imho, a real triumph of narrative pacing