Boyhood

Boyhood is such a beguiling array of time-capsule moments—12 years in the life of a boy growing up in the vicinity of Houston, Texas. Part of what’s intriguing, of course, is the project’s central concept: its bits-and-pieces story proceeds year by year, through scenes filmed year by year as Ellar Coltrane, the young actor who plays the central character (whose name is Mason), grows up. He’s 6 at the start and 18 at the finish. And part of it is also that writer-director Richard Linklater’s approach to story and drama is so casual and easygoing, even though resolutely unsentimental. The movement through these fragments of time is both seamless and unhurried. The passage of time in this story is always in motion, as is the film’s sense of “boyhood.” Linklater evokes the recent past, but his time-capsule movie has no frozen moments, and it reminds us more than once that even the most significant moments never really stand separate from the flux of all existence. Pageant Theatre. Rated R