Boyhood

Mason is a boy that everyone knows. Not him personally, but we all know someone in our class who is Mason. Divorced parents, hateful of the trends around him, and a little bit of an outcast. Because his character was so familiar to me, it also made him very relatable. You can't mention Boyhood without mentioning the fact that it was a twelve year project. Watching  the same actors grow over time with their characters gave the film a very realistic feel, almost like a documentary. When I was actually watching Ellar Coltrane, the man playing Mason, grow up it felt like growing up with a childhood friend. The movie ends with Mason being around the same age as me and his ending outlook on life is one that I can understand. He's about to start a new portion of his life and is embracing the idea of living in the moment.
The thing that made this twelve year project work was its seamless editing. The movie never lost it's flow and wove through the lives of the family in a way that made sense. Some stories aren't concluded but that's what makes the movie even more real. Sometimes you just go on without knowing what happens to your old best friend when you graduate or your old step-siblings when your mom pulls you out of the house. I liked the idea that the audience was kind of like a relative of Mason, just dropping in every few years and getting snippets of his life.
The editing was very nonchalant but that sometimes made it hard to reestablish your bearings in the new time. When you begin jumping years ahead, and especially when Mason begins puberty, it could be confusing to understand what year it was and where these people were in their lives. Although the writers did a good job of beginning the new scenes with dialogue that clued you in on what point in their lives we were at. There's one scene where Samantha is talking about having fun senior year and five minutes later, Mason is talking about visiting Samantha in her dorms. It's from this context that the viewer can understand that we're a few years after the scene previous.
This form of editing over a span of years can be seen in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. That film was another example of a story moving through several years and relying on other context clues in the film to describe the setting.

MYST: The Double

Being type-casted has got to be one of the worse things that can happen to an actor or actress. If you need a strong, bossy lead female, cast Sandra Bullock. If you need an awkward indie teen, cast Michael Cera. I had thought Jesse Eisenberg had fallen into this unfortunate category as the mumbly, nervous guy, but after seeing him play two roles in one film as his doppelganger in The Double, I was impressed by his ability to do a 180.
He starts the movie as the type-cast I usually I saw of him, so for the first 10 minutes, I questioned abandoning it. We follow him on his course to work, all the while seeing instances of his shy, pushover character. A man approaches Eisenberg's character Simon James on the nearly empty public train and tells him that he's in his seat. A little flustered, Simon looks around nervously before standing up and handing over his seat. As he's exiting the train, he's unable to get out an "Excuse Me" to the men blocking the doorway. When he finally reaches security outside his work, he's unable to get in when his card doesn't work and the guard doesn't recognize him even though he claims to have worked for the company for over 7 years. This film is set in a dingy alternate world and Simon works as some kind of information processor and is the only employee under 50. There's one other girl at the office who isn't and Simon spends a good chunk of his time watching her and trying to say something but never really getting it out. Simon's life is passing by in the most monotonous way possible and after witnessing a man wave to him before jumping to his death, he realizes that being lonely could be a terrible thing. At work, a new employee is introduced, the strikingly similar James Simon. James is everything that Simon is not: he's confident, strong-willed, and kind of rude. When James begins to win the heart of Simon's crush, Simon is faced with the cold fact that he could be so much better than he is.
This film is categorized under Netflix as Film Noir, and although I see elements of it, I wouldn't go as far to say that it really is. The film plays heavily on light and shadows, often keeping the scenes dimly lit. The opening sequence of the film features the light peeping in through the windows of a moving train on Simon's face. This causes his face to flash on and off screen, an eerie effect that was foreshadowing his later encounter with James. The film lacked the fast-paced dialogue that film noir is known for, probably because the leading character was too afraid to speak half the time. That was another common Film Noir trait that the film lacked. Normally the leading male is strong-headed and confident, neither of which Simon portrays. This movie was more of a dark comedy, some parts with enough suspense to make me fear a pop-up was coming and other very satirical and funny.
Although I liked this film, I found parts of it to be very confusing. There are very long sequences without any dialogue and once the doppelganger is introduced, no explanations can get pretty confusing. In scenes where James and Simon were together or fighting, they were often dressed the same too, and it would become hard to tell who was who. Other movies that have done the whole one actor play two parts, like The Parent Trap, did a better job of differentiating the characters by making it clear who was speaking. I give this movie 3/5 flames because it has an interesting plot and overall creative view to the shots, but I found myself able to guess many of the outcomes even through my confusion. I'd still recommend this movie though because it is interesting to see Jesse Eisenberg play such opposing characters.