Better than Boyhood?

Rating: 8/10 (26 February 2015)

Birdman is an exiting, well-made film. It is better than many, perhaps most, Hollywood hypes. I very much enjoyed watching it. Michael Keaton's acting is memorable. But is Birdman a better movie than Boyhood? Certainly for the Oscar voters. They have a peculiar taste for a "best film," and, whatever it may be, it failed to recognize such masterpieces as Citizen Kane, Raging Bull, The Graduate, Apocalypse Now, Pulp Fiction, to name some. This year they chose Birdman over Boyhood, and thereby reconfirmed the idiosyncratic nature of their taste. Again, I am not saying that Birdman is a bad movie; it is a terrific movie. Nonetheless, Boyhood is a true masterpiece, a superb work of film-making, a profound description of human life. Birdman will soon be forgotten, but Boyhood will be a required viewing for every serious student of film and will be watched decades from now.