Runs about 2:45, so be prepared.

Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke kill it. The kids are also great. It was cool to see not just Ellar Coltrane (the boy) but also Lorelai Linklater (his sister) grow into young adults.

This is pretty much a small-sized story of a fractured family and all of the permutations it takes in the 12 years that we see the kids growing up. Things happen, but nothing out of the ordinary or surprising. But that's okay. This is solid, episodic storytelling with super-natural (as opposed to supernatural) performances. It's a bit ironic that Linklater would choose an epic length to tell such a small story. Some of you may be bored. I was not.

Oh, I should also mention that the soundtrack does a nice job of helping establish time and place, and while the song selections are a bit obvious at times, the choices are still not necessarily as cloying as the way, say, a Robert Zemeckis would deploy them.

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