US president Barack Obama has named Richard Linklater’s Oscar-tipped drama Boyhood his favourite film of 2014. He revealed his choice in an interview with People magazine. “Boyhood was a great movie,” said the president. “That, I think, was my favourite movie this year.”
Linklater’s epic coming-of-age tale, which follows a young boy from the age of six to 18 and was filmed with the same cast across 12 years, is racing neck and neck with Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman in the early rounds of the current awards season. Starring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as the parents of newcomer Ellar Coltrane, who grows up on screen as the movie progresses, the film is up for five Golden Globe prizes and has been honoured by influential critics associations in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, as well as being named by Sight & Sound magazine as 2014’s best film.
Presidential backing has helped movies in the past during the run-up to the Oscars. Civil rights drama The Help, which was nominated for four prizes and won Octavia Spencer the Academy Award for best supporting actress in 2012, picked up early buzz after receiving White House backing the previous year. However, Lee Daniels’ The Butler and Nelson Mandela biopic Long Walk to Freedom both failed to score Oscar nods in major categories despite receiving positive presidential feedback.
The Martin Luther King civil rights drama Selma has not yet had a White House screening, though George W Bush did see it a week ago.
The US first lady, Michelle Obama, did not offer up her favourite film of 2014 but confided that she preferred the Gillian Flynn novel Gone Girl to the much-discussed David Fincher film adaptation starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.
