Good news for Breaking Bad fans and anyone else who struggles with goodbyes: Better Call Saul, a prequel to Breaking Bad, premiered last Monday on AMC. But loyalists of showrunner Vince Gilligan hoping for Breaking Bad II will have to stick to their Walter-Hank fan fiction; Better Call Saul already has a smoothly-running engine, with a focus and vibe all its own. Spin-offs frequently falter out of the gate, trying too hard to recreate the appeal of their source material. But Saul
Goodman (comedian Bob Odenkirk) is the perfect main character for a project like this. He’s a guy usually at the fringes of Walter’s story, and a reliable provider of a one-liner or some kooky comic energy. The slimy lawyer is now the star of the show, and Odenkirk more than holds his own in the spotlight.

Better Call Saul, perhaps anxious to set itself apart from the get-go, begins distinctively. After a brief coda depicting Saul’s life post-Breaking Bad we’re back in Albuquerque, circa 2002. The start of the series is almost entirely wordless; the first audible speech (one of Saul’s classic courtroom monologues) occurs eight minutes into the premiere. James “Jimmy” McGill, not yet known as the titular Saul Goodman, is working as a public defender, waxing poetic in defense of three teenage pranksters. The rest of the episode follows him as he struggles to scrape together a decent (if not always decently-earned) living, hones his manipulative skills and ekes his way out of tough spots.

The show singularizes itself in several ways. Breaking Bad’s descent into the depths of Walter’s psyche took five seasons; Better Call Saul, best classified as a black comedy, can shift in seconds. Odenkirk’s wonderfully expressive face allows him to vacillate between sad sack and clown. As a protagonist, he is immediately likeable and untrustworthy, a goofier version of the male antihero trope. The cynicism of Breaking Bad persists. But Better Call Saul wields it differently, in a darkly comic approach that results in more laughs and fewer beheadings (so far). Better Call Saul is a worthy follow-up to the cultural behemoth that was, is, and forever will be Breaking Bad. This is more than an attempt by executives to capitalize on that success (though that’s certainly the kind of thing Saul himself would do). This isn’t just a good business move; it’s good television.

There’s a well-worn formula for movies about love: find two young, gorgeous people, then have them meet in a cute way, and end with a wedding.

Love is Strange, the fifth feature film from writer/ director Ira Sachs, takes a much different route. It begins with the wedding of two older men: still-aspiring painter Ben (John Lithgow) and Catholic school music teacher George (Alfred Molina). But despite the film’s title, their relationship is anything but strange; it’s practiced, persistent, and nuanced. Ben and George know each other so deeply that they don’t remember how to be apart.

After 39 years together, the couple is finally married in a little New York City park. But when the diocese fires George for his marriage to another man, the newlyweds are forced to sell their apartment and search for something cheaper. In the interim, George crashes on the couch of another gay couple in their building, and Ben stays in the Brooklyn apartment of his nephew (Darren Burrows) and niece-in-law, uptight novelist Kate (Marisa Tomei). Charlie Tahan is terrific as Ben’s grandnephew, Joey, a sullen teenager who does not appreciate the arrival of an elderly roommate.

The film is strongest when it lingers on Lithgow and Molina as they interact with astonishing ease and tenderness. The two characters imbue Love is Strange with a compelling emotional center, though the framework surrounding them sometimes feels thin. Some supporting characters are underutilized and certain plots—Joey’s complicated friendship with a boy from school, Kate’s strained marriage—are either glossed over or abandoned. Or perhaps it just seems that way because scenes with Lithgow and Molina are so interesting and intricate that they outshine the rest in the film. In a particularly striking scene, Ben and George squeeze into a bottom bunk in order to be close to one another. The circumstances of their relationship are always in flux; their feelings are not.

And that’s what makes this otherwise uncooked movie uniquely absorbing. Many films get great mileage from exploring love in all its imperfections. Love is Strange is the opposite: an imperfect movie about a phenomenal love.

The central conceit of Boyhood is unlike anything previously attempted in cinema, particularly not in a cohesive work of fiction. The Up Series, a collection of short films that follow up with a group of British children every seven years, is the only similar work I can think of, though as a documentary it doesn’t really compare. Filming an 11-year story-arc would take most directors a few weeks. Linklater took 11 years, reconvening his cast and crew for two weeks each year in order to create an authentic portrait of the way a person changes throughout adolescence (as well as the way people around them change). But Boyhood is more than a clever premise. The film is anchored by strong performances that elevate it from a collection of chronological snippets to something startlingly real.

Ellar Coltrane plays Mason, Boyhood’s boy, as he matures from first grader to college student. Watching Coltrane age is so natural and moving that it makes the practice of casting various actors to play the same character at different ages seem ridiculous by comparison. Mason’s father, played by Ethan Hawke, undergoes an extended boyhood of sorts, meandering through life without much focus or maturity. Patricia Arquette is Olivia, Mason’s long- suffering mother, a woman with several bad husbands who just wants to make a good living for her family. Arquette’s performance was one of my favorite parts of the film—tough in some places, vulnerable in others. Lorelai Linklater, the director’s daughter, rounds out the not-so-nuclear family as Samantha, Mason’s older and feistier sister. Minor characters filter in and out of Mason’s life—a litany of terrible step-dads provides many of the film’s most intense moments—but Linklater’s lens is always fixed on Mason, lending a clear focus to the otherwise shapeless plot.

Boyhood is an epic, to be sure, though not in the traditional Ben-Hur sense. It’s epic in the way growing up is epic—long, gradual, knotty. The scenes are short, few more than a handful of minutes long, and often mundane. Time is marked in haircuts and the shrinking width of cellphones. Grand shifts in culture are denoted by props and set decorations: an iPod, chunky and silver, a stack of Obama-Biden signs, a Lady Gaga music video. Mason’s upbringing is unique, but his cultural context is not. The timing ofBoyhood is pretty much spot-on for today’s college students. This is both fun (the thrill of reliving a Harry Potter book release) and acutely familiar (hearing adults wax political about the Iraq War).