My second Richard Linklater film in this list, Boyhood uses music both to set the mood and to establish the setting.

Gliding through time, depicting Ellar Coltrane’s metamorphosis from a little boy to a young man, Linklater serves up the hits of the day to anchor us in each moment. Songs do such a good job of transporting us back to specific times in our lives.

But the song I think of first when I think of Boyhood is one I’d never heard before the movie’s release.

Family of the Year’s ‘Hero’ was used in the Boyhood trailer and helped sell me on the film before I’d even seen it. In the movie itself, it plays toward the end, while Mason drives himself to college. In this film, the emotional impact builds with every scene, so those final moments are especially powerful.

This is the most recent film on my list by more than a decade, and that’s a testament to its impact.

The movie scene is embedded below, and a live version of the song at the bottom of this post (I’ve now featured ‘Hero’ three times in eight months).