RICHARD LINKLATER

a very erratic filmmaker but always dear to my heart for A Scanner Darkly and Dazed and Confused

wow this is kinda tough.

guess I'll go with before sunset, edging out dazed.

He's only gotten erratic lately actually. This is tough. There are a lot of good movies on this list, but there isn't one that just pops out at me as okay that's the BEST.

Can safely eliminate FFN, WL, BNB though.

Slacker. or,

slacker

he achieved everything he couldve wanted to with dazed & confused & he'd probably admit as much under influence of truth serum

I wish they'd release subUrbia out on DVD.

i kinda wish he had ended up doing Friday Night Lights.

wow i really dont like most of his movies. never seen them all in a list together like that but ugh, just not for me.

ok with the exception of SubUrbia, which i have a bizarre soft spot for.

A few years ago I would have called him my favorite working director (because of Dazed and the Before movies, mostly), but I just don't have much interest in seeing whatever he comes out with now.

i wrote a chapter about him a few years ago and limited it to his original screenplays, which makes him seem a lot more coherent. (i included scanner darkly because he adapted it by himself and i think the finished thing feels very linklater-y in its methods and content.) anyway, i think dazed and confused really is his best. i really like the sunrise/sunset movies, and slacker and waking life have a bunch of great moments. scanner darkly is kind of a mess, but the woody harrelson/robert downey jr. scenes are good. woodshock is pretty entertaining, but it's impossible to learn to plow... is a great big student-film bore.

http://www.popmatters.com/images/film_art/s/slacker.jpg

dazed and confused, but i love sunrise/sunset.

Haven't seen some of the well-thought of ones here (Waking Life, Before Sunset) but look, barely anybody ELSE has ever made a movie as good as Dazed and Confused so I figure Linklater hasn't either.

i think the politics of dazed and confused get overlooked a little, it tends to get talked about like it's just a feel-good period piece. it's really about that moment, the total collapse of authority in america, the particular kind of freedom it promised, the reactionary pushback. all in 24 hours.

you just convinced me that I need to rewatch it.

it's also about that gto easing into the parking lot and "sweet emotion"...

Oh, and how many times the one kid touches his brow in the course of that one single scene.

dazed & confused, slacker, the before movies, all pretty much untouchable. school of rock quite good. scanner darkly major letdown and pretty lame. bad news bears and everything else pretty much whatever. but fast food nation i liked a lot.

Tape is as good as Waking Life is terrible.

I'm torn in great part between D&C and Waking Life and Slacker on historical grounds but actually my vote is going toward underdog School of Rock on behalf of the rare category of Favorite Movies My Son And I Share.

fast food nation i liked a lot.

it was better than i expected. the immigrant storyline was really good, i sort of wish the whole movie had been that. the anomic high school kids and morally conflicted corporate lackey seemed more pro forma.

fast food nation was prety weak, i thought the kinnear/willis part could have been the basis for a good comedy if fleshed out a lot. the ethan hawke part was one of the most embarassing things i've ever seen.

I really admire his erraticness. I'll go with Before Sunset

D&C, but a vote for anything but the Befores is OK with me. Even The Newton Boys.

Tape has Ethan Hawke's best performance. Voted for D&C over Before Sunrise.

i'm surely way out on my lonesome here, but I've never understood the hard-on people have for this dude. Slacker and D&C had a couple of chuckles in them, and he's uh, technically competent...
but really?

I really enjoyed Tape; would screen again.

And Slacker is just one of my favorite films ever, art's best defense of Texas -- but I D&C never clicked for me, at all.

How busy was he 2001-2006? Wow, didn't realise he was that productive then. Well, I did, but I've never looked at titles and dates and considered it before.

Arguably a little too busy.

D&C did click for me, in part, cuz apparently Texas was just like how I remember New Jersey being in 1976.

D&C is the only movie yet made that I can watch ad infinitum. Such a fun, easy-going flick.

Before Sunset, easily.

PARTY AT THE MOON TOWWER

Dazed and Confused is one of my favourite movies ever. So, um, yeah.

I haven't seen very many of his films. A Scanner Darkly was extraordinary, though.

I wish they'd release subUrbia out on DVD.

Oh yes. Warners were supposed to have it out last fall.

Linklater came down to Houston last year to introduce a screening of Minnelli's Some Came Running at the MFA. He did a Q & A about the film afterward. After that he signed some autographs and chatted with fans. Nice fellow. There was funny moment during Q & A when this one prick kept asking about A Scanner Darkly and his usage of Keanu Reeves. A real pain in the ass. Linklater finally told him that Keanu was a good guy and easy to work with.

Before Sunrise. Obv.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Waking Life is a mess, but I love it.

D&C is very good, but I don't really love it.

Before Sunrise is his best and I like it a lot.

Voted Waking Life.

saw part of FFN today. BO RING.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Waking Life (2001) 4

!!!

nono

The School of Rock (2003) 4

!!!

The School of Rock >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Waking Life

I want to like totally revolt in this poll thread omg

Worthiest winner ever.

most accurate poll results ever

Waking Life is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. (BOGUS is the worst.)

bill pullman or young jeff bridges maybe

can’t see Bridges managing the accent

Nouvelle Vague trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=795BXtBR2u4

Read a really good article about that, I'll link later.

can’t say I’m looking forward to this that much tbh

the costume designer must have thought they'd died and gone to heaven, resurrecting Parisian clothing of the 50s

D_Rf, iswydt...

lol

lol i'm such a sucker for this stuff, just hook it up to my eyeballs

note to self to never form an actual opinion of a linklater movie after one watch. my first takes on before sunrise and dazed are so insanely rong

Before Sunrise so good. Perfect slice of youth. I often think of the wine acquisition scene, nice snapshot of what what it is to be young, dumb and in love. You are annoying but affable, you break the social code for the romance of it and it makes you want to spit but the charm wins out, everything is unbearable about you but there's a veneer of necessity that dulls all the edges.

I hope he paid the guy back

the scene in sunrise where they are in the listening booth* will never not melt me

* the song they’re listening to is “come here” by michita. really good pull, beautiful song 10/10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XYr6mv1Htc

that record store still exists and still caters to anyone's needy whiteboy fantasies!

More old timey famous people stories!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo7gRHip0lI

Blue Moon trailer

yay! a hat movie

looks interesting

I finally watched suburbia after owning the soundtrack for nearly 30 years and damn it’s a dark film, particularly in light of MAGA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UufRzKVFseg

Nouvelle Vague trailer (Theatrical 10/31 & Netflix 11/14)

i am suspicious of my own clear desire to see this and i'm not sure why

I am contemptuous of my interest in seeing both movies, because they appear to be what I call cinematic cover bands.

Well yeah the very concept of making a nice conventional biopic about making A Bout De Suffle is a betrayal of the spirit of the thing, it's inherently a very corny project.

That being said I had a great time, the guy they got to play Godard really GETS it imo. There are worse things in life than being pandered to.

blue moon is fucking incredible

Nouvelle Vague was a lot of fun. The enthusiasm here for Blue Moon -- well, I didn't expect it! I thought it was fine at best (I suspect I've an animus towards Andrew Scott). But it's short enough for me to consider another watch.

i just found it so impossibly tender and aching

no one ever loved me that much

for reference Anticipate Richard Linklater's BLUE MOON, starring Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart

Linklater is so prolific and his movies are so diverse that it's no surprise some get lost in the shuffle. But the other day "The Newton Boys" came to mind - just the existence of the movie itself - and I thought, huh, no one ever talks about that one at all. A really good Dwight Yoakam performance, iirc. But then I glanced at a list of Linklater movies and there were a few that didn't ring even a hint of a bell: "Me and Orson Welles," "Last Flag Flying," and "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Odyssey." Just ... nothing.

(Totally unrelated but still related, I saw a thumbnail pop up somewhere with a Clint Eastwood-directed movie starring Matt Damon I didn't know existed either, "Hereafter." I recognize the title of just about every other movie he has directed, but not that one.)

Me and Orson Welles earned momentary Oscar buzz thanks to Christian McKay's uncanny Welles mimicry.

The other two were for streamers: LFF with the pre-MGM era Amazon, and Apollo with Netflix.

The guy who wrote the novel on which Me and Orson Welles was based also wrote the screenplay for Blue Moon.

Jonathan Rosenbaum and I think Richard Brody usually champion The Newton Boys as one of Linklater's best films, though it's possible they're more vocal about that one because it's often overlooked (a practice both have openly admitted).

Linklater is one of those artists who consistently makes good to great films, but anecdotally it's not unusual for me to hear someone complain that his films don't have enough plot or dramatic payoff, typically from people who are already resistant to "hangout" films or anything that doesn't place much emphasis on plot. (I have one friend who also hates American Graffiti for that reason, a film that's otherwise fairly popular, not to mention a massive hit in its day.) So "nothing happens" in Boyhood, or the Before Trilogy is "all talk" and "goes nowhere," etc. - all fairly popular films but it's curious to run into people who make those comments even when they claim to love films outside of the mainstream.

FWIW, I didn't like Last Flag Flying, but I liked Me and Orson Welles and Apollo 10 1/2 quite a bit, as well as The Newton Boys and Blue Moon.

I thought his installment of "God Save Texas," about the relationship between him/his home town and the death penalty, was great.

What became a somewhat surprising criticism of Newton Boys was the inclusion of the footage of one of the real guys on Carson during the end credits, which led some to point that Linklater might have been better off having made a documentary on the gang instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fenpjqq-UBo

lol the interview with the other brother where he says the only thing he's sorry about is one time they ran off and left $200,000 sitting on a counter.

FWIW, here's Jonathan Rosenbaum's appreciation.

huh, I’ve somehow not only never seen but haven’t really even heard discussed the newton boys, despite liking almost every linklater I’ve seen. might watch it tonight

huh, I’ve somehow not only never seen but haven’t really even heard discussed the newton boys, despite liking almost every linklater I’ve seen. might watch it tonight

Exactly my point!

Me and Orson Welles earned momentary Oscar buzz thanks to Christian McKay's uncanny Welles mimicry.

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, May 10, 2026 8:21 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Set your favorite band member's autobiography aside - "Me and Orson Welles" is an absolute must read.

I thought Hit Man was dreadful, so I'm not sure about "consistently good to great". I saw the fabled Newton Boys when it came out on DVD, I remember it being formless and lacking suspense, but I'd try it again. Not so much "nothing happens" as "too much happens" without peaks or troughs.

watched newton boys. was good fun, middle of the pack linklater

xp Plenty of people liked Hit Man and would disagree.

Hit Man was at best okay, but I have a Glen Powell Problem: sometimes I think Glen Powell is a scam thought up by bizzers who think millennials and Gen Z don't understand sex appeal, get enough sex, or don't want to have sex.

Yeah, the whole Glen Powell: Leading Man thing is lost on me.

Clearly a psy-op.

Geese Powell

"Sources tell Variety that “Only the Brave” star Miles Teller has been tapped to play the son of Goose and Maverick’s new protege in Paramount and Skydance’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” the sequel to the 1986 Cruise classic. In the original pic, Goose, played by Anthony Edwards, was the co-pilot to Cruise’s Maverick.

Last week, it was reported that Cruise tested with Teller, Glen Powell and Nicholas Hoult for the role."

Clearly the powers that be playing the long game recognized Powell as Son of Goose too on the nose for what they had in store.