The Films of Richard Linklater
It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books
Slacker
Dazed and Confused
Before Sunrise
SubUrbia
The Newton Boys
Waking Life (June 16/06)
It's clear almost immediately that Waking Life's been geared almost exclusively towards followers and fans of various philosophical ideas, as the film is essentially a series of seemingly endless lectures delivered by several disparate figures. It's just as obvious, however, that neophytes to the many theories proffered by filmmaker Richard Linklater will be left out in the cold (there's certainly no storyline or actual characters for viewers to latch onto). The movie follows actor Wiley Wiggins through a particularly eventful series of lucid dreams, where he encounters a whole host of chatty folks - each with their own perspective on the meaning of life. Waking Life is initially kind of interesting - albeit on an incredibly sporadic basis - but the ceaseless prattle eventually becomes mind-numbing and meaningless. It doesn't help that the majority of this stuff comes off as pompous and utterly nonsensical, though there are one or two compelling moments mixed in with the chaff (the sequence in which Before Sunrise costars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy have a brief dream-related discussion is an obvious highlight). The novelty of the much-lauded animation style wears off about halfway through, with the end result a film that's more interminable than anything else.
out of
Tape
School of Rock
Click here for review.
Before Sunset
Bad News Bears (July 5/06)
At 113 minutes, Bad News Bears feels overlong by at least a half hour; what should've been a fun and breezy comedy is ultimately transformed into an incredibly tedious ordeal, although there's certainly something to be said for Billy Bob Thornton's gleefully malicious performance. A remake of the eponymous 1976 Walter Matthau flick, Bad News Bears follows pro-baseball-player-turned-drunkard Morris Buttermaker (Thornton) as he attempts to whip a group of ragtag misfits into something resembling a competent little league team. Director Richard Linklater is clearly striving for a vibe similar to his own School of Rock, as the two films essentially feature the same storyline (ie a lazy slacker finds redemption after successfully teaching kids how to excel at something). But where School of Rock was engaging and entertaining, Bad News Bears is bloated and ponderous; screenwriters Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (working from Bill Lancaster's original) infuse the film with an unusually deliberate pace, a problem that's exacerbated by the fact that the final baseball game occupies over a half hour's worth of screentime (!) That the majority of these kids simply cannot act certainly doesn't help matters, nor does Buttermaker's magical metamorphosis from apathetic abuser to kind, caring coach.
out of
Fast Food Nation
A Scanner Darkly
Inning by Inning: A Portrait of a Coach
Me and Orson Welles
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Bernie (May 17/12)
There's little doubt that Bernie represents a fairly drastic departure for filmmaker Richard Linklater, as the movie, which tells the true story of the relationship between a kind-hearted funeral director (Jack Black's Bernie Tiede) and a loathed yet wealthy widow (Shirley MacLaine's Marjorie Nugent), rarely unfolds as one might've anticipated - with Linklater's decision to blend fictional elements with real-life Q&A footage admittedly taking some getting used to (ie the initial proliferation of interviews results in an atmosphere akin to a network-television reenactment). It's clear right from the outset, though, that the movie benefits substantially from Black's revelatory performance, as the actor effortlessly slips into the skin of a low-key and consistently likeable figure that couldn't possibly be farther from his larger-than-life persona. The ongoing emphasis on Bernie's subdued exploits does, as a result, fare somewhat better than one might've anticipated, although there's little doubt that Linklater's palpably meandering modus operandi becomes more and more problematic as the film progresses into its relatively pointless midsection (ie one can't help but wonder if the movie is going to be content merely documenting the weird relationship between the two central characters). And while the film receives a burst of energy with a rather unexpected twist about halfway through, Bernie ultimately comes off as a watchable endeavor that works mostly as a showcase for three admittedly spectacular performances (Matthew McConaughey, cast as a pragmatic lawyer, delivers his best work in years here).
out of
