Richard Linklater: The '00s
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
Click here for review.
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
