Richard Linklater

Features

Part 4: Challenging Convention

By PopMatters Staff

As cinema went completely commercial, abandoning art for artifice, true aesthetic acumen was hard to come by. Luckily, for the movies included herein, it was their difference, as well as their diversity, that helped them stand out from the rest of the high concept hackwork. [21 June 2007]

Reviews

Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema (2006)

By Brian Holcomb

This was never intended to be a conventional movie, but more like a personal industrial film illustrating the process that brings the corpse of a cow to your dinner table. [8 March 2007]

Fast Food Nation (2006)

By Cynthia Fuchs

Unabashedly didactic, Fast Food Nation points out the cruel lot of immigrant laborers without rights. [16 November 2006]

Dazed and Confused: Criterion Collection (1993)

By Chris Barsanti

Criterion's DVD appreciates the film itself, without trying too hard to analyze or understand it, thank god. [20 July 2006]

A Scanner Darkly (2006)

By Cynthia Fuchs

Simultaneously strange and familiar, not himself, Bob lives inside an ooky, unsolvable world that mirrors our own ongoing fears, of surveillance, loss, and forgetting. [6 July 2006]

A Scanner Darkly (2006)

By Chris Barsanti

The suits make for images so fascinating they feel nearly "addictive," appropriate given that the film is about (among other things), viewing, reality, and addiction.

Bad News Bears (2005)

By Cynthia Fuchs

The DVD extras are mostly valuable for the access they grant to Richard Linklater, who is a terrific storyteller and articulate filmmaker. [14 December 2005]

Bad News Bears (2005)

By Cynthia Fuchs

Morris Buttermaker's (Billy Bob Thornton) efforts to 'get down' with his token black player lead to slogany appreciation for the struggle ('Don't trust whitey') and the requisite 'the shizzle'. [21 July 2005]

Before Sunset (2004)

By Michael Healey

Before Sunset illustrates the beautiful and frustrating complexity of human hearts seeking love and meaning in a life we know to be transient. [2 July 2004]

The School of Rock (2003)

By Cynthia Fuchs

'I'm always going 10 miles too far over the top, and sometimes I have a tendency to go crazy ham and cheese,' says Jack Black. [1 March 2004]

The School of Rock (2003)

By Elbert Ventura

A welcome reminder that studio comedies need not be shoddy, dumbed down, vulgar, and impersonal, the movie is unimaginable without Jack Black. [2 October 2003]

Waking Life (2001)

By Ben Varkentine

Throughout Waking Life, the pictures rarely, if ever, stop moving, flowing, breathing -- attention has been paid to the animated environments, not just the characters in the foreground. [1 January 1995]

Waking Life (2001)

By Cynthia Fuchs

Tape (2001)

By Cynthia Fuchs

What it gets you thinking about, while you watch it and for some time afterwards, is whether anyone can ever know what has 'happened,' and more disturbingly, how the tendency to want such knowledge can be violent.