Movie Review: Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Where'd You Go, Bernadette ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Richard Linklater.

Written by: Richard Linklater & Holly Gent & Vincent Palmo Jr. based on the novel by Maria Semple.

Starring: Cate Blanchett (Bernadette Fox), Billy Crudup (Elgie), Emma Nelson (Bee Branch), Kristen Wiig (Audrey), Judy Greer (Dr. Kurtz), Troian Bellisario (Becky), Laurence Fishburne (Paul), Claudia Doumit (Iris), Zoe Chao (Soo-Lin), Katelyn Statton (Vivian), Kate Easton (Tammy).

 

Richard Linklater is always at his best when he simply allows his characters to exist, rather than forcing them into a plot of some kind. He excels at hangout movies – or even movies that simply narratively drift – movies that have plots, but those plots don’t really matter. He also has a soft spot for artists – particularly artists who cannot quite figure out how to create. Artists who talk a lot, but for some reasons cannot quite put it together to create something. That is probably what drew him to Where’d You Go, Bernadette – the story of a genius level architect who has essentially been hiding from, well everything except her family, for two decades. But at some point, the movie gets away from him – probably because the film really does need to jump through quite a few narrative hoops, to get where it’s going – and it’s more than a little far-fetched. The film also tries to be more a comedy than perhaps it should be – and tries to soften its lead character a little too much, make her more likable than she probably should be. It’s an odd little film.

 

Bernadette is played by the great Cate Blanchett – an actress who can pretty much do anything, and is fine here – although you kind of wish she let loose just a tiny bit more – risked alienating the audience a little bit more, by making Bernadette more unlikable. Audiences will likely feel that way anyway – as much of what Bernadette does in the film is objectively awful. The trick would have been to make her do that awful stuff, and still like her – whereas here, it makes it all too lightweight.

 

Bernadette lives in Seattle with her husband Elgie (Billy Crudup) – who created a company bought by Microsoft, and now works there – so obviously they have a lot of money, and their teenage daughter Bee (Emma Nelson) – about to enter high school. Bernadette hates Seattle – and everyone in it – who isn’t Elgie or Bee. She has been conducting a passive aggressive war with the other mothers – gnats as she calls them – led by her neighbor Audrey (Kristen Wiig) for years, and it is ramping up. Bernadette was a genius level architect in L.A. 20 years ago – like actually winning a MacArthur Genius Grant level genius – but she hasn’t designed anything since. An easier movie would have blamed Elgie – or domesticity – on this, but this movie doesn’t. It’s more complicated than that. Elgie is a nice guy – a supportive guy – but not exactly an attentive guy. His wife has drifted further and further into her “eccentricities” – and he hasn’t noticed, or cared. What sets her off in this film is that Bee has determined that the three of them should take a family trip to Antarctica. Bernadette hates to travel – she hates other people after all – but she cannot say no to Bee. Over the next few weeks, things will pile up and up and up on Bernadette, and she’ll dig herself deeper and deeper and deeper.

 

I can see a version of this movie working. I read the best-selling book by Maria Semple a few years ago, and think that Linklater and company were right to change directions her a little bit, make it more focuses on Bernadette than anyone else. I don’t think the structure of the novel would work as a film. However, making the changes it does to the plot is a different story. Almost all of them seem to have been made to soften the story – lighten it up, and wrap it up in a happy fashion. And it doesn’t really fit.

 

That is because Bernadette is a thorny character. The film is, in a way, another How Stella Got Her Groove Back – we’ve seen quite a few over the years, where bored middle aged women, weighed down by cheating or boring husband, and unfulfilling careers, got out and rediscover themselves. But Bernadette is a different type of character. She isn’t a “normal” person – she is a genius, and getting her groove back is not as simple as getting a new man, etc. The film is really about what happens when a genius doesn’t create – when they grow complacent and bored, and where that energy goes. You cannot really blame the other mothers for hating Bernadette – she isn’t nice to them, and doesn’t even pretend to care. You cannot blame others for thinking there is something wrong with her – she does things that would raise concerns in others. When you have that genius brain – and don’t use it – things aren’t going to go well.

 

Blanchett was undeniably the right choice for this role – she has been able to play characters who are undeniably awful and unsympathetic – and still hold an audience (I’m thinking of her Oscar winning role in Blue Jasmine for example. And she can also be quite funny when she wants to be. Here, I think she’s let down by the screenplay – which wants to flatten her character too much. She comes alive a few times – a long rant to Laurence Fishburne for example – but mostly, she is stuck playing Bernadette as “eccentric” more than anything else. She is better near the end of the movie – having found some sort of peace.

 

Basically, I think Where’d You Go Bernadette is a film that had a tremendously complex character at its core, and somehow blew it – somehow didn’t know what they had, and tried too hard to make her likable, make the movie light and comic. A more daring movie would raise a lot of troubling questions – and this one basically chickens out. And that’s disappointing, because Blanchett could have killed that role – the role she should have been playing.

 

As for Linklater, it’s another film that shows he’s drifting a little – still, since his biggest career achievement of Boyhood in 2014. His follow-up to that was Everybody Wants Some!! – a film that has grown on me, and makes sense a little bit – Linklater getting back to basics in what really was a film like Dazed and Confused. Since then, there have been two adaptations – Last Flag Flying, and now this, neither have been close to his best work (although I like Last Flag Flying more than some, again, when the mechanisms of the plot force itself on that movie, it’s at its weakest). Here’s hoping that whatever he does next, it helps get him back on track – then again, off track is where Linklater is at his best.

Movie Review: Last Flag Flying

Last Flag Flying *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Richard Linklater.

Written by: Richard Linklater & Darryl Ponicsan based on the novel by Ponicsan.

Starring: Bryan Cranston (Sal Nealon), Laurence Fishburne (Reverend Richard Mueller), Steve Carell (Larry 'Doc' Shepherd), J. Quinton Johnson (Washington), Deanna Reed-Foster (Ruth), Yul Vazquez (Colonel Wilits), Graham Wolfe (John Redman), Cicely Tyson (Mrs. Hightower).

 

In retrospect, it’s a little odd that it took so long for Richard Linklater to make a road movie, right? After all, Linklater is a director best known for his hangout movies – movies where the characters don’t really do very much, except sit around and talk. That concept is sometimes hard to make into a movie – but put those characters on a road trip, and what else are they going to do? His Last Flag Flying is not a great road trip movie – not like, say, Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail, to which this is a quasi-sequel – as it hits a few too many clichés a little hard, and veers off into some easy, lame comedy a little too often. But, when it allows the characters to settle down, and simply be with each other, it is another fine example of what Linklater does better than just about any other director working today.

 

The film is set in 2003. That is when Doc (Steve Carell) tracks down two of his old army buddies from Vietnam with a request. His wife died in January, and now (near the end of the year) he has just received word that his Marine son was killed in Iraq. Despite the fact that he hasn’t seen Sal (Bryan Cranston) or Mueller (Laurence Fishburne) in 30 years (and they haven’t seen each other) – after an unfortunate “incident” that left Doc in the brig for 2 years – he wants his two old friends to travel with him to pick up his son, and have him buried. At first, it seems simple enough – just travel to the cemetery in Arlington, and attend the funeral – but it gets more complicated when Doc decides he wants to take his son home – and bury him next to his wife. Essentially, the trio has to recreate the trip three similar characters took in The Last Detail – the same stops along the way (New York, Boston, etc) – the same worries about missing trains and their per diems, etc.

 

The movie really isn’t a sequel to The Last Detail. In Ashby’s film, the three main characters didn’t know each other before two of them – played by Jack Nicholson and Otis Young – were assigned to bring “the kid” – played by Randy Quaid to the Brig in Portsmith for the crime of stealing from a charity collection box. Here, the three were buddies, who served in Vietnam together, and the incident that lands “the kid” in jail, was something that happened over there. It would be tough to see why the Kid in The Last Detail would want to reconnect with his two old buddies – after all, The Last Detail is nothing if not cynical – they know the kid is getting a bum deal, and don’t much care, despite how they bond. The ending of that film is far from sentimental – it’s downright harsh and cruel. There is very little of that you could use to describe Last Flag Flying.

 

This film, like all of Linklater’s work, is deeply humanist. He loves these characters, just like he loves all of his characters – and he gets great performances out of them. Bryan Cranston, stepping into the “Nicholson” role is a tad too theatrical at times throughout the film – he really does lean into the role a little too much – but he still makes Sal lovable, if overbearing. This is the type of role that Fishburne has always done well – and does even better now that he’s older. He’s a man with a past – one that he’s not proud of, but doesn’t deny either – but who has now found God – and speaks with the authority of someone confident in his beliefs. But the film really does belong to Carell – who is quiet and heartbreaking throughout, as a man who has lost everything, and is just barely holding on. There are some supporting turns as well – including the great Cicely Tyson, in a one scene wonder of a performance, and J. Quinton Johnson (who was also quite good in Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! from last year), as Doc’s son’s best friend – assigned to escort the body to its final resting place.

 

Last Flag Flying is probably a little too long at just over two hours, and some of what I’m sure was meant to be charming and funny banter, comes off as forced at best (I’m sorry, these guys aren’t idiots – they would have known what cell phones were in 2003). Yet, the film does get at some hard truths throughout its runtime, and has a number of great moments and scenes. As a whole, it isn’t up to Linklater’s best work – perhaps it’s focusing on older characters that he is used to, or having source material to try and cater to – but when the film relaxes, and becomes a recognizable Linklater film, it really is quite good.

Movie Review: Everybody Wants Some!!

Everybody Wants Some !!

Directed by: Richard Linklater.

Written by: Richard Linklater.

Starring: Blake Jenner (Jake), Juston Street (Jay), Ryan Guzman (Roper), Tyler Hoechlin (McReynolds), Wyatt Russell (Willoughby), Glen Powell (Finnegan), Temple Baker (Plummer), J. Quinton Johnson (Dale), Will Brittain (Beuter), Zoey Deutch (Beverly), Sophia Taylor Ali (Beverly's Roommate), Austin Amelio (Nesbit), Tanner Kalina (Brumley), Forrest Vickery (Coma), Jonathan Breck (Coach Gordan).

 

Richard Linklater really does seem to despise the idea of plot in his films – and even by his own standards, Everybody Wants Some really is rather lackadaisical in terms of narrative momentum. The film has been described as a spiritual sequel to Linklater’s Dazed & Confused (1993) – which was about the last day of high school in 1976 for some upcoming seniors and freshmen that bleeds into a night of partying. On a recent re-watch of that film, I realized, more than when I first saw the film (when I was the age of the characters) how deep, and even melancholy, Dazed & Confused actually is – it isn’t a nostalgic look back at the “best time of our lives”, like, say George Lucas’ American Graffiti (1973) – a film Dazed & Confused is often compared to – was. As Roger Ebert pointed out in his review, if you actually showed the film to its characters two decades later – which is when Linklater made the film – it would probably evoke more madness and embarrassment than anything else.

 

Everybody Wants Some certainly shares some DNA with Dazed & Confused – it’s very easy to see its main character, Jake (Blake Jenner) as a slightly older version of Jason London’s “Pink” Floyd from Dazed & Confused – as both are popular star athletes, who are still able to flow naturally from one group to another – equally at home among the jocks as he is among the stoners. The film takes place in 1980 – and instead of one night, like Dazed & Confused, it’s one weekend. Jake arrives at the baseball house he will be sharing with his new teammates on the University team – he’s a freshman pitcher, who knows no one else. Throughout the weekend, he’ll get to know his teammates, party, drink, go from disco club to country bar to punk club to everything else, meet a few different girls – a one night stand, and someone else, perhaps a little more, and finally, go to class in the films last scene.

 

Comparing the film to Dazed & Confused, Everybody Wants Some is a far lighter film – it doesn’t contain the same feeling of being stuck, and simply waiting for your life to begin that the previous film had. Whether that’s because Linklater is now a couple of decades older – and more prone to nostalgia than he used to be, or because college is just simple a more optimistic place than high school – you’re actually away from your parents, and have that freedom you crave, and you’re on a path to what you want, even if some or all of these baseball players are unlikely to ever make the majors – you at least have it in sight – is open for debate. Linklater could have – clearly – made a much darker film here – a film about toxic masculinity, or one that addresses the decades old problem of sexual assault on college campuses, particularly by star student athletes – but he has chosen to make something lighter here. Some of the guys on the team are jerks – but they are mainly harmless jerks, are ultimately everything they do – from hazing to hitting on girls – is good natured. No real attempt is made in the film to see the girls in the film – outside of Beverley (a very charming Zoey Deutch), a theater manager Jake starts to fall for – as real people. The boys treats them as sexual conquests more than anything else. The film however, also doesn’t judge the girls (or the boys for that matter) for their sexuality either. Everyone seems to know the score, and they’re all out to have fun. Simple as that.

 

There is an easy, seemingly effortless charm to Everybody Wants Some that is actually, I assume, rather hard to pull off, or else everyone else would be able to do what Linklater does, and yet few seemingly can. Linklater avoids most of the pitfalls of movies like this by avoiding the so called “big, life changing moments” – which is something he has always done. If his 2014 masterpiece Boyhood was really just a series of the “most important” moments in Mason’s life, it would have easily turned deadly dull. Instead, in that film, he lingers on more everyday moments – moments that, if we’re being honest, Mason himself just may forget later in life, but are nonetheless, the stuff life is made up of. The same is true for Everybody Wants Some – which drifts easily from one party to another, one sequence to the next. There is a nostalgia here to be sure, but it isn’t a soppy nostalgia. Linklater grounds the film in the specific time and place of these baseball players – the film is often quite funny, and at times quietly perceptive. The cast is mainly made of actors I have never seen before, or at least ones I could not immediately identify. Watching Dazed & Confused today is amusing, in part because you can play “spot the movie star” – as so many of the actors in that film went onto successful careers – and quite a few others did not (what makes it more amusing is watching Dazed & Confused, is that if you were going to guess which ones were the future stars, and which ones weren’t, you’d be wrong at least as often as you’re right). Like that film, the ensemble of Everybody Wants Some is pretty much perfect, without anyone drawing undue attention to themselves. They fit together.

 

I have a feeling Everybody Wants Some will probably grow in my mind in the coming days and weeks – a lot of Linklater’s films do that, as at first they seem like minor, low-key comedies, although they gradually reveal themselves to be more than that. Dazed & Confused was certainly like that – I liked the film when I saw it as a teenager, but never felt much a need to revisit it until this film came out. Watching it a week and a half before seeing this one was an interesting experience – it seems a lot deeper and wiser now than it did in the past. Perhaps Everybody Wants Some will reveal that sort of depth over time – it doesn’t feel like it now admittedly – it feels like minor Linklater to be honest. But so do many of his films. It’s also, I must say, somewhat refreshing that Linklater – who likely could have followed up the massive success of Boyhood with something bigger, instead decided to stick to his roots. It’s what he does best anyway.

Movie Review: Boyhood

Boyhood
Directed by: Richard Linklater.
Written by: Richard Linklater.
Starring: Ellar Coltrane (Mason), Patricia Arquette (Mom), Ethan Hawke (Dad), Lorelei Linklater (Samantha), Libby Villari (Grandma), Marco Perella (Professor Bill Welbrock), Jamie Howard (Mindy), Andrew Villarreal (Randy), Brad Hawkins (Jim), Jenni Tooley (Annie), Richard Andrew Jones (Grandpa Cliff), Karen Jones (Nana), Tom McTigue (Mr. Turlington), Zoe Graham (Sheena), Richard Robichaux (Mason's Boss), Bill Wise (Uncle Steve), Maximillian McNamara (Dalton), Taylor Weaver (Barb), Jessi Mechler (Nicole).

You would be hard pressed to find another filmmaker working today more interested is the passage of time than Richard Linklater. He has made films in real time before – Slacker (1991) and Tape (2001) – films about people for whom time seems be standing still as they wait for their lives to start – Dazed and Confused (1993) and suburbia (1996). Then, of course, there is his brilliant trilogy of films – Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) which revisit the same couple at different points of their lives and relationship, once every nine years. That trilogy got better as it went along – culminating with the best installment last year, which retroactively made the first two films even better. That trilogy was more typical of how filmmakers portray the passage of time – a series of films, like Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel films or Michael Apted’s Up series of documentaries. What he does with Boyhood is more revolutionary, daring and brilliant – and is the best film he has ever made. He has made a coming of age film – which by itself is nothing new – but instead of using makeup to age the adults, and different children at different ages to play the children, Linklater decided to simply make the film over a 12 year span. Every year, he gathered his cast and shot a few scenes, and then they all disbanded for another year, before getting together again to film another sequence. The effect of seeing the kids grow up – and the adults age – is quietly, subtly profound and moving. The film, ultimately, is about how fast it all is – everything that seems to be moving so slowly while you’re living it, is over in the blink of an eye. Parents want to keep their kids young, but they stubbornly refuse.

As with the best Linklater films, the film doesn’t really have much of a plot. It would have been impossible to map out an entire childhood over the span of 12 years from the beginning, so instead Linklater focuses on those seemingly small moments that make up the majority of your life. Mason (Eller Coltrane) is 7 when we first meet him, arguing with his older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater), as their mother (Patricia Arquette) struggles to raise them by herself, on a poor salary, with an asshole boyfriend. They decide to pack up and move to Houston, so mom can go back to school. It isn’t until the next year when their dad (Ethan Hawke) shows up – after spending time in Alaska, he comes home – and has about as much growing up to do as his kids. He has no job, no real plan, and although he clearly loves his kids, he’s not quite sure how to behave around them. These are patterns that will repeat themselves over the years.

What Linklater does, quietly and subtly, is show how the actions of the parents effect the children – how they grow up, what they believe and who they become. They see the mistakes of their parents, and are desperate not to repeat them, but then go ahead and make other mistakes. Both parents mature in many ways – Arquette goes to school, earns her degree, becomes a teacher and a feminist – but her horrible taste in men remains, and she repeats the same patterns over and over again – falling for alcoholics – one a violent one – and yet she continues to try and build a “normal” family for her children – who do not even want one. Dad starts out the movie as essentially an old teenager – still clinging to dreams of being a musician, bouncing from one job to another, driving his beloved GTO. Hawke’s physical transformation throughout the film is almost as shocking at times as the children’s – going from wiry and gaunt, to a middle aged man with a paunch – he also becomes more compromising, less strident in his views, and eventually – perhaps because of his kids – gets a “normal” job – a “normal” wife and a new child – although he never abandons his children – at least not like he had apparently done before the movie began. The children learn from their parents in ways that are never vocalized, but are unmistakable.

The film also acts as a time capsule of the years it was made. Linklater does not avoid pop culture, social or political issues that were in the news during the different filming periods – the music ranges from Britney Spears (as Samantha sings to Mason early in the film to annoy) to Lady Gaga (as seen on a iPhone late in the film) – and everything in between – and beyond. Conversations between father and son start off about his weird collections, move onto Star Wars (which, they both agree could not possibly be made in more movies – oh for the innocence of 2008), to sex and life.

Boyhood is really unlike any other film ever made. It was an act of faith on Linklater’s part to start make the film all those years ago, and continue year after year. So many things could have gone wrong over that period of time. Yet somehow it all worked. No one else has ever really attempted to compress the experience of growing up into one, almost three hour package, using the same actors like this before, and I doubt anyone will ever attempt it again. Yes it would be great for a filmmaker like Lynne Ramsay to do something similar from a female perspective – but that won’t likely happen. Boyhood is a one of a kind masterpiece. You have never seen anything quite like this before.

Movie Review: Before Midnight

Before Midnight
Directed by: Richard Linklater.
Written by: Richard Linklater & Julie Delphy & Ethan Hawke based on characters created by Linklater & Kim Krizan.
Starring: Ethan Hawke (Jesse), Julie Delpy (Celine), Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick (Hank), Jennifer Prior (Ella), Charlotte Prior (Nina), Xenia Kalogeropoulou (Natalia), Walter Lassally (Patrick), Ariane Labed (Anna), Yiannis Papadopoulos (Achilleas), Athina Rachel Tsangari (Ariadni), Panos Koronis (Stefanos).

As much as I have loved Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004), there was always something that kept me from thinking they were the masterpieces many other critics thought they were. The writing, the directing and the acting in the earlier two films was always superb, but to me, they were always a little too much like a fantasy romance. Hollywood is often criticized for making love stories about the beginning of a relationship – and stopping when the real hard part of a relationship – being together for years – just starts. The same could be said for the first two movies in this trilogy. But with Before Midnight, director Richard Linklater and his stars (and co-writers) Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy have finally made the masterwork of the trilogy – and in doing so retroactively make the previous films better. 1995’s Before Sunrise was about two highly educated, very intelligent people in their early 20s, who thought they had everything all figured out, but were too young and naïve to realize they didn’t have a clue. 2004’s Before Sunset is about the same two people coming together after 9 years apart, looking back at who they were in the past with nostalgia and romanticism – they weren’t really in love with each other at that point, because they didn’t really know each other. They were older and wiser to be sure, but still didn’t know what life with each other would be. Now with Before Midnight, taking place another 9 years in the future, but this time when the two characters have actually been together for that time, they are finally addressing what I always wanted the other two films to address – what it’s like to be in a long term relationship with another person. All the anger, jealously, petty bickering, right alongside the love and the deeper connection you feel when you really get to know someone else. Before Midnight is clearly the best of the series so far.

When we left Jesse and Celine last time, we were pretty sure Jesse was going to miss his plane home to his wife and son, and that would cause problems. Before Midnight therefore, opens in an airport, as Jesse is saying goodbye to his son Hank after he spent the summer in Greece with him, Celine and their twin daughters – Ella and Nina. This sets in motion the rest of the film, because Jesse regrets missing much of Hank’s life, and wants to be a bigger part of it now – even though, as Celine points out, he’s going off to high school, and logically needs him less than he has in the past few years. Still, he brings up the possibility of moving to Chicago in the film’s next scene – an extended driving scene with their daughters asleep in the backseat. The two don’t really get into an argument about it right then, but it’s simmering just below the surface – and will, by film’s end, be the catalyst from the argument that takes up pretty much the last third of the movie – although that argument is far more wide ranging than just that issue.

Before we get there though, Before Midnight has scenes that the previous films didn’t – scenes involving people other than Jesse and Celine. They are staying in a Greek villa with two other couples – one roughly their age, one much younger, still in the bloom of young love, and two widowers – one male, one female – and over a few scenes the men and women talk separately, and then altogether, about their relationships. Finally, we get the type of scene we expect from this series – a long walk through the beautiful Greek town they’re staying in, with just Jesse and Celine, ending with the fight in a hotel room where it’s clear this fairy tale love story isn’t as perfect as it seems.

It’s refreshing to see a film like Before Midnight – especially in the midst of blockbuster season, where even the good movies seem to move a mile a minute, and never slow down enough for any of their characters to say something meaningful. All there is to this series of movies is talk – but what wonderful talk it is. By this point, Hawke and Delphy know Jesse and Celine from the inside out, so you easily sink back into their rhythm with each other. This movie provides each of them with their best role in the series so far – and perhaps the best role of their career (Oscar nominations for their performances, as well as their screenplay, would not be undeserved). These characters have evolved at this point into real people in the middle of a real relationship that has hit a rough patch, without either of them really realizing it – or at least acknowledging it to the other person. The argument that takes up the last act in the film will feel painfully familiar to anyone who has ever been in a long term relationship – it cuts close to the bone as the two characters now know each other well enough to know precisely what buttons to push to anger the other person.

I bet that sympathies will be split among gender lines for this movie – with the men thinking that Jesse is “more right” than Celine (I certainly did), and women siding with Celine, and thinking Jesse is still too immature (they have a point). The truth is – both of these characters are right and wrong, sometimes at the same time. What Jesse says is not unreasonable, and at times, Celine does seem to be “the Mayor of Crazy town” as he calls her. But for the most part, Celine’s response is equally valid – as are the criticisms she has about Jesse. Sometimes when two people fight, neither is fully right and neither is fully wrong – and that is the case here.

Before Midnight is the most mature film is the series – and really one of the best films about a long term relationship I have ever seen. I cannot think of another film series that has done what these three films have – the closest I can come up is Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, followed 30 years later by Saraband – but even that isn’t quite accurate. The trio behind this film has hinted that this will be the last installment – which is perhaps a good thing. I’m not sure where they could go from here, but if in 9 years they decide to revisit Jesse and Celine – who would then be 50, with two teenage daughters – I’ll be there. This is one of the very best films of the year so far.

Ranking Richard Linklater

For the past 22 years, since his 1991 breakthrough Slacker, Richard Linklater has been one of the most interesting filmmakers working in American indies. Yes, he has certainly flirted with bigger movies for studios – and actually made a couple of very good ones – but he always come back to his indie roots. Before Midnight opens this week – not in Canada, so I’ll have to wait a while to see it. So in lieu of that, I figured now was the time to look back at his 14 features (for those who are curious, I’m not counting his work before Slacker – one short, and two longer films, another short he made in the 2003, a TV movie from 2004, a documentary from 2008, or the TV series he directs – Up to Speed – just his theatrically released work). Anyway, it’s a strong resume, although I do think it is missing one thing – a true masterpiece, because for all the great, interesting work Linklater has done, he still hasn’t quite made one of them yet.

14. The Newton Boys (1998)

The Newton Boys was Linklater’s first attempt to go mainstream, and quite easily the worst film of his career. It stars Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke, Skeet Ulrich and Vincent D’Onofrio as the title brothers, who along with Dwight Yoakam, robbed some 200 banks in the 1920s, made a lot of money, and never killed anyone, except one of their own. This is because they work mainly at night and blow the safes, and make out with the money. There is a reason why The Newton Boys aren’t as famous as some of the bank robbers that came just after them – John Dillinger or Bonnie & Clyde – and judging on this film the reason is simple – they were boring. There’s no romance about them, they are strictly professional criminals, very good at their job, who can seemingly talk about nothing except what they do. The film is slow – painfully slow – and Linklater isn’t much of an action director in the few cases where it is called for. Unlike his other films, he doesn’t seem to care about his characters, or what they are saying, so you have to wonder why the hell you should.

13. Bad News Bears (2005)

I don’t really dislike Linklater’s remake of Bad News Bears – it is about as good as the original, which was an average sports movie with a fine performance by Walter Matthau. This is an average sports with a fine performance by Billy Bob Thornton, who isn’t lovably vulgar like that Matthau was, but just plain vulgar – and it must be said, pretty damn funny too. In fact, Thornton is really the ONLY reason to see the movie – and even then, you’re better off watching Bad Santa, where he plays a similar role in a much better film, that truly allows him to be vulgar, which this one doesn’t because it wanted a PG-13 rating. Bad New Bears is a mildly amusing time waster – nothing more – and I have trouble believing that Linklater really directed it. He can make a great studio comedy – see the wonderful School of Rock – but this time everyone seems to be going through the motions.

12. Me and Orson Welles (2008)

Christian McKay, who plays Orson Welles in this film, may just give the best performance of anyone in a Richard Linklater movie (certainly only Jack Black in Bernie and Ethan Hawke in Tape can compare). He fully embodies the famed director/actor as he stages what will become his infamous stage version of Julius Caesar, with Nazis, a few years before he went on to reinvent film with Citizen Kane. It is a magnetic performance, where you can never take your eyes off of him. He looks and sounds as much like Welles as you could possibly expect, and captures the gravitas that Welles had that so few others did. It is a brilliant performance. And the movie is also a showcase for period costumes and set design, done on a shoestring compared to most period movies. So why then does Me and Orson Welles rank only 12^th for me among Linklater’s films? Simple – I wasn’t all that interested in the “Me” part. Zac Efron plays that title character, and is fine as a youngster who has bit part in the stage, and tells the story, and also has a romance with an older woman (Claire Danes). All is well enough handled, but rather perfunctory as well. I wanted more McKay and Welles – a supporting character in the movie, but the only one you really remember as you leave the theater.

11. Fast Food Nation (2006)

Fast Food Nation is a fine film that tells three interlocking stories about how America slaughters and consumes meet. One story involves Greg Kinnear as a fast food executive who is tasked with finding out if there really is shit in their meet. He does not like what he discovers – especially when he meets with one of the biggest suppliers (Bruce Willis) who matter of factly tells him it doesn’t matter – the germs are killed by cooking the burgers, and besides, sometimes we all gotta eat shit. The second is about undocumented Mexican workers who come to America and end up being cheap, illegal labor at the factories that package the meet. Americans don’t want the jobs, so they do it, and companies like it because they save money and if a worker gets hurt, what can they do about it? The third is about fast food employees themselves, who don’t much like their job, and at some point decide to do something about it – although what they do doesn’t really accomplish anything. Fast Food Nation certainly has a point of view about meet – but it doesn’t really drill into your skull, but rather sits back and allows you to watch everything that happens. The ending of the movie – where we see a cow being slaughtered in the factory from beginning to end, is stomach churning, but I guess if you’re going to eat meet (and I’m not going to stop), you should at least know how it got to your table.

10. subUrbia (1996)

The oddly capitalized subUrbia was written by Eric Bogosian, a gifted playwright adapting his own work for the screen. For whatever reason, this movie never really seemed to catch on with audiences, and all these years later, I still don’t think it has ever really found its audience – and that’s too bad. While it may not be as good as Linklater’s best work, it is still fine indeed. The film, I think, makes an interesting companion piece to Dazed and Confused – which is about high school grads who don’t know what to do with their lives – as the characters in this film are older, but no wiser, and still don’t know what to do with their lives. All they do is hang out in the parking lot of a convenience store, drinking beer and waiting – but there is nothing to wait for. True, during the course of the night that makes up this film, they are actually waiting for a former high school friend, who has become a rock star (and he does show up), but even if they weren’t waiting for him, these characters would still be there, drinking, waiting, arguing with the Pakistani owners of the store (who see them more clearly than they see themselves). And perhaps that is why subUrbia still seems like it’s waiting to find its audience – while there are moments that are funny, this ends up being a fairly dark film, about the emptiness of the lives of these slackers. Unlike some movies (like say Kevin Smith’s), there is nothing romantic about these slackers – they’re kind of pathetic, and you feel sorry for them.

9. Slacker (1991)

Linklater’s breakthrough film was this free association film about life in his hometown of Austin, Texas. In it, we see what Linklater will do best throughout his entire career – listen to interesting people as they do nothing but talk and talk and talk. The film all takes places in seemingly real time, as Linklater’s camera finds a character and follows them for a while, as they ramble on about nothing overly important, until Linklater gets bored with them, and then spins off, finds another person on the street and follows them for a while. Linklater does this better later in his career (especially in Waking Life, but also in the Before Sunrise/Sunset films, although of course, there you don’t spin away) and Slacker certainly feels like exactly what it is – a young filmmaker experimenting with style and finding his voice. On that level, Slacker is a must for Linklater fans, much like the first films of many great directors are – not because they are the best work the filmmaker will do (Slacker clearly isn’t) but because we see the seeds of greatness in the film all the more clearly once we know what comes after.

8. Before Sunrise (1995)

Of the two “Before” films so far, Before Sunrise is the more dreamily romantic – because, of course, the characters at this point are in their 20s, and still see the world and their lives with endless optimism. They haven’t quite been crushed by life yet, haven’t settled down and “become their parents”. Instead, they are two young, intelligent 20-somethings who meet cute on a train in Austria, and decide to spend the long night together in Vienna – walking around and talking – before Jesse (Ethan Hawke) has to board a plane back to America and Celine (Julie Delphy) has to return to her life in Paris. Watching them walk around the streets of Vienna and talk – about everything and nothing – is a wonderful experience. You almost wish there was no sequel, because then we could remember them – and they could remember each other – as they were. But alas, time moves on.

7. Dazed and Confused (1993)

Dazed and Confused could well be Linklater’s most famous film – it has certainly garnered a sizable cult following in the nearly two decades since it was released. Most people remember it as an hilarious comedy – and while it certainly is hilarious at times – it is also a more clear eyed view of life in high school than most movies of its ilk. Unlike say George Lucas’ American Graffiti, which looked back nostalgically to life as a teenager in the 1950s, Dazed and Confused has no delusions that life in high school was all romance and fun times. It is a movie about these characters who seem stuck between teenagers and adults (or in the case of Matthew McConaughey, an adult who wants to remain a teenager). Like all of Linklater’s best films, this one is all talk – the character ramble on about seemingly nothing, and yet somehow find some real truth along the way.

6. Tape (2001)

Tape is the most underrated film of Linklater’s career – a stage to screen adaptation, that although the entire thing contains just three characters and takes place in a hotel room, doesn’t feel stage bound. Working on video (daring in 2001), Linklater doesn’t go for the shaky camera work of many films of the time who used that format – but does use the camera more freely – to capture everything in a more free flowing manor. The movie stars Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard and Uma Thurman. At first, it’s just Hawke in the motel room, than Leonard arrives. The two are old high school friends, and Leonard has become a famous filmmaker. Hawke was in love with Thurman in high school, but the two never had sex, but she did have sex with Leonard once. But was it consensual? Hawke hammers away at Leonard until he “confesses”, and then Thurman arrives and things get even more complicated. Because nothing is quite as it seems, nothing is the same from every character’s point of view. It shifts, and in some stories one character in the “bad guy”, and in other’s someone else is. Like Linklater’s best films, this one is all talk – but what talk it is, and what acting (especially by Hawke) and how much Linklater is able to accomplish with little more than three actors, a hotel room and a videocamera.

5. School of Rock (2003)

Out of all of Linklater’s experiments with mainstream filmmaking, School of Rock is the only one that truly works – and it does so just about perfectly. It stars Jack Black being his regular Jack Black self (see his performance in Linklater’s Bernie to see him do something completely different), as an aging rock singer who never made it big, but keeps the dream alive. He needs money, and somehow fakes his credentials, becomes a 5^th grade teacher and turns his class into a rock band so they can compete in Battle of the Bands. Yes, the plot sounds dumb, but the movie is anything but. This is a sharply written movie (by Mike White), that actually takes the premise seriously. Black remains himself throughout, and the kids stay kids. Yes, you know where the movie is going, but does it really matter? Linklater has made better films than School of Rock, but I don’t think he’s made one this purely entertaining.

4. Before Sunset (2004)

Before Sunset, made 9 years after Before Sunrise, as the two characters once again meet up – this time in Paris – and once again walk around the city and talk. Those endlessly optimistic characters we knew for the first film, are gone. They have become older and wiser, and look back at their night together partly wistfully, partly with regret of a path not taken. I feel that over the years I have been too negative about the film – which was never my intent, because I do think it is a near great film. I just don’t think it is the masterpiece that many claimed it was back in 2004. A near great film to be sure, and I am certainly looking forward to the final chapter this year – to see not only what happens to Jesse and Celine, but perhaps if Linklater can actually make his masterpiece.

3. A Scanner Darkly (2006)

Even when Philip K. Dick’s stories are turned into great movies – like Blade Runner or Minority Report – they usually just use the original Dick story as a starting point, and then jump off into something different. This may well make A Scanner Darkly the best “faithful” adaptation of a Dick story. Like he did five years earlier in Waking Life, Linklater uses an animation process called rotoscoping – where he films real actors, and then animates over top of them – to achieve the shimmering animated look of the film – and to achieve effects that he never could on his budget (like the scramble suit). This works just about perfectly for this film, which all takes place in a drug induced haze as undercover cop Bob (Keanu Reeves) starts to forget he is an undercover cop because of all the drugs he is taking. He spends a lot of time watching video of himself and his roommates (Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson) trying to remember what happened, and chasing down Donna (Winona Ryder) who is either his wife or his drug connection or both. A Scanner Darkly is certainly an anti-drug movie, but it’s much more than that as well. It’s a haunting film, and a brilliant one.

2. Bernie (2012)

Perhaps I am over praising Bernie because it is Linklater’s most recent film – but I don’t think so. Bernie is a great film about a character who lies to everyone, including himself, but is so charming that no one really cares. It gave Jack Black the role of his career so far, as the seemingly sunny, cheerful man who blows into a small Texas town, becomes a beloved local overnight, and even when he’s charged with murder, no one much cares, because the old woman he killed (the great Shirley Maclaine) was a bitch. Linklater combines documentary elements with his film, based on a true story, letting many of the locals play themselves. It is a daring combination that comes off because the screenplay is so strong, as are the performances (not only Black and Maclaine, but Matthew McConaughey who is great as the prosecutor). The film is much more ambiguous and less exploitive than most true crime movies of its ilk – and, for the moment anyway, it is one of Linklater’s best films.

1. Waking Life (2001)

When Waking Life opened in 2001 it was a completely different kind of animated film. Using a process called rotoscoping, where Linklater films real actors and then animates over top of them, Linklater has made an animated that captures all those small moments of human behavior and body language, that animation can never get quite right, but also gives him the freedom that animation provides. It stars Wiley Wiggins as a young man caught in a dream that he cannot wake up from, and like Slacker, he moves from one character or set of characters to another, eavesdropping on their conversations, or listening to their dialogue, as they try to answer the BIG questions of existence’s meaning. The movie doesn’t try to answer that question, but like Wiley, it wants the audience to at least be asking themselves those questions. It is unlike anything other movie I can think of – which is why I think it’s Linklater’s best so far.

Movie Review: Bernie

Bernie *** ½
Directed by: Richard Linklater.
Written by: Skip Hollandsworth and Richard Linklater based on the article by Hollandsworth.
Starring: Jack Black (Bernie Tiede), Shirley MacLaine (Marjorie Nugent), Matthew McConaughey (Danny Buck), Rick Dial (Don Leggett), Tommy G. Kendrick (Larry Brumley), Brady Coleman (Scrappy Holmes), Brandon Smith (Sheriff Huckabee), Sonny Carl Davis (Lonnie), Juli Erickson (Mrs. Estes), David Blackwell (Mel), Richard Robichaux (Lloyd Hornbuckle).

Richard Linklater`s Bernie exists at the intersection of comedy and tragedy, fiction film and documentary. It is somehow all of those things, and none of them at the same time. This makes Bernie, the film, as tough to define as Bernie the character is. And its further proof that it’s nearly impossible to figure out what Texas director Linklater is going to do next.

Bernie Tiede (Jack Black) arrives in the small, East Texas town of Carthage from Louisiana, where he immediately makes an impression on the locals as the assistant funeral director. There is not an aspect of his job he doesn’t excel at – embalming, making up the deceased, delivering sermons and eulogies, singing whatever song they want. But what he is best at is comforting the family of the dearly departed – he specializes in grieving widows. The residents of Carthage – many of them playing themselves giving interviews talking about Bernie – speculate as to whether or not he was gay – but the truth is it hardly matters. He has no time to date, and shows no interest in women his own age – and is never seen out and about with men. He always seems to be on the arm of some wealthy, old widow. And soon, it is one widow in particular – Marjorie Nugent (Shirley Maclaine). In a town full of wealthy widows, she is the wealthiest. She is also one of the most hated women in town – cold, distant, stuck up and cheap, despite her wealth. She barely even speaks to her own family – who hate her as much as anyone in town, and have even sued her to get at some of the money they feel they are entitled to. The only person she likes is Bernie – who she showers with expensive gifts, and takes him on her various trips around the world. Soon, Bernie has left his job at the funeral home, and works full time for Marjorie – doing practically everything for her. And she becomes more and more possessive of him and his time, and it starts driving the pleasant Bernie insane. He likes to be involved in everything in town, and Marjorie wants him to spend all his time with her – and because Bernie has expensive tastes, he goes along with it for as long as he can. We know from the start that this isn’t going to end well – why else does everyone in town refer to both Bernie and Marjorie in the past tense, and why else would District Attorney Danny Buck (Matthew McConaughey) be the only person interviewed who seems to hate sweet, little Bernie.

Jack Black delivers one of his best performances as Bernie – the slightly effeminate, ever cheerful, charming and fun center of the film. This is a more serious role for Black, but it is hardly an all-out `dramatic` role for the comedian – it just has a little bit more depth than the characters he usually gets to play. The role still gives Black a chance to show his more exuberant side – like in a rousing rendition of 76 Trombones in full costume. And Black is as instantly likable as he always is in his films – and just as funny. And yet, there is a side of Bernie – a darkness – that only bares peaks through the cracks. In many ways, although nearly every scene in the film involves Bernie, or at least someone talking about Bernie, he remains an enigma. We are well aware that there is a part of Bernie that we don’t get to see in this movie – that he shows to no one. The other two major performances are also quite good, but have less depth. Shirley MacLaine is used more for her stature and physical presence than anything else, but she is effective in her role. Matthew McConaughey has never been a favorite of mine, but in a role where he has to be all laid back, Texas charm, he is effective – and actually quite funny.

For a movie as fun as Bernie, the film also raises some interesting questions about small town life and justice. At the heart of the movie is a murder – but no one in town really seems to care. After the truth of what happens comes out, everyone in town feels sorry for the perpetrator and no one feels bad for the victim. The trail, when it happens, has a lot of interesting observations, and manipulations by the D.A. that he needs to make in order to get what he wants. This is an interesting film, an entertaining film, and yet there`s a lot more going on under the surface.

Movie Review: Me and Orson Welles

Me and Orson Welles *** ½
Directed by: Richard Linklater.
Written By: Holly Gent Palmo & Vincent Palmo Jr. based on the novel by Robert Kaplow.
Starring: Zac Efron (Richard Samuels), Claire Danes (Sonja Jones), Christian McKay (Orson Welles), Ben Chaplin (George Coulouris), Zoe Kazan (Gretta Adler), Eddie Marsan (John Houseman), Kelly Reilly (Muriel Brassler), James Tupper (Joseph Cotton), Leo Bill (Norman Lloyd).

There has never been, and never will be, someone quite like Orson Welles. He was a man of great contradictions and genius. He had huge appetites for women, and later in life for food. He demanded, and received, absolute loyalty from the people who worked with him. He was an egomaniac and often difficult to work with. He has a man you both loved and hated. He had such a supreme confidence about himself, that even when he drove his people crazy, they stuck by him. Why? Because everyone could tell his genius. If you stuck with Orson, you may go through hell, but you were going to be a part of something that would be remembered forever.

I have seen Welles portrayed by many actors over the year. Vincent D’Onfrio probably did the best job in his cameo roles in Ed Wood. Liev Scheiber and Angus McFadyen tried valiantly in RKO 281 and Cradle Will Rock respectively, and did a decent job, but didn’t quite pull it off. Maurice LaMarche does a killer Welles impression, that he has used in animated shows like The Simpsons and The Critic. And I will always remember Jim Cummings brilliant voice work on an episode of Pinky and the Brain, which mocked Welles’ infamous frozen pea ad.

In Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles though, Christian McKay outdoes them all. He looks uncannily like a young Orson Welles, and his has perfected Welles speech patterns. There are times in this movie, usually small moments when McKay simply smiles, when I swore that I was looking at the real Welles. But McKay’s performance is more than just genetics and impersonation; he embodies Welles, and all his contradictions, perfectly. You cannot help but love the guy even when he goes off on one of his unreasonable tirades, yelling at whoever happens to be around him at that moment. It is, in short, one of the best performances I have ever seen by an actor playing an iconic figure from the past.

The movie that surrounds this towering performance is pleasant enough. Young Richard Samuels (Zac Efron) comes to New York one day, and ends up in front of the Mercury theater, where by pure happenstance, he ends up being cast in the small role of Lucious in Welles now infamous stage production of Julius Caesar. The movie concentrates on Richard, his struggles to try and learn how to play the ukulele (that will be disguised as a lute, and which he’ll have to serenade Welles’ Brutus in a key scene), and his relationship with Sonja Jones (Claire Danes), a kind of girl Friday for the Mercury theater. Everyone in the cast wants Sonja, but it is Richard that she warms to. There is something sweet and innocent about him and his come ons that contrast him to the rest of the cast – especially Joseph Cotton (James Tupper, who also looks uncannily like his real life counterpart), who just wants another notch on his belt.

Linklater is a talented director, and he gives Me and Orson Welles the proper period details, and keeps the story moving along rapidly. Efron, in his first real role, does a fine job as Samuels, and Danes is cute and believable as Sonja. It’s not their fault that whenever they are on screen, we long to get back to McKay’s Welles. Me and Orson Welles is a solid movie all around – lightweight, enjoyable, but it is McKay’s performance that makes it a must see movie. It’s one of the best performances of the year.