BLUE MOON is one of Richard Linklater’s two 2025 joints, the one that’s in English and that he didn’t sell to Netflix and that was nominated for two Oscars (actor and original screenplay). At a glance it doesn’t sound like the most typical Linklater picture, because it’s about the songwriter Lorenz Hart when his partner Richard Rodgers has just started a successful new team with Oscar Hammerstein II. But when you see it it turns out it’s very Linklater, because it’s basically a one location play starring Ethan Hawke (like TAPE) and because it’s all about listening to a weirdo carry on and show off blabbing about all the random shit he’s obsessed with (like SLACKER or WAKING LIFE).
It’s basically a bittersweet hangout movie, spending a couple hours at a bar with Hart (Ethan Hawke, 24 HOURS TO LIVE) on March 31, 1943, opening night of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!. He ruminates on his past, his current failure, his dreams of how to continue, what’s going on with this war in Europe, and many of his opinions about many different things. Also he’s really excited because he thinks he’s in love with a Yale art student he’s been corresponding with who’s going to meet him here. But mostly he just tries to hold court and receive the attention he desires before Rodgers and friends show up to celebrate their triumph without him. (read the rest of this shit…)
I have a confession to make: I don’t think I’ve ever seen the original BAD NEWS BEARS movies in full. Parts, maybe. I know people love the first one. I don’t remember it. So this review comes from the rare perspective of a person who saw Richard Linklater’s remake in theaters and is returning to it after 20 years of still not seeing the original to find out why nobody seemed to think this stacked up to it. Ignorance is bliss!
For me the main movie to compare it to is BAD SANTA, which came from the same screenwriters, Glenn Ficarra & John Requa (CATS & DOGS). Obviously it’s not as good, but it’s the second best movie at presenting Billy Bob Thornton as an alcoholic asshole in a way that is somehow really funny and ultimately sweet in a way that doesn’t seem too phony because the guy is still an asshole, he just made a small gesture that shows he’s trying. This is a PG-13 family-friendly-ish sports movie, so the change is a little bigger than just wanting to give a stuffed elephant to a child after getting shot by the police, but it still maintains his acerbicness to pretty uncomfortable levels until the last couple innings of the big game. (read the rest of this shit…)
HIT MAN (2024) is on the more crowdpleasing side of Richard Linklater movies, a sort of comedy, sort of romance, sort of noir, sort of true story that’s good enough to sort of make me forgive the “based on a true story… sort of” disclaimer and related dad joke vibes. For me it doesn’t quite live up to the hype from the Toronto International Film Festival, where it apparently blew the roof off, but it’s definitely worth watching if you already get Netflix, where it ended up.
This is really a star vehicle for Glen Powell, an Austinite who worked with Linklater in FAST FOOD NATION, EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! and APOLLO 10 1/2 (an animated/rotoscoped movie that’s also on Netflix, and quite good) before blowing up in TOP GUN: MAVERICK and ANYONE BUT YOU. Now the two of them teamed up to co-write and co-produce this showcase for Powell doing more than just his usual cocky hunky guy thing (but also that). He plays Gary Johnson, a New Orleans psychology professor who lives alone with two cats, enjoys bird watching, and tucks his polo shirts into his cargo shorts. He’s a dabbler who moonlights as a tech guy for the police, recording undercover stings busting people who were asking around about putting a hit out on somebody. When Jasper (Austin Amelio, The Walking Dead) is suspended for excessive force, Gary is pushed into playing the hitman, digs deep to create a macho character, and turns out to be very good at it. (read the rest of this shit…)
SLACKER is a landmark independent film of the ’90s, and I thought it was Richard Linklater’s first feature until I rented the blu-ray and saw that one of the extras was a feature length Super-8 movie he did in 1988 called IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO LEARN TO PLOW BY READING BOOKS. But I turned it off before the first shot ended and I don’t think it ever got released before so it doesn’t count in my opinion.
When SLACKER came out at the beginning of the ’90s it was unlike anything I’d seen before. You know how people who don’t know much about movies will say that a movie where they didn’t like the plot “has no plot”? This one actually for real has no plot, it’s just a camera floating through Austin watching people talk. Then somebody will leave the conversation or someone else will walk by and the camera will go with them and watch something else.
Some of the conversations are very one-sided. The two conspiracy nuts (one JFK specific, one all over the map from early moon landing to mind control) seem particularly Aspergersy. It’s funny to watch two guys walking along a sidewalk or riding in a cab for several minutes and one of them is doing a monologue and the other one never says a damn word. They’re all stone-faced non-actors so they don’t always convey whether they’re being very open-minded and actually listening, or if they’re just politely waiting for it to stop. (read the rest of this shit…)
Note: I sincerely considered whether or not it was feasible to write this review one paragraph per year for 12 years. I decided maybe somebody else should do it.
When we first met Richard Linklater in the ’90s, his specialty was the one-day movie. SLACKER and DAZED AND CONFUSED captured a moment in time by following a group of characters (or a random selection of Austin weirdos) at a particular time. But all these years later he’s fascinated with the opposite: showing the same actors over a long period of time, seeing how things change. He started by following up the characters from the one-day BEFORE SUNRISE seven years later, and then fourteen years later. And with BOYHOOD, as you’ve probly heard, he somehow managed to make a movie with a star who is 7 years old at the beginning and he filmed a little bit each year until the year he starts college. About the only thing that would be more ambitious would be if he made a movie about trying to get me to sit through WAKING LIFE again.
The result is a movie as impressive as it sounds and much more involving. It still has that day-in-the-life feel, it’s just that it’s a whole bunch of days spread out across years. You know what, maybe alot of you other directors are just rushing things. Where’s the fire, man? Take the time to let your actors grow up on camera. Don’t be lazy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with our main man, Vern, who got an early look at Richard Linklater’s newest, A SCANNER DARKLY. My words are meaningless when the great Vern speaketh below. Enjoy!
A SCANNER DARKLY, Richard (BAD NEWS BEARS) Linklater’s new adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel, is a visionary and boldly stylized look at the tragedies of the drug culture and the growing police state. Its psychedelic style of wobbly, traced-over animation creates a fluid, disconnected reality that perfectly captures–
Ah fuck, who am I fooling. This movie put me to fuckin sleep.
Maybe it’s over my head, I won’t rule that out. And I don’t want to say it’s necessarily a terrible movie (like WAKING LIFE – I hate that god damn movie). I haven’t read the book, and maybe people who did will enjoy it. Who knows. I think I admire what the movie is going for but that doesn’t change the fact that, to me anyway, it’s a meandering bore with barely any characters, humor or even plot to latch onto. (read the rest of this shit…)
It took me a while to get to this one because 1) cartoons are only for children and 2) it wasn’t nominated for the best animated feature oscar so it must not have been any good. so I watched Jimmy Neutron instead.
Actually that is all bullshit. I know this movie was beloved by critics and people alike. I even talked to one dude who hates all Richard Linklaters other movies but liked this one. As you probaly already know this is a movie that Linklater shot on digital video, then had computer animators paint over the video in their computer programs and turn it into surreal computer art type business. What the plot is about is this kid is dreaming, but he can’t wake up, and everywhere he goes people talk to him about free will or lucid dreaming or show off that they have some wacky quirk like they pretend their car is a boat. (read the rest of this shit…)
I have to admit, the digital video is starting to look more promising. For a while there I was about to declare it my arch-enemy. It never looked like a real movie. It always looked like crap. But it was winning over directors like Spike Lee, lowering their standards. Either it looked muddy and ugly (like Bamboozled) or like a TV special (like Original Kings of Comedy). Even in the best cases it just looked like cheap film stock (Chuck and Buck) and in the only case where it looked really great (Julien Donkey Boy) it was because they transferred it to film and then back to video and then back to film, or some crazy shit like that that nobody else is gonna bother to try.
I’m still skeptical but I must admit that the technology is improving, making it more acceptable. They’re even using digital video for important works like the next Soderbergh film and the third installment in the Mariachi trilogy. I saw an ad for Star Wars Part 2 and although it looked more artifial than part 1, I would never have guessed it was all shot on some super high tech rich guy camcorder. (read the rest of this shit…)
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BLUE MOON is one of Richard Linklater’s two 2025 joints, the one that’s in English and that he didn’t sell to Netflix and that was nominated for two Oscars (actor and original screenplay). At a glance it doesn’t sound like the most typical Linklater picture, because it’s about the songwriter Lorenz Hart when his partner Richard Rodgers has just started a successful new team with Oscar Hammerstein II. But when you see it it turns out it’s very Linklater, because it’s basically a one location play starring Ethan Hawke (like TAPE) and because it’s all about listening to a weirdo carry on and show off blabbing about all the random shit he’s obsessed with (like SLACKER or WAKING LIFE).
July 22, 2005
For me the main movie to compare it to is 
HIT MAN (2024) is on the more crowdpleasing side of Richard Linklater movies, a sort of comedy, sort of romance, sort of noir, sort of true story that’s good enough to sort of make me forgive the “based on a true story… sort of” disclaimer and related dad joke vibes. For me it doesn’t quite live up to the hype from the Toronto International Film Festival, where it apparently blew the roof off, but it’s definitely worth watching if you already get Netflix, where it ended up.
Note: I sincerely considered whether or not it was feasible to write this review one paragraph per year for 12 years. I decided maybe somebody else should do it.
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with our main man, Vern, who got an early look at Richard Linklater’s newest, A SCANNER DARKLY. My words are meaningless when the great Vern speaketh below. Enjoy!
It took me a while to get to this one because 1) cartoons are only for children and 2) it wasn’t nominated for the best animated feature oscar so it must not have been any good. so I watched Jimmy Neutron instead.
I have to admit, the digital video is starting to look more promising. For a while there I was about to declare it my arch-enemy. It never looked like a real movie. It always looked like crap. But it was winning over directors like Spike Lee, lowering their standards. Either it looked muddy and ugly (like Bamboozled) or like a TV special (like Original Kings of Comedy). Even in the best cases it just looked like cheap film stock (Chuck and Buck) and in the only case where it looked really great (Julien Donkey Boy) it was because they transferred it to film and then back to video and then back to film, or some crazy shit like that that nobody else is gonna bother to try.
