Like, dude. The other day I got like so wasted.... I just, like, stared at the wall and didn't do anything all day.
One assumes that Richard Linklater, one of the more interesting filmmakers of the '90s, can closely identify with the above monologue. Nothing much happens in any of his movies, except for the one about bank robbers, and even that is curiously mellow for an action movie. This guy must have smoked a lot of pot back in his youth. The thing about potheads is that smoking wacky weed makes you completely unmotivated and unambitious (true story: every summer in Fayetteville NORML holds a big rally in the park. However, one summer the rally never occurred because nobody felt motivated enough to organize it). This, coupled with the damage inflicted by pot on the memory cells, creates films without much plot or forward motion. None of this is really a criticism, mind - it's simply a description. His movies are always interesting, and hold up much better than an awful lot of movies with frame-by-frame fireworks - perhaps because, with their plotlessness and long stretches in which people just talk about the world and don't do much of anything, his movies capture the way real life actually is.
__________________________________________________________________________________Slacker (1991): Coined the infamous term for downwardly mobile '90s youth, who aren't that different from downwardly mobile '60s hippies or '50s beatniks (or '20s Lost Generationers, for that matter). The weird thing about this movie is that there is not only no plot whatsoever, but also no main characters. For about five or ten minutes you hang with one set of characters, then segue to another completely different set of cats, which gives it a slightly documentary feel. Set in Austin, the hippie capital of Texas, the odd assortment of weirdos and flakes makes for one of the most fascinatingly off films I've seen.
Grade: A
Dazed and Confused (1993): A much more commercial effort, this has a semblance of a plot revolving around a group of '70s stoners in Texas who are about to graduate from highschool. Again, there's a large cast of characters: you get to hang with the nerds, the jocks, the burnouts, wannabe freshmen. All in all, it's a great throwback not to the '70s but to the '80s teen flicks: lots of drinking, jokes about sex, anti-authoritarianism (all the grownups are villians), class warfare as a metaphor for class warfare. Plus the soundtrack totally rocks.
Grade: A-
Before Sunrise (1995): Since dinner and a movie seems to be the most popular form of dating in these United States, you need to take care and pick out the right movie to set the mood. This one is perfect. Why? Because this movie is like eavesdropping on a couple out on a date. Julie Delpe and Ethan Hawke don't do anything except wander around Vienna and talk. Both actors are very attractive, and make a nice couple, even though there's absolutely no plot. Oh, and the scenery's pretty, too.
Grade: B+
Suburbia (1997): Scripted by Eric Borgosian, who's really the central driving creative force here, this is smart, sharp, funny, in your fuckin' face, and overly cynical and facilely nihilistic like all of Borgosian's work. A very dark portrait of the dead-end lives of losers inhabiting Any 7-11 Parking Lot, USA, these are slackers who've stopped smoking dope enough to wake up out of their stupor and realize how shitty their lives really are. The key epiphany is when one of the characters says that 20 years ago there were some other losers hanging out in the same parking lot, and 20 years from now other losers are going to replace them, and so what's the freakin' point?
Grade: A
The Newton Boys (1998): It's fun to watch studly country superstar Dwight Yoakam as a bald-headed, unattractive middle-aged duffer, 'cause it confirms my theory that the cameras in Hollywood create beauty and ugliness, not capture it. Shoot at the right angles and anyone can look like a sex symbol; and then switch the film and lighting and the same person is transformed into an ugly duckling. Anyway, this is Linklater's only film not set in contemporary times; it's based on the true story of a gang of Depression-era bank robbers. These are generally easy-going bank robbers who'd much prefer to blow up safes in the dead of night than have to get violent in broad daylight, but things don't quite turn out the way they planned. Don't miss the final credits - as a bonus, there's archival footage of the robbers as old men talking with folks like Johnny Carson about their escapades.
Grade: B+