Here are Cinephile Corner’s picks for the 10 best Richard Linklater movies, ranked:
10. Tape (2001)
9. Waking Life (2001)
8. Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022)
7. Boyhood (2014)
6. Before Sunset (2004)
5. A Scanner Darkly (2006)
4. Before Midnight (2013)
3. Dazed and Confused (1993)
There’s a short, short list of movies that, in the moment, feel like the greatest thing you’ve ever seen. Richard Linklater has somehow made a few of them across a decades-long career, and I’m not sure he’s ever been more locked-in than with Dazed and Confused. It drops you into 1976 on the last day of school, where the soon-to-be seniors are running the show and the incoming freshmen are about to take the brunt of hazing rituals that are passed down like some warped tradition. Then the sun goes down, the cars start cruising, the beer starts flowing, and the night stretches out into that specific kind of teenage summer freedom that feels infinite while you’re in it.
2. Before Sunrise (1995)
1. Everybody Wants Some!! (2013)
I can probably count on one hand the movies I’ve rewatched more often than Everybody Wants Some!!, and that’s because Richard Linklater’s secret masterpiece is one of the most endlessly watchable films of the 2010s. Its 117 minutes fly by with the kind of effortless charm that makes you want to live inside it, following a team of college baseball players during the final weekend before classes begin at a mid-sized Texas university in 1980. Freshmen move into the house, parties blur together, baseball practice tests egos, and friendships form so naturally you wish you were dropped right into the middle of it.
Read our full review of Everybody Wants Some!!
