Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 80 - Richard Linklater

In a bid to expand the scope of the show, Matt and I have instituted a new monthly feature in which we pick an artist whose work we admire or think is significant, select five of their films to discuss in depth, then use them as a jumping off point to the discuss the artists' themes and style.

For our first such episode, we're taking on the filmography of independent film stalwart, Austinite and multiple Oscar nominee Richard Linklater. The films we discuss in this episode were chosen using the following criteria, which will form the basis for future installments in this strand:

• Breakthrough: Either the first film that the artist made, or the one which first announced their arrival as a figure of note.
• Most Successful: The film which earned the most money, and theoretically made the biggest impact on the culture at large.
• Oddity: A film in their oeuvre which stands out as being in some way distinct from their other work.
• Dud: A.K.A. their worst film.
• Crowning Achievement: A.K.A. their best film.

Next month's artist is going to be Clint Eastwood, and after that I promise we'll start choosing artists who aren't white men.

Film Review: Before Midnight (2013)

One of the most beautiful things about the films in Richard Linklater's Before... series is that each leaves the audience with a question. When Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) first met in 1995's Before Sunrise, that question was "What next?" After spending a day and night together in Vienna, talking about love and life, everything and nothing, would the two meet up again in six months, as they promised to do in the final moments of the film? When Linklater, Hawke and Delpy revisited the characters in 2004 for Before Sunset, they emphatically answered that, no, they did not see each other again. Jesse and Celine went off and lived their own lives apart, only to meet again in Paris as older, seemingly wiser but no less verbose people. People who were still living with the uncertainty of what would have happened if they had kept their rendezvous. At the end of Before Sunset, as Celine told Jesse that he was going to miss his plane as he sat in her apartment, the same question was posed to the audience: What next?

Rethinking Matthew McConaughey

I feel bad for using this ridiculous image as the main one for the article, but if he's going to continue to make artistically interesting choices, then I might no longer get to make fun of him anymore, DAMMIT!

If you're anything like me - and why wouldn't you want to be? I'm grrrrrreat. And a cartoon tiger, apparently - then you probably don't think all that much of Matthew McConaughey, if you think of him at all. For the best part of the last twenty years, he's been a blandly charming presence in a succession of slightly rubbish dramas and extremely rubbish romantic comedies, most of which, if their posters are to be believed, seem to revolve around him leaning on things:

I choose to believe that the level of commitment he brings to any given role can be determined by the angle at which he leans and how few clothes he is wearing on the poster. So we see that he is putting a lot of effort into Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, could give a shit about Failure to Launch, and is super-committed to his work in Surfer, Dude.