Everybody Wants Some (2016)

Everybody Wants Some!! (R)

"Some, why not all?"

A group of freshman college baseball players settle into their new life of stiff competition, stiff drinking, loose girls and acting all grown up in Texas in Richard Linklater's comedy Everybody Wants Some!!.

Sold as the spiritual sequel to Linklater's Dazed and Confused (1993), EWS follows a group of freshman baseball players trying to fit into their new lives, trying to out perform the older players, and trying to stay as stoned and laid as possible.  It's now the 1980s, and boy was it a different time.  As a study of how America has changed in just a few short decades (which Linklater's films often revel in) Everybody Wants Some succeeds, but as a pure form of visual entertainment it sadly falls on it's own cleats.

Maybe it's the lack of "loss of innocence" plot line or pungent stench of post-pubescent ambition, but Everybody Wants Some!! leaves you wanting a bit more and less.  There's no issues with the comedy which is humorous, the acting which is naturalistic, the directing which is approachable.  However all together these testosterone fueled Jocks in a Frat house will only appeal to a certain audience, if it was your Father or favorite Uncle telling these tall tales of chopping baseballs with axes or the night they got kicked out of the disco after meeting your mother inbetween gulps of Shiner Bock then you'd have a sincere reason to listen.  Told to a modern audience it falls flat, a rude boy story/brag bereft of the nostalgia and hope that shone from Dazed and Confused.  Instead it concentrates on the potential for success (or failure) for these near-men, friends, odd balls and sexual dynamos that only a small group of modern individuals could really relate too, or more importantly, really laugh at.

6.5 Still Not as Boring as Boyhood, But Not High Art Either out of 10 (GOOD)

Boyhood (2014)

Boyhood (R) - Review

"Years pass like seconds, minutes like hours"

A boy and his family grow up, through thick and thin, through 12 years of life in Texas in Director Richard Linklater's newest experimental film in long-distance filmmaking, the first real time coming of age picture

Actually spanning these years, watching an actor grow from childhood to adulthood onscreen in accelerated real-time as his family also grows and morphs, is a fascinating exercise in spatial filmmaking; joining up year after year (the music and styles and car-fads are the only clue what year the characters are living in at the moment, which zoom forward without provocation).  It's a video diary of a generation, the post 9-11 children and their families, ups and downs, divorces and new found loves zipping by as the hairstyles go from mullets/Biebers/Emo/to Hipsters.

However, the necessarily amateur acting detracts from the believability, having child actors that grow into adult actors that can never quite act hurts the suspension of crucial disbelief.  The start of the film has some tense moments with a drunk stepdad or family fights, but about half-way through the film all the characters settle down into this tepid groove of suburban life that, while may be real, is not very absorbing.  The boy of the title, Mason, is the kind of sullen eyed aimless kid who won't tear himself away from a game screen for half a second to say hello, the kind of child we've all met and felt a little slighted by.  His sister is a charming goof, his dad (Ethan Hawk) is a tousled hair loser, his mom a caring overstressed hen (Patricia Arquette).  The family dynamic itself is interesting, yet they all surround a kid who is very unrelateable and, dare we say, almost unlikable?  And at nearly 3 hours, Boyhood may invoke a feeling of family just at it's sheer length of exposure you are inflicted to, like a distant relative whose opinion is ignored off hand: "No Mason, why would you gauge your ears, do you know what you'd look like when you're 80?"  He shrugs, digs out cereal bowl.

Boyhood (which is a bit of a misnomer considering the other characters get almost as much screen time as Mason, or at least are more interesting) feels like some of the other nostalgia pieces of Linklater's, whether it's the Austin Weirdness of Slacker or the High School weed-glow in Dazed and Confused.  Some of it seems rewrtitten from these other movies, the underage drinking and drug use are such low hanging fruit that they feel out of place here, not every generation is doomed to repeat the previous' fun and mayhem, and not every kid will take a nip from a flask if asked to.  The only difference here is that Richard isn't that personally nostalgic about the Iraq War, or Honda MiniVans or Game Boy Advances, and it shows.  Stapling these emotions from his 70s boyhood has a false feeling of disjointedness to the millennial events, and while literally watching a kid grow up from 6 to 18 is a fascinating experience, the film itself, the entertainment value, is the same as watching a strangers home movies without anyone to answer your questions, "Aren't these kids cute but where are they living now, that must be his uncle I guess, when did she start dating him, seriously there is a whole other hour left on the tape???"  There are whole 15 minute scenes that seem superfluous,  and when your movie is a nearly 3 hour long family drama one could think it's runtime very excessive.

Narrative-wise, fun-wise, script-wise, acting-wise, it's not Linklater's best by a long shot (and he has done great before).  Concept wise, it being a literal time-lapse photograph of a human being, like a stretched out youtube vid of the picture a month variety (turned into a scene a year in Boyhood), is fantastic and it's execution remarkable (that Linklater had to leave provisions for the film to be finished in the event of his untimely death speaks volumes about the commitment and energy of all involved).  Unfortunately the mundane plot, length per entertainment value and overall distance of emotion left us with a dissenting opinion that unlike our own sunbeam dreanched childhood, this is something we won't be reminiscing about anytime soon.

6 Watching Human Grass Grow out of 10 (GOOD)

Bernie (2011)

Bernie (R) - Review

"Nice Guys finish up in Prison"

In a small eastern Texas town, a charming man named Bernie takes a job as a local undertaker who eventually begins a relationship with an affluent widow which soon turns suspicious as the woman is no longer seen yet her money is still being well spent.  They discover her body months later and Bernie is subsequently tried for murder by the flashy local DA.  However Bernie is so popular with the local residents and the widow so despised that the District Attorney must request a trial in a different county for fears that loveable Bernie will win over any jury, despite his own confession.

Bernie is strikingly played by Jack Black (Tenacious D), shedding off his goofy kid-like type casting for an ambiguously sexed undertaker with a darker side.  Directed and written by Richard Linklater (Waking Life, Slacker) after witnessing the trail first hand over a decade ago, the movie has a clear small town ring of truth with an incredible surreal reality (we'd expect no less of Richard).  Shirley MacLaine is the aging victim and Matthew McConaughey as the half cowboy half media darling DA, but mixed in with the cast are real locals illuminating us on East Texas life and politics; a scene describing the unique geography and politics of the state with accompanying cartoon map was most helpful.  Linklater has often enriched his films with the uniquely smokey and tangy flavors of Deep Texas.  His style has matured on Bernie, like a long smoked brisket wonderfully juicy with a thick black comedy rind.

8 Big Gulp Jurors out of 10 (GREAT)

Dazed and Confused (1993)

Dazed and Confused (R) - Review

"Lots of people talkin', few of them know"

School is out in Texas and as the teens and young adults begin their revelry on the darkening streets a group of friends and acquaintances begin to coalesce and intermingle and inebriate a story emerges of coming of age and friendship in one night in 1976 Austin.

Richard Linklater (Slacker, Bernie) brings his directorial microscope to bear on his young adulthood in Weirdtown, TX USA.  Drugs, sex, Aerosmith concerts and partying all night all summer are the norms for these children of the post-love generation.  It is a fascinating for an outsider to watch, a social study on an almost unrecognizable American society where grads have sacred rituals and kids don't text their mothers when they are out past 10.  An amazingly large and talented cast of then up an comers light up the camera including Milla Jovovich, Jason London, Joey Lauren Adams, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck as a overly aggressive spankhappy zealot and Matthew Mcconaughey as the grown up slacker sex fiend everyone wishes (at the time) they could grow up to be.  A night in the life of these teens rings true to an America that once was, whether you are too old or too young to have remembered it takes away nothing from it's charm.  The lenses on these rose tinted glasses are thick as coke bottles, but they make you sound like John Lennon and look just like a young Steven Tyler.

9 Pop Tops out of 10 (GREAT)