Richard Linklater: RANKED
- 10 hours ago
- 5 min read
Richard Linklater is one of my favorite filmmakers of all time... no question. A true hero of cinema. A guy who never sold out, never moved to Hollywood, never stopped making his kind of movies.
He’s an artist who stayed home in Austin, Texas, where he’s from, and built a career doing things on his own terms. He’s one of the great American directors, a genuine champion of independent film, and a storyteller who somehow manages to make the most everyday moments feel absolutely profound.
Born in Houston in 1960, Linklater grew up playing baseball and football, went to Sam Houston State, dropped out, worked on an oil rig, and started watching films obsessively at repertory cinemas. That’s where the spark hit.
He used his savings to buy a Super 8 camera, moved to Austin, and decided, “Yeah, this is what I’m going to do.” And thank God he did, because what came next changed the shape of American independent film.
In 1985, he co-founded the Austin Film Society (which is still going strong today) to support local filmmakers, teach film history, and build a community around movies. That alone would make him a hero, but then he started directing, and everything really took off.
His first feature, It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books, was basically a one-man experiment (he wrote it, shot it, edited it) and it led directly to Slacker (1991), the film that truly put both him and Austin on the map.
Slacker became a sensation at Sundance, one of those defining indie touchstones that lit the fuse for that incredible early-’90s movement, right there alongside Clerks, El Mariachi, Bottle Rocket, Kids, and all those little miracles that suddenly made it feel like anyone with a vision and a camera could break through.
Slacker was talky, weird, digressive, and utterly alive, it was a movie that didn’t care about plot, just about people. It was revolutionary.
Then came Dazed and Confused (1993), one of the greatest films ever made. Full stop. That movie is high school. It is the 70's. It’s everything about youth, rebellion, and time in one perfect night.
It made stars out of Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, Joey Lauren Adams, and about a dozen others. Every line, every song, every shot just breathes authenticity. The studio didn’t get it, of course, but audiences did, and it became a legend.
He followed that up with Before Sunrise (1995), and that started something nobody else would’ve dared: a love story that unfolds in real time, and then continues across decades. The Before trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight) is one of the greatest achievements in film history.
Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy talking about life, love, aging, regret, and everything in between. It’s cinema stripped down to its most essential element, just two people connecting.
And Linklater loves time. He’s obsessed with it, how it passes, how it shapes people, how movies can capture it. That’s what makes him so special. He doesn’t just make films about time, he uses time as his medium.
Boyhood (2014), which he shot over twelve years, is maybe the ultimate example. It’s one of the most ambitious projects ever attempted by following the same cast as they literally grow up. He captured something no other film has ever captured: real life unfolding.
He’s done everything. Lo-fi indies. Big studio comedies. Animation experiments like Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, both of which used rotoscope to turn philosophical conversations into visual dreams.
He made Tape, which is an entire movie shot in one motel room. He directed School of Rock, one of the most joyous, crowd-pleasing movies of the 2000s, which launched Jack Black into superstardom and literally created a real-life subculture of music schools for kids.
He’s done crime, satire, nostalgia, sci-fi, slice-of-life, romance, and even when the subject matter changes, that same curiosity, compassion, and warmth are always there.
He’s also a collaborator: Ethan Hawke, Jack Black, Julie Delpy, Matthew McConaughey, Glen Powell. He builds relationships, and they last decades. He trusts actors, and they trust him. You can feel that mutual respect in every one of his films.
And he’s a teacher. Literally. My girlfriend Julie went to UT Austin for graduate film school, and Linklater was a real presence there. He’d drop into classes, host screenings, talk to students, and genuinely care about what they were working on.
He’d share his love for filmmakers like Ozu, and when Julie told him she loved Ozu’s I Was Born, But…, he actually made her a copy of the movie and left it in her mailbox. Who does that? That’s who he is, he is a kind, engaged artist who lives and breathes cinema and gives back to the next generation.
Now, we’re in a moment where, unbelievably, two new Richard Linklater movies are in theaters at the same time: the biographical Blue Moon, about Lorenz Hart, starring Ethan Hawke, and the incredible Nouvelle Vague, his fictional film about the making of Godard’s Breathless.
Two totally different movies, and both are worth seeing. Nouvelle Vague in particular is one of the best films of the year and another reminder of just how alive and curious this guy still is after four decades.
And that’s the beauty of Linklater. He’s never stopped experimenting. Never stopped evolving. He’s made rotoscoped animation, studio comedies, philosophical meditations, and 12-year odysseys... and somehow, they all still feel like him.
You can tell instantly when you’re watching a Richard Linklater film. There’s this relaxed energy, this love of conversation, this joy in just hanging out with characters. His movies are like spending an afternoon with a friend who happens to be smarter, funnier, and more observant than you are.
I love everything he represents: the independence, the intellect, the humor, the empathy. He’s one of the most important filmmakers America has ever produced. And he’s still doing it, still taking chances, still teaching, still making great work from Austin, Texas, which is his home base, his universe.
So, now that we’ve caught up with the great Richard Linklater, it’s time to look back at his career, it's an extraordinary filmography that stretches from Slacker to Boyhood to Hit Man, Blue Moon, and Nouvelle Vague.
What follows is every one of his feature films ranked in order of my preference. These are not shorts, not documentaries, not his TV work, just his narrative feature films.
There are no movies I outright dislike (although Waking Life comes pretty close); some are stronger than others, but every one of them is worth seeing. His filmography is deep, eclectic, and brilliant.
So without further ado (now that we’ve celebrated one of the best, most consistent, and most inspiring filmmakers on the planet) here they are:
Richard Linklater: RANKED (in order of my preference):
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