Richard Linklater Films Ranked, from the ‘Before’ Trilogy and ‘Dazed and Confused’ to ‘School of Rock’ and ‘Hit Man’

There’s maybe no major auteur in cinema as unassuming as Richard Linklater. A Houston, Texas born film nerd who got his start making DIY, low-budget films around Austin, Linklater has maintained the scrappy, laidback vibe of his first feature even as his prestige has risen and his budgets have grown. The average Linklater film unfolds with a careful sense of effortlessness, loosely moving through vignettes with a keen naturalistic flow.

That’s not to say Linklater is an unambitious filmmaker; far from it. This is a man who took a seemingly small one day romance film in “Before Sunrise” and created an ambitious 20-year trilogy out of it, using the love story of Jesse and Céline as a canvas upon which to explore ideas of aging, growth, and the cruel passage of time. With “Boyhood,” he took a completely new approach to the classic coming-of-age narrative by shooting on and off for the better part of 10 years, watching Ellar Coltrane and his daughter Lorelei Linklater as they grew from sweet little kids to moody teenagers to kind young adults. It’s a mammoth undertaking that he’s doing again, this time as an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s beloved musical “Merrily We Roll Along” starring Paul Mescal, Beanie Feldstein, and Ben Platt; stay tuned for when this list gets updated with it in 2039!

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While Linklater has his directorial ticks and obsessions — his love of Texas and frequent tendency towards the autobiographical, his sense of suburban ennui and wistfulness, his signature sharp and naturalistic sense of dialogue — he’s a remarkably varied filmmaker, capable of jumping between comedy, drama, and even rotoscope animation. His sense of adventure when it comes to stretching his abilities unfortunately results in some misfires; he probably has a more uneven batting average compared to his contemporaries like Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson, who keep their output a bit more scarce. But it also means you never know what you’ll get from him next. In just his last few films, he’s gone from a scattered female-centric dramedy (“Where’d You Go, Bernadette?”) to a wistful animated semi-autobiography (“Apollo 1/2”) to a crowd-pleasing rom-com (“Hit Man”).

With “Hit Man” now streaming on Netflix, IndieWire is taking a look back at Linklater’s filmography to determine which of his films stack up as the greatest. Revisiting his canon reveals a treasure trove of films that are both of their time and decidedly timeless; to paraphrase a much parodied Matthew McConaughey quote from one of Linklater’s projects, as you get older, his films stay the same. For the purposes of this list, the “Before” trilogy will be counted as one entry. Read on for every Richard Linklater film, ranked from worst to best.

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