Every Richard Linklater Movie, Ranked
Updated March 2022 to add Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood.
First emerging during indie cinema's golden age in the early 1990s, Linklater has (with just a few exceptions) stayed true to his indie (and Austin) roots, earning mostly stellar reviews along the way. While only 4 of his films have grossed more than $10 million, all but two of his features received acclaim from critics, making him one of the finest directors of the past 30 years. In the gallery above, we rank every one of his films from worst to best by Metascore.
The first film that Linklater directed without also writing at least part of the screenplay (and there would only be four more in his career), this 1996 dramedy adapts Eric Bogosian's stage play of the same name centering on a group of aimless young people (a Linklater specialty in the 1990s) who spend most of their time gathering outside of a local convenience store (with the play's suburban Boston traded for Linklater's usual Austin, disguised here as "Burnfield"). Nicky Katt and Parker Posey return from Linklater's Dazed and Confused, while Steve Zahn and Samia Shoaib were veterans of the stage production. While it's not one of the director's best films, it does feature a terrific indie rock soundtrack that includes music from Sonic Youth, Superchunk, The Flaming Lips, Beck, and Stephen Malkmus.
“What's weird about subUrbia is that Linklater's zoned-out technique is wedded to Bogosian's in-your-face power-rant oratory. The result is like local anesthesia--you can see the incisions, but you can't feel them.” —Peter Rainer, Dallas Observer
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