Asked to nominate his favourite American film of the 90s, Quentin Tarantino chose this spot-on recreation of the last day of high school in May, 1976. The seniors debate party politics while next term’s freshmen run the gauntlet of brutal initiation rites, barely comforted by the knowledge that they’ll wield the stick one day. No one’s looking much farther ahead than that.
This has a freewheeling, ’day-in-the-life-of’ structure which allows writer/director Linklater, in his second feature, to eavesdrop on an ensemble cast without dramatic contrivance. There’s a quirky counter-cultural intelligence at work: sympathy for those on the sidelines, and a deadpan pop irony which places this among the hippest teenage movies. While the camera flits between some two dozen youngsters (played by uniformly excellent unknowns), Linklater allows himself to develop a handful of stories. There’s no nostalgia or wish-fulfillment here, but it’s seriously funny.
Once every decade or so, a movie captures the hormone-drenched, fashion- crazed, pop-song-driven rituals of American youth culture with such loving authenticity that it comes to seem a kind of anthem, as innocently giddy and spirited as the teenagers it’s about. Dazed and Confused may be the most slyly funny and dead-on portrait of American teenage life ever made.
Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
Richard Linklater
Jason London, Rory Cochrane, Wiley Wiggins, Parker Posey, Matthew McConaughey, Milla Jovovich, Joey Lauren Adams, Ben Affleck
USA
1993
English
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Credits
Producer
James Jacks, Sean Daniel, Richard Linklater
Screenwriter
Richard Linklater
Cinematography
Lee Daniel
Editor
Sandra Adair
Production Design
John Frick
90s, Baby!
Ten years. 11 weeks. 90 films from the 1990s. This summer, 90’s Baby! takes a deep dive into a defining decade of cinema.
GoodFellas
The ultimate crash and burn movie, Scorsese's exhilarating gangster film is infused with the excitement of fast cash, girls, guns and drugs. Yet this brazenly amoral movie also captures the brutality, betrayal, and spiritual void of the criminal world.
Madonna: Truth or Dare
A year in the life of Madonna at the height of her fame, touring Blonde Ambition through 1990. There's concert footage, but the movie is also daringly truthful about life behind the scenes — not that Madonna is every really off-stage.
Pulp Fiction + The ReViberators
In the spirit of Quentin Tarantino, we're going to launch our summer series 90s, Baby! smack in the middle, with 1994's Pulp Fiction, the most exciting and influential movie of its era. On 35mm. Preceded by surf guitar sensations The ReViberators live!
Jacob's Ladder
Ever feel you're losing your mind? Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) comes back from the Vietnam War with a firefight in his head. Sanity is a losing battle in Adrian Lyne's terrifying psychological thriller.
Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Tarantino announced himself to the world with this ingeniously fractured heist movie, carved into character-centric chapters, riffing breezily on pop culture, but counterpointing all this with blood-soaked intensity.
Total Recall
The master of the subversive blockbuster, Paul Verhoeven concocts a film about corporate mind-control vs. revolutionary uprising by setting it on Mars and allowing for the possibility the whole thing is just an escapist fantasy...
True Romance
Rockabilly comic book clerk Clarence (Christian Slater) meets dream girl Alabama (Patricia Arquette) with trouble in her wake, in this seminal couple on the run thriller from Quentin Tarantino's excitable mind.
The Company of Strangers
In this Canadian gem, seven elderly women find themselves stranded when their bus breaks down in the wilderness. With only their wits, memories and some roasted frogs' legs to sustain them, this remarkable group of strangers share their life stories.
Boyz n the Hood
Twenty-three-year-old writer-director John Singleton's groundbreaking portrait of three young men growing up in South Central is a film of integrity and compassion. It's a far richer portrait of Black lives than Hollywood's gangsta exploitation pics.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
In 2029, Earth has been ravaged by the war between the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet and the human resistance. (Yep.) James Cameron's all too relevant action movie is in some ways unsurpassed. Linda Hamilton is the mom we all need right now.
Thelma & Louise
In this iconic feminist road movie BFF Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon take off for a weekend getaway that turns violent when one of them is attacked. The stakes get higher as they flee the scene. Winner: Best Original Screenplay (Callie Khouri).
Julio Avila Cuban Band Live + The Mambo Kings Film Screening
Feel the heat! Shake your booty as we combine a live set of exhilarating Cuban music followed by a rediscovered 90s barnstormer of a movie starring Latin heartthrobs Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas alongside the likes of Tito Puente and Celia Cruz.
The Silence of the Lambs
Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) gives FBI serial killer hunter Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) pointers from his maximum security cell. But is he trying to aid the investigation, or just messing with her head?
Delicatessen
Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jacquet collaborated with Marc Caro on their first film, a breathlessly inventive and unexpectedly charming comedy about two young lovers evading a cannibal butcher in a post-apocalyptic France.