"Director: Richard Linklater"

• The Newton Boys | DVD | (19/07/2004) from £7.39   |  Saving you £5.60 (75.78%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Newton Boys were the most successful bank robbers in the history of the United States. They never killed anyone, never snitched and only robbed banks (just bigger thieves, in their opinion), until their final deal, which was a botched train robbery for $3 million. Engagingly played by Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke, Skeet Ulrich and Vincent D'Onofrio, the Boys don't have the kind of flaws of more brutal criminals that make for more volatile dramas. The film ambles along in a leisurely way to tell its story of the Newtons' bank-robbing career, with an ever-present air of reverent Americana. This may make some viewers impatient and cause a glow in others. It seems like a departure for director Richard Linklater (Slacker and Dazed and Confused)--a costumer to be sure but Linklater's deliberately amiable pace perfectly balances the Boys' personalities. You may wander into this movie and feel right at home. The golden-hued cinematography of Peter James (Driving Miss Daisy) adds a level of comfort that makes everything warm-like. The end credits intercut archival footage of two of the real-life Newton boys toward the end of their lives, one from a 1980 appearance with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. --Jim Gay

• Dazed And Confused | DVD | (05/10/2009) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Director Richard Linklater turned his free-range verite sensibility on the 1970s in Dazed and Confused after changing the world with the generation-defining Slacker. As before, his all-seeing camera meanders across a landscape studded with goofy pop culture references and poignant glimpses of human nature. Only this time around, he's spreading a thick layer of nostalgia over the lens (and across the soundtrack). It's as if Fast Times at Ridgemont High was directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The story deals with a group of friends on the last day of high school, 1976. Good-natured football star Randall "Pink" Floyd navigates effortlessly between the warring worlds of jocks, stoners, wannabes and rockers with girlfriend and new-freshman buddy in tow. Surprisingly, it's not a coming-of-age movie, but a film that dares ask the eternal, overwhelming, adolescent question, "What happens next?". It's a little too honest to be a light comedy ("If I ever say these were the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself.") But it's also way too much fun to be just another existential-essay-on-celluloid. --Grant Balfour

• A Scanner Darkly | Blu Ray | (10/05/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Keanu Reeves stars in this eye-catching adaptation of Philip K. Dick's sci-fi novel.

• Tape | DVD | (04/11/2002) from £7.55   |  Saving you £-1.56 (-26.00%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Richard Linklater's Tape doesn't announce itself as a Dogme movie, but it might very well qualify. Acted out in real time in a single setting--a cramped, grimy motel room--with no music score, a cast of just three and shot on grainy digital video, it marks a further step back to basics for Linklater after the woeful miscalculation of his gangster period drama The Newton Boys (1998). It's set in Lansing, Michigan, hometown of petty drug-dealer and part-time firefighter Vince (Ethan Hawke), who's come back for the screening, in Lansing's film festival, of the debut feature of his old school friend Johnny (Robert Sean Leonard), now an indie filmmaker. At least, that's Vince's ostensible reason--but it turns out he's got a hidden agenda that involves Amy (Uma Thurman), the girl they both fancied in high-school, and now the local assistant DA. Tape was adapted from a stage play (by Stephen Belber, who also scripted) and often feels like it, with characters announcing their motivations and reactions in grandstanding, tell-don't-show speeches. The camerawork tends to the tricky, too--tilted angles and way too many whip-pans during dialogue sequences--as if Linklater was worried his single set might get visually boring. But the tight, twisty plotting, compact running time and intense performances keep the film absorbing. Hawke and Leonard's mutual lacerations carry a rancid sense of resentments banked up and brooded on for years, while Thurman's Amy, arriving halfway through the action, visibly relishes setting both men by the ears. As a meditation on the relativity of truth Tape may not be in the Rashomon class, but it shows Linklater doing what he does best, making pungent use of minimal resources. On the DVD: Tape offers no extras on disc, just the trailer. Production-value splendour was obviously never on the menu here, but the 2.0 Dolby Digital sound and 16:9 anamorphic widescreen transfer do the original no disservice. --Philip Kemp

• Drillbit Taylor/School Of Rock | DVD | (05/10/2009) from £8.08   |  Saving you £1.91 (19.10%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Titles Comprised: Drillbit Taylor: Ryan (Troy Gentile) Wade (Nate Hartley) and Emmit (David Dorfman) attend their first day at high school and they're pumped...until they meet up with Filkins (Alex Frost) a school bully who comes off like a little Hannibal Lecter. Before they become completely engulfed in Filkins' reign of terror they seek out some protection by placing an ad in the Soldier of Fortune magazine. Their best response - and the cheapest - comes from Drillbit Taylor (Owen Wilson) a down-on-his luck soldier of fortune who lives a homeless - he likes to say 'home-free' - existence on the beach. School Of Rock: Fired from his band rock guitarist and vocalist Dewey Finn takes a job as a 4th grade substitute teacher at an uptight private school where his free livin' lifestyle attitude music and antics soon influences the students to explore other sides of themselves the school doesn't encourage. Finn's real goal in taking the job is to recruit a 9-year-old guitar prodigy Zack to become the lead guitarist in a band that would be able to win a battle of bands solving Finn's money problems and re-establishing him as a respected rocker...

• Indigent 4 Film DVD Collection | DVD | (14/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  From the independent studio behind the Sundance Film Festival smash 'Personal Velocity' come four of the hottest indie films in the 21st centuray digital revolution. Tape: After ten years apart three people come together at a motel to play out the unresolved drama of their final days in high school. The nature of memory and truth the bonds between old friends and lovers are examined with hagged intensity. Amy arrives at the motel expecting only to see Vince but is stunned to be also facing John and her past. Chelsea Walls: The Chelsea Hotel used to be the hippest place to live for New York artists. Painters writers and musicians from Mark Twain to Jimi Hendrix enlivened the hotel's halls. Now even though the iron fa''ade has become rusty a new generation of dreamers inhabit the hotel. Memories aspirations passion and scandal influence the creative visionaries to create their own masterpieces... Ten Tiny Love Stories: Love. Sex. Stories. And everything in between! Ten women talk about the men they remember most. The man who last loved them; the man who left them; the man who wasn't enough; the man who was too cruel; the man who passed away; the man they married and the man they sent away. The film presents an honest portrait of women where memories are the only connection to the men that touched their lives. Final: When Bill (Denis Leary) wakes up in the psychiatric wing at Sumner Hospital he has trouble distinguishing his dreams from reality. He is quite certain of his sanity but memories of being cryogenically frozen tissue regeneration experiments and talk of a final lethal injection race through his mind. With the help of Ann (Hope Davis) the psychiatrist assigned to his case he struggles to piece his memories together while newer more rational memories flood his mind. Struggling with his paranoia Bill begins to question Ann's motives. Can he trust the only person in the position to help him or will she be the one holding the needle that does him in?

• Tape | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

  Richard Linklater's Tape doesn't announce itself as a Dogme movie, but it might very well qualify. Acted out in real time in a single setting--a cramped, grimy motel room--with no music score, a cast of just three and shot on grainy digital video, it marks a further step back to basics for Linklater after the woeful miscalculation of his gangster period drama The Newton Boys (1998). It's set in Lansing, Michigan, hometown of petty drug-dealer and part-time firefighter Vince (Ethan Hawke), who's come back for the screening, in Lansing's film festival, of the debut feature of his old school friend Johnny (Robert Sean Leonard), now an indie filmmaker. At least, that's Vince's ostensible reason--but it turns out he's got a hidden agenda that involves Amy (Uma Thurman), the girl they both fancied in high-school, and now the local assistant DA. Tape was adapted from a stage play (by Stephen Belber, who also scripted) and often feels like it, with characters announcing their motivations and reactions in grandstanding, tell-don't-show speeches. The camerawork tends to the tricky, too--tilted angles and way too many whip-pans during dialogue sequences--as if Linklater was worried his single set might get visually boring. But the tight, twisty plotting, compact running time and intense performances keep the film absorbing. Hawke and Leonard's mutual lacerations carry a rancid sense of resentments banked up and brooded on for years, while Thurman's Amy, arriving halfway through the action, visibly relishes setting both men by the ears. As a meditation on the relativity of truth Tape may not be in the Rashomon class, but it shows Linklater doing what he does best, making pungent use of minimal resources. On the DVD: Tape offers no extras on disc, just the trailer. Production-value splendour was obviously never on the menu here, but the 2.0 Dolby Digital sound and 16:9 anamorphic widescreen transfer do the original no disservice. --Philip Kemp

• School Of Rock / Orange County / Without A Paddle | DVD | (03/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £23.99

  School Of Rock (Dir. Richard Linklater 2003): Fired from his band rock guitarist and vocalist Dewey Finn takes a job as a 4th grade substitute teacher at an uptight private school where his free livin' lifestyle attitude music and antics soon influences the students to explore other sides of themselves the school doesn't encourage. Finn's real goal in taking the job is to recruit a 9-year-old guitar prodigy Zack to become the lead guitarist in a band that would be able to

• Tape | DVD | (24/12/2007) from £9.98   |  Saving you £-3.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  After ten years apart three disparate people come together to play out the unresolved drama of their final days in high school. As years of denial slowly peel away each is provoked into revealing their true nature.

• Mean Machine/Coach Carter/Bad News Bears | DVD | (06/10/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Titles Comprise: 1. Mean Machine 2. Coach Carter 3. Bad News Bears

• Slacker | DVD | (07/01/2008) from £29.99   |  Saving you £-12.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Richard Linklater's Slacker presents a day in the life of a subculture of marginal eccentric and overeducated citizens in and around the University of Texas at Austin. Shooting the film on 16mm for a mere $23 000 writer/producer/director Linklater and his close-knit crew of friends eschewed a traditional plot choosing instead to employ long takes and fluid transitions to create a tapestry of over a hundred characters each as unique as the last culminating in an episodic portrait of a distinct vernacular culture and a tribute to bohemian cerebration. Slacker is a prescient look at an emerging generation of aggressive nonparticipants and one of the keynote films of the American independent film movement of the 1990s.

• Slacker | DVD | (13/01/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  SLACKER (slak'er) n. 1. A person who evades duties and responsibilities; 2. a new generation of young people primarily centered around college campuses that rejects the values of the generation before them; 3. the title of a film directed by Richard Linklater.

• The Newton Boys | DVD | (27/05/2013) from £29.99   |  Saving you £-20.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Set in the 1920s, the Newton brothers work hard in the fields for little reward, so when one of the brothers suggests a change, they all agree to become bank robbers.