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‘Scanner’ is excellent, plus Linklater’s latest
Moving at a clip comparable to Werner Herzog, Woody Allen and Michael Winterbottom, Richard Linklater is averaging two movies a year and not slowing.
He’s working on a documentary about the Longhorns baseball team, continuing his untitled multiyear feature project — in which he follows a little girl as she grows up in real time — and has begun production on “Last Flag Flying,” the 2005 sequel to 1973’s classic military dramedy “The Last Detail,” starring a young, profane Jack Nicholson and directed by Hal Ashby.
Linklater is adapting Darryl Poniscan’s novel and will, of course, direct. So far, Morgan Freeman and Randy Quaid, who played the young sailor heading to prison in “Last Detail,” have been cast. Freeman plays an older version of the character played by Otis Young. No word yet if Nicholson will return as foulmouthed Billy Buddusky. The war in Iraq is the backdrop this time.
Linklater will have two films on screens this year, starting with “A Scanner Darkly” on July 7, followed by “Fast Food Nation” in the fall. The good news is “Darkly” is excellent, despite the first wave of bad reviews from Cannes. The rotoscope animation totally suits the dystopic Los Angeles, which is plucked from Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi novel, and the performances are screaming good.
What’s surprising is how funny the movie is, at least the first two-thirds. Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. make a crackling comic team, riffing, dissing and sparking off each other like ornery brothers. The drug-filled story hints at the privacy-invading aspects of today’s Patriot Act, though its done with a rapier, not a bludgeon.
Critics have griped about the film’s talkiness. Geez, it’s a Linklater film. You get what you pay for. And I like what I got.
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