Before Midnight
Director: Richard Linklater
Screenwriter: Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, Jennifer Prior, Charlotte Prior, Walter Lassally, Ariane Labed, Athina Rachel Tsangari

Synopsis: In Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight, we meet Celine and Jesse nine years after their last rendezvous. Almost two decades have passed since their first encounter on a train bound for Vienna, and we now find them in their early forties in Greece. Before the clock strikes midnight, we will again become part of their story. — Sony Pictures Classics

A sequel to Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004), Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight catches up with Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) 18 years after their first encounter. From Vienna, to Paris, to now Greece, Linklater’s Before Trilogy features some of the most beautiful, picturesque scenery one could ask for in these types of romantic films.

A Scanner Darkly
Blu-ray | DVD
Directed by Richard Linklater
Starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson, Rory Cochrane
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
Release date: September 7, 2010

Here is a film meant to be existentially frightening. It shows the power of drugs and the frailty of the human spirit, two main contributions that can put the human soul at an extreme vulnerability. Director Richard Linklater never diverts its attention to concentrate on anything else. Only when we realize the descent the characters in A Scanner Darkly have to go through do we get disturbed. Like most great science-fiction films, one succeeds the best when it explores the unexplored depths of the human mind.

The film’s unusual look lures us into its web of disheartening themes. Like his previous film that dealt with extensively analyzing of dreams, Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly adopts that film’s visual flair by using an unorthodox way of mixing animation with reality. The actors, décor, and environment inhabit their true form, but the difference is the way they are presented; in animation. It is a laborious process to achieve this but the tone the film carries throughout the movie because of this animation is something completely fascinating and odd.