One of the advantages of 2026's year of movies, much like 2025's year of books, is that I'm encouraged to get out of my rut and watch movies that I've always meant to watch but somehow never got around to viewing. So, why had I never got around to watching Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, even though it's all but a cultural touchstone. Of course, the first reason may simply be that it's a cultural touchstone, and that ran up against my well known contrarian nature. Also, I think much of the 1990s went by in the blur of child-rearing and kicking off my career. Finally, and maybe most importantly, shit, I lived through high school in the mid-1970s, and I don't have any happy or romantic memory of it. One of the thing that I like about the film is that Linklater didn't try and turn it into some idiotic George Lucas American Graffiti version of the 70s. Yes, Dazed and Confused featured a lot of fun and silly behavior, but it also included the stupidity and cruelty and small-mindedness and boredom that was also a big part of the age. I'm sorry that it took me so long to watch Dazed and Confused for the first time, and it won't nearly be so long before I give it a second look.
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