Just watched the Criterion collection release of SLACKER
It's a sunny Texan day sometime in the late 80's (at least some time before the films 91 release) and we follow the lives of a loosely connected slackers around Texas. The film follows a character for a while before deciding that other guy seems more interesting then another character will come into play and the film follows them and so forth and so forth.
We get lots of discussions on topics such as media, philosophy, politics and history from a varied and interesting set of characters most of whom are played by non actors, and while the film has no real over-arching plot its still very watch-able and clearly shows influences from earlier independent American directors such as Jim Jarmusch as well as influencing Kevin Smith to direct CLERKS.
Slacker set the trend for a lot of stuff in the 90's and was hugely influential. It still holds up today and Criterions Blu-ray is a phenomenal presentation including a great looking transfer, three commentaries and a whole bunch of extra stuff including a 16mm short from Linklater. It also has a nifty book included in the packaging as well. Worth a look if you can play region A.
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