10 Movies That Ripped Up The Rule Book

After the innovation of the 1970s gave way to the more commercially-oriented 1980s, the 1990s saw American independent cinema take significant leaps forward. One of the key films that got the ball rolling, right at the start of the decade, was Richard Linklater's Slacker.

With some of the films we're discussing here, it's a matter of addressing which specific rules of cinema they bent or broke; but in the case of Slacker, it's more of a struggle to identify any existing rule of cinema it bothers to follow in the first place.

Set over the course of a day in Austin, Texas, Slacker has no clearly defined protagonists, no readily apparent narrative structure, no sense of a beginning, middle and end. Rather, it's as though the camera randomly wanders around the streets following a succession of hipsters, oddballs and layabouts as they go about their inconsequential business.

Yet as self-consciously weird as it may be, Linklater's low-budget, 16mm-shot vision of the young and the aimless rings true for much of the audience, and proves endearing in its own particular way.

Slacker also went some way to laying their groundwork for Linklater's subsequent cult classic Dazed and Confused, as well as his more recent film Everybody Wants Some!!