15 Best Films Of 2016 (So Far)

I know it's just marketing jargon, but describing Everybody Wants Some!! (exclamations a homage to Van Halen) as a “spiritual sequel” to Dazed & Confused is actually pretty fitting. New decade, new stage of life, same recollective nostalgia powering an astute coming-of-age tale (and same t-shirt). We’re at university now, following a group of baseball players (who claim to be the equivalent of football players) in their sex-driven, booze-filled pre-term "training", but the point is still the meandering.

It’s classic Linklater, with all the requisite beats timed almost perfectly: it begins feeling somewhat aimless and the laddy sports banter feels more cruel than inviting, then, as the film goes on, the sheer beauty of the normality obsesses you, culminating with a character summarising what they think the movie’s all about (but really only presenting how we view our own lives in the moment). It's honest with an "H". Linklater as usual then, as seen with his neatly balanced ensemble, with everyone given a sub-plot that reveals the nuances of their archetype without distracting from the bigger picture.

The real genius though lies in the acute observations. Anybody who went to university can recognise falling asleep after fighting to get to a 9am lecture on time, but there’s more subtle turns too: beautifully, nobody in the entire film gets a hangover.