How many trilogies get better with each film? The Lord of the Rings, right. Anything else? I can't think of any others, either. Until now. Richard Linklater's Before Midnight isn't flat-out lovely like Before Sunset, but the emotional complexity of the thing is rather remarkable -- heroic, even. Watching the film last night at its Sundance premiere, I was reminded of a line by Robert Christgau about Bob Dylan's Love & Theft: "It's profound, too, by which I mean very funny." That's a great way of describing this movie as well. My rave is up at Screen International.
