Before Midnight

Directed by Richard Linklater

(R)

****

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Director Richard Linklater has just completed “the greatest trilogy in film history,” said Christopher Kelly in Texas Monthly. Pairing Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy for a third time in a movie that mostly shows them talking, Linklater has not only charted a romance across 18 years from first spark to midlife stress test, he’s “come arguably closer than any other director” to creating a three-movement symphony on screen. As onetime strangers who met on a train in 1995’s Before Sunrise, Hawke and Delpy have created “an astoundingly believable relationship,” said Richard Lawson in TheAtlantic.com. This time the couple is spending a day together while vacationing in Greece, and the script reveals “in the most subtle ways” that Jesse and Celine have settled down and had twins since we last saw them. When a question about the future ignites a battle, Before Midnight captures, “in a manner arguably unequaled in film,” just how “infuriatingly hard” it is to make any romantic partnership last, said Tim Wu in Slate.com. This movie “can’t be missed.” It’s “not only good, but so good it approaches perfection.”