Rack Focus

Dazed and Confused
(Criterion)

Although Before Sunset and this week's A Scanner Darkly provide some stiff competition, Richard Linklater's first studio film might just be the director's best. Set on the last day of school in 1976 Texas (as a bicentennial film, it beats the hell out of Nashville), Dazed blends several underexploited subgenres (teen film, stoner comedy, rock 'n' roll movie, etc.) into an improbably organic whole. Criterion's two-disc package includes audio commentary by Linklater, deleted scenes, a 50- minute making-of doc, interviews, auditions, footage from the 10-year anniversary celebration, and essays by music writers Jim DeRogatis and Chuck Klosterman, as well as Film Comment's Kent Jones.

The Matador
(The Weinstein Company)

Pierce Brosnan plays an aging assassin who meets up with a struggling businessman (Greg Kinnear) and his wife (Hope Davis) in this comic thriller from director Richard Shepard.