Writer/director Richard Linklater is the master of “poetry of everyday life” movies — think Boyhood, Dazed and Confused, Everybody Wants Some!!, and the Before trilogy. But he has also proved quite adept at crafting high-concept crowd-pleasers such as 2023’s Hit Man or the 2003 classic School of Rock.

School of Rock gives us one of cinema’s great fictional bands in the outfit helmed by Jack Black’s substitute teacher Dewey Finn and a team of musically savvy prep school fifth graders. Dewey has been kicked out of his former band and hopes to get his revenge by winning the Battle of the Bands with his newly-formed outfit.

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