Q&A: Richard Linklater on 'Last Flag Flying,' 'liberal patriotism' and finally making a middle-aged movie

Let's say you're a director who has a heralded comeback with the final chapter of a three-part, 18-year romantic film series.

And you follow it up by releasing a 12-year epic project that nearly wins best picture.

Then, barely a year later, you make an underrated comedy derived from your own college baseball career.

You can't really top all that if you're Richard Linklater, the American auteur coming off the triple threat of "Before Midnight," "Boyhood" and "Everybody Wants Some," could you?

Yet here comes the 57-year-old, riding into award season with his low-key intimacies and profound digressions once again.

His new film is "Last Flag Flying" and - stop us if you've heard this before - it looks to be some of his most impactful work yet. Aging, masculinity, friendship, responsibility and war all come to the fore in the new feature, which opens the New York Film Festival at the end of September ahead of its theatrical release several weeks later.