This sharply drawn satire gets so much about art school right.
Art School Confidential (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:131
Fresh:47
Rotten:84
Average Rating:5.4/10
Consensus: Art School's misanthropy is too sour, its targets too flat and cliched, and Clowes and Zwigoff stumble when trying to build a story around the premise.
Rated: 15 [See Full Rating] for language including sexual references, nudity and a scene of violence.
Runtime: 1 hr 42 mins
Genre: Comedies
Theatrical Release:00-00-0000
Synopsis: "Art School Confidential" follows a talented young artist Jerome Platz (Max Minghella) as he escapes from high school to a tiny East Coast art school. Here the boyish freshman's ambition is to... "Art School Confidential" follows a talented young artist Jerome Platz (Max Minghella) as he escapes from high school to a tiny East Coast art school. Here the boyish freshman's ambition is to become the world's greatest artist, like his hero Picasso. Unfortunately, the beauty and craft of Jerome's portraiture are not appreciated in an anything-goes art class that he finds bewildering and bogus. Neither his harsh judgments of his classmates' efforts or his later attempts to create pseudo-art of his own win him any admirers. But Jerome does attract the attentions of his dream girl — the stunning and sophisticated Audrey (Sophia Myles) — an artist's model and daughter of a celebrated artist. Rejecting the affectations of the local art scene, Audrey is drawn to Jerome's sincerity. When Audrey shifts her attentions to Jonah (Matt Keeslar), a hunky painter who becomes the school's latest art star, Jerome is heartbroken. Desperate, he concocts a risky plan to make a name for himself and win her back. Filling out Jerome's world are a host of offbeat characters, including: a quirky art teacher (John Malkovich) who takes an extra-curricular interest in Jerome; a failed artist (Jim Broadbent), drowning in alcohol and self-pity; a regal art history professor (Anjelica Huston) Jerome tries to influence; a coffee shop owner-cum-art impresario (Steve Buscemi) swelling with self-importance; a worldly classmate (Joel David Moore), who introduces Jerome in the intricate mores of campus life; and Jerome's filmmaker roommate (Ethan Suplee), exploding with energy to create a cinematic masterpiece. United Artists and Sony Pictures Classics present Terry Zwigoff's "Art School Confidential," starring Max Minghella, Sophia Myles, John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Matt Keeslar, Steve Buscemi and Anjelica Huston. The film is produced by Lianne Halfon, John Malkovich and Russell Smith, partners in the production company Mr. Mudd, which also produced "Ghost World." Based on Daniel Clowes' short comic story of the same name, "Art School Confidential" is directed by Zwigoff from a screenplay by Clowes. --© Sony Pictures Classics [More]
Starring: Max Minghella, John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Ezra Buzzington
Starring: Max Minghella, John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Ezra Buzzington, Sophia Myles, Matt Keeslar, Anjelica Huston, Steve Buscemi, Adam Scott, Nick Swardson, Paul Collins, Roxanne Hart
Director: Terry Zwigoff
Director: Terry Zwigoff
Screenwriter: Daniel Clowes
Producer: Russell Smith, Daniel Clowes
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Reviews for Art School Confidential
grabs you by the backpack and sends you hurtling into a realm of false praise, vicious backbiting and pretentious gallery openings. A rich, bleedingly authentic cast of characters emerges.
It's pleasant enough, features fine acting in smaller parts, rises occasionally to laughs or plot, but its ambitions and its accomplishments are modest.
...if the lack of chemistry between the leads and the glued-together nature of the plot bring the movie down, they don't totally extinguish its subversive spirit.
It's often as naive as it is knowing and can feel as unfocused and sketchy as a film one of Strathmore's students might make.
Art School Confidential constitutes two-thirds of a worthy follow-up to Ghost World, but it doesn't feel nearly as substantial.
It becomes the sort of thing Zwigoff usually holds in contempt, and how depressing is that?
In almost any medium, Art School Confidential would draw a failing grade.
Art School Confidential's various plotlines never quite gel to form a cohesive whole.
Bitterness can carry us only so far in a movie. Director Terry Zwigoff and writer Daniel Clowes, who adapted his own comic book, don't know what to do after they've impaled their targets.
Takes some getting used to, but ends up being as bleak as Zwigoff's coal-blackened Bad Santa.
Even if one disagrees with some of its points, as I do, it offers plenty to mull over.
There is something in the Zwigoffian universe that values such characters [as Jimmy]; having abandoned all illusions, they offer the possibility of truth. I also much enjoyed Broadway Bob.
Risks more highs and lows than the plaintive, even-toned Ghost World. But both, improbably, have made themselves more or less at home on screen.
Zwigoff captures quite well the backstab aspects of this world, its rampant phoney baloneyness. But his funk doesn't allow him to capture something far more enticing: the power of true artistry.
The few characters we might have cared for become increasingly shallow, and it all lapses into clichés about the relationship between art and infamy, between personal integrity and selling your soul, and so on.
It's almost fascinating to watch Art School Confidential slowly start coming apart before it finally crashes and burns.
If you're an art student, you'll probably buy the movie on DVD and rub it all over your body.
A stilted satire of teenage passion and apathy, sex and death and crime...so concerned with aping style that it never bothers to consider its characters as people.
Latest News for Art School Confidential
September 14, 2007:
Zwigoff, Clowes to Assemble $40,000 Man
The creative duo responsible for Ghost World and Art School Confidential has found its next project. More...
August 27, 2007:
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May 14, 2006:
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May 07, 2006:
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