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Reviews
Film School Confidential (2002)
Captures truths about film students... AND their films
I came across this when directing a friend to a book about film schools with the same title, so I decided to check it out. Having been to film school myself, I think the movie does a great job of capturing how disparate personalities can start out hating one another, and, by the end, come to appreciate their differences and ultimately become close friends. Just putting aside the film school stuff for a minute, it really did a great job sketching out the backgrounds of the characters, giving you their weaknesses and strengths. You really root for them by the end. But the thing that really got me about the movie was the films that the students make. They're not staring at a screen that the camera never turns towards, leaving you to imagine what they wound up with, you actually get to see a variety of little student films that, in my opinion, are the biggest triumph of this movie. In all their artsy awkwardness and glory, the student films seem like they actually came from somewhere completely different than the movie itself. They've got a power on their own, and that's no small feat. There's a little bit to get over as far as the editing style is concerned, certain scenes, gestures, and lines are repeated for stylistic effect, but the last 20 minutes really brings the film to a great close, and that's a helluva lot more than I can say about the majority of movies nowadays.