Welcome to the Film School Rejects Archive

Release Date: September 26, 2006
There is a bit of genius in the formula that Producer Neal H. Moritz has found. That formula is where he has found a way to take a mediocre story, slap some hot cars and a hot cast in for good measure and come out the other end with a film […]

Kevin Costner’s The Guardian tells a story which has been told before and doesn’t bring anything unique to the telling. The script is formulaic and the characters, though not precisely one dimensional, are nevertheless stereotypes that could be traded with characters from other like movies without much damage being done to the project. Despite these unremarkable aspects, the movie was competently filmed and the subject matter is just interesting enough to entertain us most of the time. Hollywood could do, and has done, a lot worse.

This weekend Ashton Kutcher makes his return to the big screen, could this be his big test as a box office draw? Will he benefit from the Kevin Costner rub? Who knows. I am intrigued, but not especting much. Going against it we have an underdog comedy and an animated family film. Will this be […]

Release Date: September 15, 2006
Hollywood themes come in twos. I don’t feel like doing the actual research, but I have noticed several times in the past that two movies of a similar theme will open in the same year and sometimes in the same season. Right now, two movies dealing with Hollywood murders […]

After the wild critical acclaim of Rushmore, Wes Anderson set out to direct his most personal piece to date. With an ensemble cast anchored by Gene Hackman, The Royal Tenenbaums made Hollywood and moviegoers stop and say “Who is Wes Anderson?”
The Tenenbaum family is both blessed and cursed. Two prestigious parents, Royal (Gene Hackman) and […]

Allow me to step up onto my soapbox for a moment and bask in the glory of actually winning a Weekly Over/Under despite going against the general consensus. Allow me to bring Cole Abaius up onto the soapbox as well, and share it as a team victory…
Give us a moment to savor it…
Alright, that is […]

Release Date: September 1, 2006
This Film Is Not Yet Rated, is at its heart, a documentary.
That’s a powerful statement, right there. And you’d better pay attention to it, if you use movie reviews to decide what you’ll spend your hard-earned money on. What you may have heard about the movie, and indeed, it’s […]

Here’s a blast from the past. A movie about a teenage computer hacker, original huh? Well back in 1983 this was relatively new. Computers were in the early stages of making it into the home and we were still in the Cold War, with the threat of nuclear war hanging over us. Then along comes […]

Release Date: February 21, 1996
Like a cheap bottle of beer exploding all over a frat guy’s “College” shirt on Sixth Street, there has been a recent explosion of filming in Austin. That being said, the movie Bottle Rocket was not actually filmed in Austin. It was, however, filmed mostly in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and […]

This week is loaded with titles worthy of adding to your collection, and mine if any of you are feeling particularly generous. Old titles, new titles, television titles, a whole assortment. There is one that stands above the pack, and it is a movie that I have not even seen yet.
The official […]

Brian De Palma is no slouch when it comes to delivering stylish, captivating films that keep his audiences entertained and yearning for more. Of that, we can be certain. Scarface is quite possibly the second greatest gangster movie ever and The Untouchables was, to say the least, spectacular among modern westerns. De Palma’s latest offering, […]

Release Date: September 22, 2006
Let me start this by saying that I do not like the possessive that was added to the title. I can understand it from a marketing perspective, but I just do not like that it was officially tacked on to the official title. In China it was known […]

Shriekfest, now in it’s 6th year, is a small horror-themed film festival that takes place over two weekends. The first weekend was September 22-24 and the festival wraps up September 30 til October 2nd. Each day is filled with several film “programs,” generally either about 90 minutes of shorts or a short paired […]

Rushmore single handedly launched the mainstream career of director Wes Anderson and his star Jason Schwartzman. Not to be left unmentioned, this film also provided a much needed jumpstart towards the end of a disappointing decade for Bill Murray. While Rushmore is not Anderson’s first film, it is his most groundbreaking.
At the surface, Max Fischer […]

Before really going into my usual writings, I would like to take a bit of offense to something I read over at IMDB.com. In their box office recap they have the headline “Box Office Flunks Intelligence Test” as they describe the dominance of the teenage boy demographic at the box office and the rise of […]