Strong and Moving!

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Blistering performances.

They should call this movie "School" because the movie was just as boring as it. The Movie was a long slow and boring movie leading up to nothing. It was a complete waste of time. I Do not recommend seeing this movie, it is boring and the so called "TWIST" at the end was not much of a twist at all. The slow shots where things were cut off were really annoying, and I didn't enjoy watching a boy masturbate for no apparent reason for the movie. I also didn't enjoy staring at the back of his head for like an hour. terrible movie, not worth watching, not worth anything, I wouldn't waste 90 minutes of my life on this movie, I recommend watching "You're Next"

AFTERSCHOOL is a raw movie, and not in a good way. Unlike ELEPHANT or THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES or even ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, this offering from Connecticut does a very poor job of building tension toward a cathartic climax. Instead, it allows a promising premise of an underclassman's video class assignment inadvertently capturing a moment of drama on campus to dissipate, petering out through a collage of implausible plot points, poor characterizations, and limp dialog. AFTERSCHOOL is raw as in raw eggs, and who likes those, except ROCKY and other such masochists? Perhaps this movie could be taken as a "morning after" pill; an antidote to the over-sexed, all-powerful Van Wilders and Stiflers of the Wild Bunch school of campus film-making. But with the two main characters a high school sophomore and freshman at a boarding school, what drugs and sexual misbehavior happens here (such as a nonchalant stroll to nearby a campus dale overlooked by upper floor school windows for a muddy consensual double-deflowering in broad daylight) seem beyond the pale for even these pampered yidiots. (Of course, there WAS that related item of Alaskan high school news a while back . . . )

"...but I can safely say that's probably the worst thing I've ever seen. You didn't even have music!"Well, I AM an editor, and I couldn't agree more about this whole mess. Honestly, they really should teach film school kids not to sum up their worst critiques by themselves, and then stop them when they want to put said review in their s*****y film, making sure to underline it in case we forgot.It boggles my mind how smart, sensitive people who claim to love cinema can love (I mean really love, not just begrudgingly respect) Stanley Kubrick. But to start orally fellating a 24 year-old kid who is so overtly ripping off an overused - and frankly highly questionable - aesthetic to no apparent end, is really beyond me."Afterschool" takes a brilliant title and (unfortunately) a barely engaging or interesting concept (at best), and then goes to great pains to make you not care. "We're all becoming more and more disconnected from each other, our feelings, and our humanity in this new digital age." No f***ing s**t, Sherlock. Fortune cookies have more insight.Campos obviously loves what he's doing (and by that I mean he loves pointing out that life is a hollow, static, arid, poorly-framed affair). And while I applaud a filmmaker who cares more about a visual experience than he does a (in this case almost non-existent) script (what with that terribly embarrassing thesis and all), any artist still has to maintain a modicum of humanity - especially when he's decrying the zeitgeist for lacking the very same. Not to mention that most of the visuals in this piece have (it's been pointed out) been done many times before, by people far more with-it.This dreary, pedantic tripe needs to be ridiculed, for Campos' sake, if not for our own. For shame.

AFTERSCHOOL is certainly not the kind of movie which would appeal to most people, yet this film very aptly portrays "the unease of a troubled state of mind". Slow and deliberate pacing epitomizes the depression and sense of dread of the student body. At first glance, it would appear that these young people have it all; intelligence, money, and social standing, yet with all these positive attributes, their sophisticated environment only highlights and magnifies the emptiness of their lives. High School is usually portrayed as a happy time, yet in this case, nothing could be farther from the truth. A bit of a re-write might have tightened up the storyline, yet overall, AFTERSCHOOL is most definitely worth a look. Gus Van Sant's, ELEPHANT is somewhat similar in that it also tries to convey a sort of 'dreamy malevolence'.