Afterschool (2008)

As a female boomer I'm definitely not the target demographic for this tale of a boarding school freshman boy with no friends, an internet porn addiction, and some pretty bad luck, but I liked it quite a bit nonetheless. It has odd camera framing, including one scene where I recognized the voice of Rosemarie DeWitt as a teacher, even though the only parts of her that were shown were the parts on which a teenage boy would focus. Later the odd framing could be explained by members of the school's A/V club. The talented Ezra Miller (a series arc on Californication in 2008, another on Royal Pains 2009-2010, and wonderful in City Island), in his first acting gig, stars as Rob. Jeremy Allen White (Lip on the fabulous Showtime series Shameless, more) play's Rob's roommate Dave. Michael Stuhlbarg (after I wrote about him in A Serious Man, I've been watching him in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire as Arnold Rothstein, the man who fixed the 1919 World Series) plays the earnest school principal, and Addison Timlin, as the innocent sophomore Amy, looked familiar but I had to look her up to find she had her own series arc on Californication this year, one in which she removes her top frequently.

The feature debut of director/writer Antonio Campos, this movie was nominated (after premiering at Cannes) for The Gotham Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You (lost to Sita Sings the Blues) and breakthrough Director (lost to Lance Hammer for Ballast), as well as for the Independent Spirit Best First Feature (lost to Synecdoche, New York), and Campos does have another release in the can, Simon Killer, for later this year. Definitely worth seeing sometime, but probably not suitable for innocent kids (worldly teenagers, okay), this was the second half of the one-night-only independent movie double feature at the university last Thursday (with Littlerock) (coincidentally both have titles with two words melded together). Even fewer people saw this one. Again, too bad.

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