The Cool School (2007)
Average Rating: 7/10
Reviews Counted: 26
Fresh: 24 | Rotten: 2
A breezy and lively modern art documentary, revealing that LA is not a cultural wasteland when it comes to fine art.
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 12
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 0
A breezy and lively modern art documentary, revealing that LA is not a cultural wasteland when it comes to fine art.
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Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 464
Movie Info
New York City has long been regarded as the heart of the American art movement, but near the end of the 1940s, as the post-war rise of Abstract Expressionism became the new wave of painting in the United States, a small but determined band of painters, curators, and collectors on the West Coast were determined to make themselves known. Filmmaker Morgan Neville examines the rise of the Los Angeles art scene and how it brought a new and vigorously American slant to contemporary painting in the
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All Critics (27) | Top Critics (12) | Fresh (24) | Rotten (2) | DVD (2)
Morgan Neville's 'The Cool School' is a slickly packaged document of the burgeoning modern art scene in LA during the late '50s and early '60s which sadly submerges its fascinating subject matter in technical clutter and contrived set-ups.
Top CriticDiverting.
The Cool School, a breezy, lively documentary about a thin slice of the Los Angeles fine art scene in the 1950s, is easy on the eyes, and the ears too.
Cool School is a must for anyone interested in 20th century American art.
Smart, jazzy and unafraid to deflate egos, Morgan Neville's fast-paced, finely critical study makes for a pungent intro to a movement now esteemed as a key alternative to the New York AbEx stranglehold.
Documentarian Morgan Neville takes an appropriately lively, left-field approach to The Cool School's eye-opening history of the Beat-era Left Coast art scene -- a lesser-known chapter in the story of American modern art.
The Cool School is a history of the LA art scene which will be most interesting for those who are involved in it.
Occasionally too reverent, this remains an effective evocation of a vibrant and interesting art scene, not to mention a touching paean to lost youth.
The Cool School is neither as lively nor as complete as it could be, but as an introduction to modern art, it's a fine freshman course.
Breezy doc lives up to its title.
Veteran documentarist Morgan Neville's illustrated history of the painters and sculptors associated with Venice's Ferus Gallery (1957-1967) is at once lively and analytical.
Makes the case that there's more than basket weaving and freeway driving going on in the seedbed of originality we know as the Great Basin of L.A.
Sweeps you off your feet with quick-witted visuals and cleverly used archival footage.
Definitely proves that, contrary to certain opinions, Los Angeles is not a cultural wasteland where fine art is concerned.
Surf's up in Southern California as the modern art world invades Nixonville and Reagan City in the 1950s. A fascinating look at the start of something big: modern art in Los Angeles.
Thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Largely avoids sharply delineated portraits, with its focus on the scene at the expense of individuals, ultimately resulting in a documentary that doesn't rise above the functional.
Though designed more for the devotee of the arts than your average moviegoer, the film is still apt to enthrall even the uninitiated who wouldn't know a Jackson Pollock from a Willem de Kooning.
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Movie: ID: 770761007 Title: The Cool School Release Date: 2008-03-07 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 6 Status: 1
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