His grades are so poor he risks being thrown out of school, but precocious 15-year-old Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) isn’t about to let an academic performance cramp his career at Rushmore Academy. He’s editor of the student paper, president of the chess, astronomy, German and French clubs, captain of the fencing and debate teams, and the creative force of the Max Fischer Players. Then there’s his unreciprocated passion for Miss Cross (Olivia Williams), the new first grade teacher. With the help of his industrialist friend Mr Blume (Murray), Max reckons he can win her heart by constructing an aquarium on the school baseball field.
Anderson’s oddball second feature picked up rave reviews and remains one of his touchstone pictures. Even by his own standards, this is a peculiarly poignant comedy, with an outstanding character turn from Bill Murray as… a depressed middle-aged man obsessed with a 15-year-old boy? Granted, Max is 15 going on 50. With his beret, braces and blazer, he’s part Ferris Bueller, part Jay Gatsby. And yet it’s Blume, the first of Anderson’s lost father figures, who gives the movie it’s gravity — and this movie was central to Bill Murray’s late career resurgence.
Line for line this is as witty as any Anderson movie, and the lopsided love triangle at its heart makes this one of his most emotionally accessible films.
Staff Pick: Sean
This tender coming-of-age tale gave the director his most enduring (and endearing) onscreen alter ego in Max Fischer, a bright, brashly big-thinking and socially inept high school misfit negotiating an awkward first crush on a kindly schoolteacher. Max’s own overreaching school plays speak to Anderson’s own soaring creative ambition, though it found its perfect scale in this sophomore jump.
Guy Lodge, Variety
One of the happiest moments of my moviegoing life…. Mock-sophisticated and actually sophisticated, pretentious and unpretentious, arch but sincere — this impossible balance of snobbery, warmth, and pseudo-adolescent craftsmanship… When it was over, I just kept saying, Yes, yes, yes.
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe
Media Partner
Wes Anderson
Jason Schwartzman, Olivia Williams, Bill Murray, Brian Cox, Seymour Cassel, Mason Gamble
USA
1998
English
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Credits
Producer
Barry Mendel, Paul Schiff
Screenwriter
Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson
Cinematography
Robert Yeoman
Editor
David Moritz
Original Music
Mark Mothersbaugh
90s, Baby!
Ten years. 11 weeks. 90 films from the 1990s. This summer, 90’s Baby! takes a deep dive into a defining decade of cinema.
Casino
Revisiting the wise guy milieu for the third (but not the final) time, Scorsese tells the story of Ace Rothstein and Nicky Santoro (Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci), two New York hoodlums who become major players in the history of Las Vegas.
Ghost in the Shell
This seminal anime which inspired James Cameron and the Wachowskis, anticipates how AI technology encroaches on the human domain in ways we can scarcely comprehend. "A work of profound and melancholic beauty." Daily Telegraph
La Haine
This angry French thriller about alienated kids (a skinhead, an Arab, and an African) in the working class outskirts of Paris plays like a cross between Do the Right Thing and Mean Streets. French cops turned their backs on the red carpet at Cannes.
Crash
Sex drive, David Cronenberg-style. The car-crash fetishists who orbit Cronenberg's metrosexual Toronto (they include James Spader, Holly Hunter, and Deborah Unger) obsessively seek a fusion of metal and flesh... Fender bender as the ultimate orgasm.
Trainspotting
Danny Boyle's blistering movie was a sensation in 1996: a kick in the teeth of old school British kitchen sink realism, it fearlessly transformed the dire circumstances of Edinburgh heroin addicts into an experience by turns exhilarating and devastating.
Fargo
Have the Coen brothers ever made a more satisfying movie than Fargo? This grisly comedy pits one of cinema's most pure-hearted cops (Frances McDormand's pregnant cop, Marge Gunderson) against the machinations of weak and mercenary men.
Lone Star
John Sayles's modern day Western is a murder mystery which draws sheriff Chris Cooper to investigate two of his predecessors, the notoriously corrupt Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson), and his own father, Buddy (Matthew McConaughey).
90s Mystery Movie + Trivia Night
And now for a shot in the dark... We're not announcing the Mystery Movie in advance, so you'll have to take a leap of faith. We can say it was released between January 1990 and January 2000, and it's not already showing elsewhere in this series. As an added enticement we're going to throw in a 90s movie trivia night with your ticket — plus prizes!
Princess Mononoke
A mystical fight between humans and the Animal Gods of the forest. Ashitaka, the last prince of a dying race, struggles to find a way for both sides to co-exist. But the fighting only becomes more and more bloody and all hope seems to be lost…
Gummo
Harmony Korine was just 24 when he made Gummo. It's become a cult favourite as much for its singularity as anything else: it's a strange, misshapen beast, a slice of beat poetry translated into experimental film.
Jackie Brown
Take half a dozen characters who know they're in a fix, and give them half a million dollars to fight over. Tarantino's crime movie (his best) transcends genre in large part because in Pam Grier and Robert Forster it gives us people we truly care about.
The Big Lebowski
The Coens' whacky, warped slacker generation riff on Raymond Chandler, a shaggy dog story which delights in going sideways at every turn. Jeff Bridges is the Dude, and what he really wants is to get his rug back...