Terry Zwigoff, Daniel Clowes. After Ghost World, that should be a recipe for a decent film at the very least, right? Not so much. Remember the scene in Ghost World with Illeana Douglas as the art teacher? This basically takes that gag and stretches it out to feature length with an exceptionally lame murder mystery storyline tacked on. It starts out alright and is amusing when they stick to light skewering of artiste stereotypes but it fails to give any of the characters anything resembling depth or empathy. Not nearly clever enough to function as a satire and just generally clumsy all around. Disappointing, especially from creators who should know better.

Trailer: Art School Confidential

I’m a pretty big fan of Almodovar’s films if for no other reason than they a) always look amazing and b) never fail to have some theme or image or something stick with me long after it’s over – no mean feat for someone with an attention span like mine. His latest film (excepting Return, which just premiered at Cannes) is a little bit of a departure as the main story is a sort of mystery-thriller with an extra-twisty story-within-a-story-within-a-story structure. As such, it turns out a bit darker than I’d expected but is still immensely satisfying and stimulating. Gael Garcia Bernal, in particular, is amazing in his two or three roles (I lost track). I only had one question – if you’ve seen the DVD and seen the deleted scenes, wouldn’t those, if included, had completely screwed up the way the entire plot unfolded? I can’t figure out why they were even shot.

Trailer: Bad Education

A small, charming and only slightly precious coming-of-age film loaded with more star power than you’d expect. Basically the story of a teen who tries to give up sucking his thumb as a rite of adolescence, it’s got your fairly standard crises at school (boy pines for girl, inexplicably gets girl, gets ditched by girl for pot), home (unhappy mom, careerist dad) and dental office. General observations about the cast – Tilda Swinton is terrific, Vincent D’Onofrio and Vince Vaughan almost look interchangable (this is not a compliment to Vince Vaughan’s diet) and Keanu Reeves is a hoot and perfectly cast as a spacey, new-age orthodontist.

Trailer: Thumbsucker