Rushmore
- gentle
- signature
- intimate
Neutral, steady, gentle comedy / drama, inventive in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.
How every film is hand-scored →When a beautiful first-grade teacher arrives at a prep school, she soon attracts the attention of an ambitious teenager named Max, who quickly falls in love with her. Max turns to the father of two of his schoolmates for advice on how to woo the teacher. However, the situation soon gets complicated when Max's new friend becomes involved with her, setting the two pals against one another in a war for her attention.
Our read · Rushmore (1998) reads as a neutral, steady, inventive comedy · drama entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.
More info & search links
The shape of Rushmore
What watching it is actually like.
“You want precocious heartbreak, deadpan comedy, and Bill Murray at his saddest.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if adolescent obsession and awkward romance feel too cringe tonight.
The reading.
Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.
Eight films that read most like this one.
Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”
Discussion
What does your Movie DNA look like?
Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.
Calibrate yourself