Filmed verité-style, Argott's film can hardly lay claim to the greatness its subjects clearly aspire to. Most of the time it comes across as a kind of amateur version of The Bad News Bears.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 26, 2019

For all of his questionable methods, Paul Green gets results that are revealed when he takes a group of students to perform the difficult music of Frank Zappa at a Zappa festival in Bad Doberon, East Germany.

| Original Score: B | Apr 15, 2009

Watching the students band together to rock -- and the faces of the audience and participants when they realize what these kids are capable of -- is a joy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 2, 2006

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 7, 2006

The result isn't pretty -- but it does, on occasion, rock.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 6, 2005

The documentary studies the different children at the school, some lazy, some brilliant, some sensitive. Argott traces their development.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 6, 2005

Where you'll find a bunch of raucous and talented kids, you'll find at least one glory-hungry grown-up intent on stealing the spotlight.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 23, 2005

Engaging, ultimately uplifting documentary that is by turns hilarious and horrifying - but say what you like about Green's methods, he certainly gets results.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 10, 2005

It's like Spinal Tap, only shorter.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 23, 2005

Green berates and insults his students to push them to work harder

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 5, 2005

Hail, Hail Rock School. Documentary about teacher the real deal.

| Jul 19, 2005

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 16, 2005

So overpowering is Green's outsized, needy, arrested-adolescent personality (while you initially suspect he's playing for the camera, the blas attitude of his students suggests he really is like this), it throws the movie off-balance.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 8, 2005

It's unflinching, discomfiting, profane, with an ignoble real-life 'hero' and children who absorb the full brunt of his rage.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 8, 2005

Their playing is terrific, but there's little doubt the kids are fulfilling Green's fantasy rather than the other way around.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 8, 2005

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 5, 2005

As a documentary, Rock School works just fine. As an advertisement for the Paul Green School of Rock Music, it's considerably less successful.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 25, 2005

An intriguing fly-on-the-wall documentary.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 24, 2005

The movie seems a little too much in love with the overbearing and self-aggrandizing Green - almost as much as Green is with himself.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 24, 2005

Even with Paul Green's invective echoing in the back of your mind, nothing's quite so heartwarming as the sight of a young person blossoming.

Full Review | Jun 17, 2005