Directed by Thoroughbreds<\/em> writer-director Cory Finley and written by Mike Makowsky, a former Roslyn student, Bad Education<\/em> is about much more than scandal and greed run amok. It\u2019s about our obsession with capitalist ideas of success, and what the public servants who drive a community\u2019s prosperity feel they\u2019re owed. It\u2019s about making difficult decisions between what is morally right, and what supports the perceived \u201cgreater good.\u201d It\u2019s also, perhaps most fascinatingly, about the tenuous balance between public persona and private life. It\u2019s in this last aspect, and its pitch-perfect expression in Jackman\u2019s performance, that the movie really shines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bad Education<\/em> is surprisingly compassionate and often funny, but it never takes cheap shots or smacks its lips at the salacious story it\u2019s telling. The muted way Finley chooses to shoot the film, highlighting the banality of public school buildings and offices, points out the normalcy of these people, their work, and their community. Makowsky\u2019s script likewise never forgets that everyone in this story–student reporter, corrupt administrator, and concerned parent alike–is a human being, with complex motivations, never fully good or evil. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The performances as a whole feel understated and natural, with excellent turns from Jackman, Janney and a fantastic supporting cast that includes established names and reliable character actors alike. As Gluckin, Janney exudes confidence and competence. She would be a dominating personality if she didn\u2019t seem to genuinely care about the people around her, and love her job beyond the criminal perks she gives herself. As Rachel, the high school journalist who uncovers the story, Geraldine Viswanathan is gutsy, thoughtful, and genuinely conflicted about whether or not she should report what she\u2019s discovered, knowing it would end the careers of people who worked hard to help her succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bad Education<\/em> is a well-made film, but it absolutely wouldn\u2019t work as well as it does without Jackman. The character of Frank Tassone, and his parallels with Jackman\u2019s own public persona, comment on each other to the point of unintentional subtext. Tassone is outgoing, attractive and meticulous; all of these aspects of his personality have helped him accomplish great things. However, there\u2019s a significant portion of his life that he keeps secret, even beyond the misappropriated school funds. Tassone\u2019s secretiveness, and his obsession with pleasing others, take on an almost uncanny resonance with Jackman, who\u2019s always seemed surprisingly private for someone so energetically outgoing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s all too easy to see the version of Bad Education<\/em> that could have been, something that reduced its characters to stereotypes, or focused solely on bad deeds, rather than the people committing them and uncovering them. In the hands of Finley and Makowsky, however, it\u2019s a multilayered film that avoids harsh judgment and embraces a much more considerate ambiguity. It\u2019s a story that feels like it could happen anywhere, with characters who resonate, in some way, with all of us. Bad Education <\/em>isn\u2019t a showy movie, but is all the more impressive for its lack of showiness. \u00a0 Bad Education recounts the true story of Roslyn School District Superintendent Frank Tassone (played by Hugh Jackman) and Assistant Superintendent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":13940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,1381],"tags":[1098,162],"class_list":["post-13937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-movies","tag-movie-review","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22849,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13937\/revisions\/22849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/bad-education2-1024x683.jpg\")
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