Bad Education - Festivals and Awards Watch

[jo]

Could be SPOILERS --

SPOILER: Click to show

Ry

@projectslay
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7m

Replying to
@jasonosia
Is he gay in it?

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Jason

@jasonosia
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6m

Very

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Eric R.

@grey603
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6m

Does he make out with a dude?


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Jason

@jasonosia
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Yup

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Eric R.

@grey603
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1m

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HLVDMovies

@hlvdmovies
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9m


Replying to
@jasonosia
Drama or Comedy?

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Jason

@jasonosia
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8m

Comedy

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

From Twitter --

Ernesto Pastrana

@pastranatweet


TORONTO 2019: La Malversacion de fondos tratada en #BadEducation (2019) ha gustado y mucho a la crítica. Importante, realista, honesta con una Allison Janney y Hugh Jackman quienes han cosechado grandes comentarios. #TIFF19


#TIFF2019 #DomingoDeGanarSeguidores #TIFF
Translated from Spanish by

TORONTO 2019: The Embezzlement of funds treated in #BadEducation (2019) liked the critics a lot. Important, realistic, honest with an Allison Janney and Hugh Jackman who have garnered great comments. #TIFF19


#TIFF2019#DomingoDeGanarSeguidores#TIFF

[jo]

Donnelly writes for VARIETY.

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

EW has a short feature on the TIFF coverage --

ew.com/movies/2019/09/08/allison-janney-shares-inspiration-for-bad-education-long-island-accent/

Check out attached clip

Allison Janney shares inspiration for Bad Education Long Island accent

By Maureen Lee Lenker September 08, 2019 at 03:35 PM EDT


Allison Janney has quite the distinctive voice — but it’s about to get a Long Island brush-up in forthcoming film Bad Education.

While sitting down at EW and People’s video suite at the Toronto International Film Festival where the film premiered, Janney revealed the various sources of inspiration and instruction for the distinct New York dialect.

“I spent a lot of time in Long Island because my grandparents are from there and I used to be obsessed with the way my friends in Long Island would say ‘very,'” Janney says. “Very early on, I adapted a little Long Island accent, little pieces of it. I don’t why I thought ‘very’ was so cool.”

Courtesy of TIFF

Bad Education calls upon the Oscar-winning Janney to portray Pam Gluckin, an assistant superintendent for business in Long Island’s Roslyn School District. The comedic film is inspired by the true story of one of the most egregious financial crimes in the history of the U.S. school system.

For Janney, the best way to nail her accent for the film was an unlikely source — her assistant’s mother. “I worked with a dialect coach and my assistant’s mother is from Long Island. She has a perfect [accent],” the actress explains. “I was like ‘Call your mother, I need to talk to her,’ and just listen to her…I love doing accents, as challenging [as they can be], it’s a lot of fun.”

With a script from Mike Makowsky and directed by Cory Finley (Thoroughbreds), Bad Education made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday. A release date is still to be determined.


Watch the clip above for more.

[hughmanity]

First review.  Jo, I  know you will reprint 

www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/bad-education-review-1238167?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral

[jo]

Done!

The Hollywood Reporter


Courtesy of TIFF

The Bottom Line : Gets a solid B+ without even cheating.

Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney and Ray Romano star in 'Thoroughbreds' director Cory Finley's second feature, which was inspired by a school district scandal on Long Island.

An embezzlement scheme whose total take was $11.2 million seems like peanuts compared to Enron, Bernie Madoff or any other billion-dollar fraud of our epoch.

But in Cory Finley’s engagingly devious new dramedy Bad Education, it takes on the guise of a real-world morality play where the mighty fall from up high — even if up high means the superintendent seat of a public school district on Roslyn, Long Island.

Based on a scandal that rocked the upmarket New York suburb over a decade ago, and adapted to the screen by a former student, Mike Makowsky, who witnessed the ordeal firsthand, the film marks something of a departure for Finley from his pitch-black comic debut Thoroughbreds, which drew more than one comparison to Heathers.

Here, the satire is softened to let reality sink in, with characters and plot-points drawn from actual sources, resulting in a movie that plays like a slow-burn investigative thriller with comic touches and a major comeuppance in the last act. It’s perhaps less flamboyantly enjoyable than Finley’s first feature, but it also digs deeper into the souls of its characters, asking how a few people meant to ensure the pedagogy of hundreds of children could flunk out so badly.



The man behind all the monkey business was one Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman), the beloved Roslyn School District superintendent who rules over his fiefdom like a lifelong educator, assuaging the fears of overzealous parents and encouraging his students with generous pep talks. He’s assisted by Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney), who minds the budget in the office next door, and flanked by school board president Bob Spicer (Ray Romano), who works as a local realtor and sees Frank's success as his ticket to major bucks.

With his house-of-wax complexion, oversized suits and jet-black pompadour, Frank resembles a textbook New Yawk bureaucrat, even if he reads Dickens for fun and appears to be more refined. Jackman slips into such a role perfectly, staring beady-eyed at his interlocutors in the creepy way we all remember school officials used to look at us, and joining Janney, Queens boy Romano and the rest of the cast in a chorus of Long Island accents that could constitute its own Billy Joel fan club.

Initially the film’s plotting seems a bit subdued as we follow Frank on his mission to make Roslyn number one in the region, — only in such a location-specific movie could the competing towns of Jericho and Syosset be referred to as “sons of bitches” — watching as he deals with the dull day-to-day duties of running his district. Things seem to be going fine, and Frank seems like a great guy, so why should anybody worry?

It’s at this point that the superintendent dishes out advice to an eager but somewhat inhibited student reporter, Rachel (the excellent Geraldine Viswanathan), telling her to take the puff piece she’s writing about a planned school renovation a little more seriously. Little does he know that Rachel will become the Woodward & Bernstein to his Richard Nixon, spinning her story into a full-blown inquiry that will open up a giant can of worms.


Things slowly but surely unravel, and then completely fall apart, as we learn that the supposedly grieving widower Frank leads a double life both professionally and personally — the latter when we see him start a fling with a former pupil, Kyle (Rafael Casal), now working as a bartender in Vegas. Meanwhile, right-hand gal Pam has been doing some unruly things with the official credit card, including making major improvements on a house in the Hamptons that seems way over her pay grade. This will get her fired, but it will also be the tip of the iceberg in a much bigger conspiracy.

If Finley eases us into the action during the first hour, teasing out lots of information with occasional jokes and digressions, his film snowballs into a tragic-comic tale of retribution in the second half as Frank’s shiny Botoxed mask tumbles, taking down everyone else in the rooms. It’s at this point that emotions run high, especially during a moving montage and dance sequence — set to Moby’s “In This World,” which came out a few years before the actual scandal broke — where we see Frank experiencing one sad last hurrah before his number’s up.

While the filmmaking overall is less distinctive here than in Thoroughbreds, the characters seem more lifelike and the story itself is riddled with irony. Frank is not only undone by one of the very students he tried to motivate, but the movie ponders what his guilt means in a place where parents, many of them way wealthier than he is, are constantly pushing him for favors and then showing little gratitude for it: Didn’t the guy deserve a few million for helping so many of their kids get into Harvard?

Working once again with cinematographer Lyle Vincent, Finley captures this ethical s---show in cool colors and wide lenses that frame Jackman against some of L.I.’s finest schools, administrative offices and seven-figure homes. Production design by Meredith Lippincott and costumes by Alex Bovaird further add to the suburban authenticity, turning Bad Education into a paean to bad taste and even more questionable morals.


Production companies: Automatik, Sight Unseen, Slater Hall
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Geraldine Viswanathan, Ray Romano, Alex Wolff
Director: Cory Finley
Screenwriter: Mike Makowsky
Producers: Fred Berger, Eddie Vaisman, Julia Lebedev, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Oren Moverman, Mike Makowsky
Executive producers: Leonid Lebedev, Caroline Jaczko
Director of photography: Lyle Vincent
Production designer: Meredith Lippincott
Costume designer: Alex Bovaird
Editors: Louise Ford
Composer: Michael Abels
Casting directors: Ellen Lewis, Kate Sprance
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations)
Sales: Endeavor Content (U.S. and international), CAA (U.S.)
103 minutes

LOL - I am presently straddled watching for all the TIFF reactions and possible reviews...and watching/reading up on the just concluded US (Tennis) Open, with my favorite tennis warrior claiming his 19th Grand Slam win

Will try to find other stuff for Bad Education ?


Jo

[hughmanity]

Good multi-tasking Jo! Here are a few apparent viewer reactions.  I'm also not too sure how to start a new thread for reviews. Sorry!


letterboxd.com/film/bad-education-2019/reviews/by/added/

[jo]

I think we can leave the various social media reactions and longform reviews in this thread in the meantime.

Maybe when the movie is released officially - we can repost to an Official Reviews Thread.

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★★★½ Watched by adamhouse 08 Sep, 2019
TIFF19 Film #2:
An entertaining and fascinating true story that has some strong performances from Jackman and Janney. It has some pacing issues, and I would have liked some things to be explored a little more, but on the whole I enjoyed this. Can’t wait to see what Finley does next.
1 like
View

★★★★ Watched by juliangen 08 Sep, 2019
Tight, funny, great performances but a little messy. Excited to see more from him.

View

★★★★ Watched by rachel✨ 08 Sep, 2019

the cast! the cinematography! the score! i might be over exaggerating a bit because i just got to breath the same air as allison janney, BUT with all that aside what a great film! i’m definitely gonna need more hugh jackman and allison janney together, and more comedy from both! there’s so many specific things i want to mention, but this film probably won’t be released for a while and i think i might wait till then. so for now… more
4 likes
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★★★★ Watched by Frank Martin 08 Sep, 2019

TIFF 19 WORLD PREMIERE
Cory Finley has proven himself as one of the best directors working today. His directorial debut Thoroughbreds was a high bar to set (Rip Anton Yelchin). But Bad Education really blew me away with the improvements he's made as a director. Go watch as soon as it gets a wide release.
4 likes
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★★★½ Watched by Matt Goldberg 08 Sep, 2019
The movie has a nice 'Election' vibe to it in terms of the school leaders we look to not only provide academic education, but moral leadership, and what happens when they turn out to be scumbags. The plotting is a little shaggy, but it's certainly a relevant story about a journalist investigating a corrupt administration that fleeces taxpayers so that people who should be public servants can enrich themselves. I also think this is one of Hugh Jackman's better performances and more interesting characters. Overall, a solid film that's worth a look.
9 likes
View

★★★★ Watched by kavehj4 08 Sep, 2019

TIFF Film #15.
Fire.

View

★★★★ Watched by Tristan French 08 Sep, 2019


1
TIFF ‘19: Film #6
A total blast! Corey Finley impressed me with Thoroughbreds, and this is another high energy, expertly written and completely engaging film from this promising upcoming filmmaker.
9 likes
View

★★★½ Watched by Hussain Alokaily 08 Sep, 2019


3
Paying 25 bucks to spontaneously see the world premiere for this was the best decision I have ever made.
6 likes
View

★★★★ Watched by xgrubbyx 08 Sep, 2019

Really enjoyed Finley’s follow up to thoroughbreds with a dark comedy about superintendents embezzling millions of dollars to fund their expensive lifestyles.

View

Added by Cameron 23 Jun, 2019
Geraldine Viswanathan? I love her...
Jimmy Tatro? A YouTube/mockumentary king...
Fronted by Huge Jackman & Allison Janney while directed by an indie-breakout visionary?
Preppin my body for this one
3 likes
View

[hughmanity]

I figured Variety review would follow soon after Hollywood Reporter
variety.com/2019/film/news/recent-college-scandals-make-hugh-jackmans-bad-education-relevant-and-rage-inducing-in-toronto-1203328216/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

[jo]

Just caught that one, too

Will reprint!


It looks more like a featured article than a critique --

Variety
Home
Film
News

Recent College Scandals Make Hugh Jackman’s ‘Bad Education’ Relevant and Rage-Inducing in Toronto

Matt Donnelly
September 8, 2019 8:47PM PDT


Hugh Jackman’s embezzlement drama “Bad Education” debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday night with apt timing, as the sharply executed film offers parallels to scandals currently playing out in American colleges.

The film arrives only two days after actress Felicity Huffman explained to a California judge why she would attempt to deceptively boost her daughter’s SAT scores with the help of the consultant at the heart of the Varsity Blues admissions scandal. Huffman shared the news cycle with Ronan Farrow, who published an explosive report about deceased, accused predator Jeffrey Epstein’s financial involvement and alleged influence in a research lab at MIT.

Inspired by true events, Jackman plays Long Island school district superintendent Frank Tassone, who was arrested in an $11.2 million larceny plot 15 years ago. Tassone and his district’s head of business affairs Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney) defrauded taxpayers and students to purchase beach homes, jet skis, lavish European vacations and even a Park Avenue apartment.



Janney’s Gluckin, who according to filmmakers stole a shocking $4.2 million, confesses her crimes to her husband and two kids early on in the film, saying: “I stole from them. We all did. Your clothes, car, college. You didn’t want state college, you wanted private college. I wanted you to be happy with me.”

Huffman’s contrite letter, which was widely covered by the media on Friday, had similar arguments.

“As warped as this sounds now, I honestly began to feel that maybe I would be a bad mother if I didn’t do what Mr. Singer was suggesting,” Huffman said of paying Rick Singer $15,000 to raise her daughter’s test scores.

Jackman’s Tassone answers to a board of directors who are positioned as wealthy private citizens, obsessed with improving the academics and appearances of their schools to propel their children to greater success and subsequently raise property value. Tassone, in turn, sees himself as a community leader and spokesmodel entitled to $30,000 dry cleaning tabs, cosmetic procedures and first-class getaways with male lovers (he pretends to be mourning a dead wife to his colleagues, while hiding a husband of 33 years in Manhattan and a young male lover in Nevada).



At rock bottom, when the district’s board president played by Ray Romano delivers fatal news that Jackman’s jig is up, his final ace in the sleeve is nepotism. “I can still get Becca into Harvard,” Jackman says, referring to Romano’s on-screen daughter.

Tassone and Gluckin’s crimes were exposed in real life by the student journalists writing for the district’s high school paper. A composite of those kids is played ably by Geraldine Viswanathan (also at TIFF with Sundance breakout “Hala”). When she approaches the paper’s editor (Alex Wolff) with proof of Tassone’s criminal activity, he hesitates.

“He’s writing my recommendation letter for college,” Wolff admits through gritted teeth, though he eventually runs the story.

Jackman was not present for the premiere, currently on a world-tour with his one man musical show. Janney spoke about her struggle to find honest motivations to play such a clearly guilty character, citing a run of bad marriages and obligations to her kid as factors.

A young man in the audience raised his hand during a Q&A following the screening, and asked if low salaries and abusive treatment (akin to that of customer service, Jackman suggests in the movie) can lead teachers and administrators to such corruption. It’s been on his mind because his own college, a TIFF screening venue called Ryerson University a few miles away from the premiere, was in the news last year. The student union was under forensic audit for up to $700,000 in dubious spending.

Ripped from the headlines or not, “Bad Education” features desperate, compelling performances from its leads Jackman and Janney. Cory Finley, who directed the acclaimed 2017 film “Thoroughbreds,” does right by a nimble script from Mike Makowsky. As one of the only high profile films in the first few days of TIFF not to have debuted at Telluride or Venice, hopefully “Bad Education” can wake up distributors in a sleepy acquisitions market.

[hughmanity]

Here is a second, more "reviewy" Variety review, this time heaping praise on Hugh!


variety.com/2019/film/festivals/bad-education-review-hugh-jackman-1203328219/

[jo]

If this were a Broadway show -- the whole review should be reproduced in BOLD print -- and splashed all over the lobby!!

HOME Film Festivals
September 8, 2019 8:52PM PT

Toronto Film Review: ‘Bad Education’

Hugh Jackman delivers an acting master class, trading on his charismatic star persona to reveal the rotten core of bad-apple superintendent Frank Tassone.


By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge
Chief Film Critic
@https://twitter.com/askdebruge?lang=en


CREDIT: Toronto Film Festival


Director: Cory FinleyWith: Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Ray Romano, Geraldine Viswanathan
Running time: 108 MIN.


Going forward, what will Hollywood do when it needs a Kevin Spacey type? The disgraced Oscar winner is precisely the actor a movie like “Bad Education” calls for: Cory Finley’s audacious second feature centers on the true story of Frank Tassone, district superintendent of the Roslyn School District in Long Island, N.Y. — a hero to parents and students alike, responsible for turning the Roslyn High into one of the state’s top-achieving public schools, while exploiting the trust the community put in him. It’s a tricky, two-faced role that calls for the kind of firm-handshake, direct-eye-contact duplicity Spacey brought to “House of Cards” and half a dozen movies before it. Google “Frank Tassone” and tell me that I’m wrong.

Now, Hugh Jackman isn’t the actor I would’ve expected to fill those shoes. He’s more movie star than character actor, and this role presents him in such an unflattering light — quite literally so, shooting its Caucasian cast such that their skin looks like raw chicken and every wrinkle casts a shadow — that you’d think his agent would have advised him against it. (George Clooney’s probably did.) That’s what’s so courageous about Jackman’s decision, and one of several reasons that “Bad Education” is the best work he’s ever done.



Toronto Film Review: 'Bad Education'

Here’s a star at the height of his powers leveraging his own appeal to remind that even our heroes are fallible and that you can never really judge someone from the outside. And Finley — whose only prior feature credit is the ice-cold, Patricia Highsmith-worthy high-wire act “Thoroughbreds” — is every bit the director to bring it home, pairing Jackman with an equally astonishing Allison Janney as school business administrator Pam Gluckin, Tassone’s creative-accounting accomplice. Finley, who clearly thrives when dramatizing morally complicated situations, doesn’t do the first thing you’d expect from any telling of this national-headline-making story (one that was first exposed by the school paper, the Hilltop Beacon): He doesn’t sensationalize it. Not that it would have been wrong to do so.


It worked for Martin Scorsese in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” It worked for Steven Soderbergh in “The Informant.” Splash it up — that’s the obvious answer. Make the colors pop, the movie’s carotid artery bulge. That’s how such material is usually played. Look at this story on paper — a high-school student exposes an $11 million embezzlement scheme perpetrated by the institution’s most admired figure — and you might expect a tongue-in-cheek cross between “Election” and “To Die For” (the Gus Van Sant-directed satire inspired by Pamela Smart, a high school employee locked up after enlisting her teenage lover to murder her hubby).

Written by Mike Makowsky (“I Think We’re Alone Now”), who was attending Roslyn Middle School when the Tassone scandal broke, “Bad Education” doesn’t shy away from the humor of the situation, but it doesn’t go for the cheap laughs either (unless you count some of the distractingly tacky decorating choices in Gluckin’s ready-for-remodeling home). With their strong accents and “Sopranos”-like way of dressing, the movie’s all-too-trusting Long Island residents would’ve been an easy target for parody, but that’s not the tone Finley’s going for. From the high-contrast, stark-widescreen look of things, he’s most interested in the way that people like Tassone and Gluckin could rationalize what they were doing.



That’s easy: Of all the careers in America, educators are by far the most undercompensated. In New York, where the cost of living is high and the real estate outrageous (the latter ironically exacerbated by the quality of the public schools), how are teachers supposed to afford being part of the community they serve? That doesn’t justify graft, mind you, but it suggests how people who’ve dedicated their lives to a low-earning field might find themselves bent toward skimming a little something extra for themselves out of the school budget.

“Bad Education” makes a point of showing how much Tassone meant to the community. Early on (the year is 2002, as signified by flip phones, compact discs and other period details), Tassone is seen tweezing his nose hairs before going onstage to take credit for turning the school into a success. Roslyn is ranked No. 4 in the country. Test scores are up. Seniors are getting into Ivy League schools in record numbers. And the school is set to break ground on a $7.5 million “sky walk,” that could give the community a massive boost.

Rachel, a sophomore played by “Blockers” standout Geraldine Viswanathan, has just joined the school paper, whose editor isn’t prepared for the deep dive into the school’s financial records that she has in mind. “We are an extra-curricular designed to get us into good colleges,” he says. But Rachel (who is a fictional character based on an actual student journalist) has something to prove — to herself; to her father (Harid Hillon), who was canned in an insider-trading scandal; and to Tassone, who truly cares about the students, encouraging her to turn the puff-piece assignment into something meaningful.

At times, the story borders on the incredible, and it may spoil the surprise to read some of the details that follow. Through an imbecilic mistake — in which Gluckin’s son charges thousands of dollars of home renovation supplies to the school account — the school board gets wind of Gluckin’s financial misdeeds. When it happens, audiences don’t know whether or to what degree Tassone is involved, and it’s fascinating to watch Jackman in action: Like a master politician (or a brilliant actor), he sizes up the situation, assesses his audience and begins to spin things to best protect all involved. In other movies, scenes like these are played such that audiences can see the con man’s hand, but Jackman keeps a poker face, which protects the remaining surprises until such time that Rachel can reveal them.




True-crime movies so often serve to reinforce the notion that wrongdoers are eventually brought to justice in this country. But “Bad Education” refuses to get so reductively didactic. Yes, Tassone and Gluckin stole millions of dollars, but they also made Roslyn an extremely successful school (if you don’t dwell on the leaky ceilings and outdated equipment). When certain details of Tassone’s private life come to light — including a reunion with a former student (“Blindspotting’s” Rafael Casal) and an unconventional arrangement with one of the school’s mysterious suppliers (Stephen Spinella) — one may be tempted to judge. But the real takeaway is how hard that can often be.


Maybe Spacey isn’t the only one who can handle the ambiguity such a performance demands. The way Jackman plays it, Tassone was a villain who didn’t see himself as such. Finley finds creative ways to suggest the discrepancy between inner and outer appearances. The hair-slicked, health-conscious superintendent is constantly watching his cholesterol, forgoing carbs in favor of charcoal smoothies — which amounts to nourishing his insides with what looks like black bile. Late in the game, before the jig is up, he goes in for a face lift — another reminder of the mask Tassone wears (and an unexpected sight for a now-50-year-old movie star). Appearances can be deceiving. This we know. But how do young people cope with seeing their heroes shattered? “Bad Education” can be a hard lesson to accept, but a necessary one in how the world works.



Toronto Film Review: 'Bad Education'

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 8, 2019. Running time: 108 MIN.
Production: An Automatik, Sight Unseen, Slater Hall production. (Int'l sales: Endeavor Content, Los Angeles.) Producers: Fred Berger, Eddie Vaisman, Julia Lebedev, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Oren Moverman, Mike Makowsky. Executive producers: Leonid Lebedev, Caroline Jaczko.
Crew: Director: Cory Finley. Screenplay: Mike Makowsky, based on the New York Magazine article "Bad Superintendent" by Robert Kolker. Camera (color, widescreen): Lyle Vincent. Editor: Louise Ford. Music: Michael Abels.
With: Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Ray Romano, Geraldine Viswanathan
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Allison Janney
Bad Education
Cory Finley
Geraldine Viswanathan
Hugh Jackman
Toronto Film Festival

Hope everyone sits up and appreciate that this is an acting gem from HUGH JACKMAN!





PS: That was why I was so keen to see him at Toronto -- if this could be the start of an awards campaign - his presence could further cement any extremely favorable critique of his performance. Because sad to say -- that is how the ball bounces in the world of awards

EDIT : And seeing that the film has not been picked up for distribution, it was hoped that Hugh Jackman's presence at the film festival would be helpful. But maybe given the personal review of his performance, his actual presence and the movie's storytelling strengths would already sell the movie to distributors and audiences! And Hugh can enjoy the brief break allowed him... On second thought, didn't Sutton Foster mention that there is a forthcoming lab for THE MUSIC MAN in September




Jo

[jo]

[jo]

http://instagram.com/p/B2Lqa71A4fE

He praises it for its sophistication, a movie for film buffs and students of contemporary cultural/social behavior.

Not a masses-directed form of entertainment


Jo

[jo]

Hugh Jackman for AWARDS CONSIDERATION?

Yes, please


Do check out his blog --


toddmthatcher.com/2019/09/09/oscar-watch-bad-education/

All My Life… I Wanted To Be A Blogster
Oh, I'm sorry! Did I break your concentration??


Oscar Watch: Bad Education
Posted on September 9, 2019

Few actors had a better movie year as Hugh Jackman’s 2017 with two smash hits – Logan and The Greatest Showman. Yet despite the acclaim, Oscar didn’t honor him. In fact, his sole nod came five years prior in Les Miserables. Last year’s The Front Runner looked like awards bait, but it fizzled quickly.

Now we have Bad Education for possible consideration as it screened in Toronto. The comedic drama tells the true tale of a beloved New York school superintendent cheating the system. And Variety has called it Jackman’s best performance to date. Other reviews also praise his work in this effort from director Cory Finley. This is his sophomore film following 2017’s well regarded Thoroughbreds. Costars include Allison Janney (who did win in 2017 for I, Tonya), Geraldine Viswanathan, Ray Romano, and Alex Woolf.

I say possible consideration because Education has yet to land a distributor. However, that shouldn’t be a problem. The real question is whether this gets released in 2019. If so, I would expect a campaign to be mounted for its lead actor. And as I’ve said repeatedly in the past few festival days, that race is looking incredibly competitive. Unlike The Front Runner, I would anticipate some critics vying for his inclusion. It could be a long shot, but he’s in the large mix. A Golden Globe nod in Musical/Comedy might be more reachable. My Oscar Watch posts will continue…

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This entry was posted in Oscar Predictions and tagged academy awards, Alex Wolff, Allison Janney, Bad Education, Cory Finley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Golden Globes, Hugh Jackman, I Tonya, Les Miserables, Logan, movies, Oscar Predictions, Oscar Watch, oscars, Ray Romano, The Front Runner, The Greatest Showman, Thoroughbreds, Toronto Film Festival by toddmthatcher. Bookmark the permalink.

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]