Bad Education (2019)

Bad Education was bought by HBO in “[The Toronto Film Festival’s] biggest deal” last year,  according to Variety, who called it a “sign of the future… a game-changer, a cutting-edge example — or maybe you could call it a casualty — of the shifting sands of movie distribution,” where great movies will compete “not for the Oscars but for the Emmys.”

Bad Education is based on the real-life scandal that went down at writer Mike Makowsky’s high school, where a student journalist uncovered the single largest public school embezzlement scheme in America’s history.

The movie follows Frank Tassone (Oscar nominee Hugh Jackman) and Pam Gluckin (Oscar winner Allison Janney), whose reign over a prestigious school district is threatened by the embezzlement scandal, forcing Frank to take drastic steps to maintain order and secrecy.

The cast includes MTV Movie + TV Awards nominee Alex Wolff (Hereditary), Kathrine Narducci (The Irishman, Godfather of Harlem) and Golden Globe nominee Ray Romano (The Irishman, Everybody Loves Raymond).

Bad Education has a 94% critics’ rating. IndieWire calls it, “A diabolically smart true-life crime drama that stars Hugh Jackman in his best performance since The Prestige”, while Little White Lies says, “It’s a story about the lengths people will go to for self-preservation, deliciously mean and as funny as it is outrageous.”