Bad Education: Cleaning Up the District, Cleaning Out the Cash Drawer

Jeremy BeckReviews
Hugh Jackman and friends in Cory Finley's "Bad Education"

The lessons imparted in Bad Education aren’t typically taught in the classroom, but they’re nonetheless worth taking to heart. They include: Don’t give your corporate credit card to your no-account kids. Don’t schedule work trips to Las Vegas. And if you’re going to embezzle money from the school district that you run, do not—do not—encourage the student reporter writing a puff piece on your newest fancy expenditure to “dig deeper”.

The last of these nuggets of wisdom forms the linchpin of Bad Education, the spry and perceptive new movie from Cory Finley that’s currently streaming on HBO. An immensely promising young talent (he just turned 30), Finley’s debut feature was Thoroughbreds, an electrifying thriller about two teenage sociopaths who plot the murder of a loathsome stepfather. At first glance, his follow-up looks to be a dramatic departure; there are no off-screen stabbings, no portentous firearms, no dosed-up cocktails. But the two films do share a preoccupation with the falsehood of appearances: how conniving people construct polished exteriors in order to manipulate others. Finley’s characters tend to be sneakily more—and morally less—than what they seem. Read More

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Underrated Movies to Stream, from A to Z

Jeremy BeckFeatures

As it paralyzes the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has generated all manner of terrifying questions. Am I going to get sick? Will I lose my job? Are my parents safe? When can my kids go back to school? And most importantly: If I’m going to be stuck at home, which movies should I watch?

The last of these questions may not be the most pertinent or existentially troubling, but it happens to be the one that I’m most qualified to answer. One practical consequence of our collective quarantine is that everyone is firing up their favorite streaming services, seeking to either escape from the world or relate to it by means of entertainment. The darkening of movie theaters may have deprived us of the communal experience—that intangible, alchemical joy derived from absorbing a work of art while surrounded by strangers—but it’s hardly prevented us from watching movies. Read More

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The 20 Best Movies of the 2010s: Part II

Jeremy BeckTop 10 Lists

We’re counting down our picks for the best movies of the 2010s. If you missed #s 11-20—along with our discussion of the decade at large, and of which films just missed the cut—you can check them out here. Also, please remember that 20 is a very small number, so if your favorite film of the decade doesn’t appear on my list, rest assured that it’s nothing personal. Except where it is.

On to the top 10.


10. The Lobster (2016). From the opening scene of Dogtooth, which found three nameless adult children listening to cassette tapes on which their father intoned inaccurate definitions of basic words, Yorgos Lanthimos put his indelibly weird stamp on the decade. Years later, the Greek auteur uncorked two more stunners—I liked The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Favourite even more than Dogtooth—but it’s The Lobster that’s most stuck with me. Lanthimos’ usual tics are on full display—the heavily mannered dialogue, the formal rigor, the absurdist deadpan—but while the movie bristles with strangeness and creativity, it’s also oddly elegiac. A romance where people only pretend to be in love—as well as a comedy where nobody laughs, and a dystopian thriller where the jackbooted thugs always say “please”—The Lobster is distressingly frank about the challenge of finding happiness in the modern world. Yet it’s genuinely heartfelt too, treating its beleaguered characters (led by Colin Farrell, in the performance of his career) with sincerity and respect. It’s a decidedly original work—its bizarre vision could only spring from a mind as twisted as Lanthimos’—but the yearning that it articulates is universal. (Full review here; streaming on Netflix.) Read More

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The 20 Best Movies of the 2010s: Part I

Jeremy BeckTop 10 Lists

Every “best of” list is by definition ridiculous, but best-of-the-decade columns constitute a particular form of lunacy. For standard year-end lists, writers are reacting in the moment, often (at least in my experience) only having seen each film once. The process is instinctive, reactive, impulsive; we’re basing our rankings off of relatively recent viewing experiences, often still buzzing from the visceral and emotional highs they gave us. The relatively short timeframe helps us make fair comparisons; when everything is equally fresh in our minds, we’re less vulnerable to recency bias or the primacy effect.

The method of compiling a “best of the decade” list is different. Instead of relying on the power of immediacy, it hinges on the peculiarity of memory. What strikes you in the moment isn’t always what lingers with you. Films that once landed with considerable force recede from view; conversely, certain scenes and images implant themselves in your mind, refusing to be washed away with the tide. Read More

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Onward: Dwindling Magic, But What of Imagination?

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Holland and Chris Pratt voice brothers in Pixar's "Onward"

The world is gripped by existential despair, so what’s better to capture our collective terror than a Pixar movie? The wizardly corporation owns a patent on brightly colored, child-friendly entertainments that nevertheless speak to adults’ bone-deep fears. Of course, Onward, the newest adventure from the preeminent purveyor of computer-generated animation, isn’t about the coronavirus, no matter how tempted we might be to perceive everything through the lens of that horrifying pandemic. But it is about people—and a world—crippled with fear and self-doubt, struggling to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. That it’s also a playful children’s movie with a happy ending comes as something of a relief, even if it also currently feels like wishful thinking.

But enough about impending global catastrophe. Besides, there’s a more obvious metaphor to be found in Onward. At one point, its two brothers, Ian (voiced by Tom Holland) and Barley (Chris Pratt), squabble over navigation, disputing how best to reach their destination. Ian, the more pragmatic of the pair, insists on taking the freeway, a straight shot to their goal. Barley, a fantasist with either grand ideas or delusions of grandeur, instead suggests that they follow the Path of Peril, a twisting road fraught with danger and uncertainty. The freeway is of course the logical choice, but in Barley’s view, it is the eccentricity of the Path of Peril—its literal and figurative curves—that makes traveling it worthwhile. Read More

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