BAD EDUCATION (US - 2020) Directed by Cory Finley. Written by Mike Makowsky. Cast: Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Ray Romano, Geraldine Viswanathan, Alex Wolff, Rafael Casal, Stephen Spinella, Welker White, Annaleigh Ashford, Hari Dhillon, Jeremy Shamos, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Catherine Curtin, Kathrine Narducci, Ray Abruzzo, Kayli Carter, Jimmy Tatro, Pat Healy, Victor Verhaeghe, John Scurti, Larry Romano. (Unrated, 109 mins) Based on Robert Kolker's 2004 New York Magazine article "The Bad Superintendent," BAD EDUCATION chronicles what stands as the largest school system embezzlement--upwards of $11 million-- in US history, a scandal that broke at Roslyn High School in Long Island in 2002. What's so jaw-dropping about what's depicted here is how it was more or less in plain sight, with numerous parties involved, with no one really paying attention to things like a treasurer owning three homes and driving a Jaguar to work every day. Roslyn is a school district on the rise and getting national attention, leading to some rapidly increasing property values, with by-the-book school board president Big Bob Spicer (Ray Romano) a millionaire from his day job selling real estate. But the star of Roslyn is beloved, charismatic superintendent Dr. Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman), an almost god-like figure who's the face of the school system, a former English teacher with a passion for Charles Dickens, and a dedicated educator who always makes time for any student. He offers a quick pull quote about a heavily-hyped, multi-million "skywalk" construction project for the high school to Rachel Bhargava (Geraldine Viswanathan), a junior doing grunt work on the school paper. She says it's just a puff piece because seniors get all the good stories, but the always-inspiring Dr. Tassone reminds her that "it's only a puff piece if you let it be a puff piece," and that a good journalist can turn anything into a substantive story. Curious about some contractor bids on the skywalk contract (and being curtly dismissed when she asks why some of that money isn't going toward replacing the numerous moldy and rotting ceiling tiles throughout the school), Rachel is given the key to the records room by treasurer and assistant superintendent Pamela Gluckin (Allison Janney) and she starts noticing financial inconsistencies, payments for vaguely-defined services to companies with non-existent phone numbers, payments for work that was never done, etc. She keeps digging despite being scolded by senior editor-at-large Nick Fleischman (HEREDITARY's Alex Wolff) that "we're just a school paper...not the New York Times."
But then the shit hits the fan. Gluckin's dumbass son (Jimmy Tatro) makes thousands of dollars worth of purchases at several Ace hardware stores over the course of a day, all for an expensive remodeling project at one of Gluckin's three homes. A store manager alerts Spicer, who has no idea why Gluckin's son would have a school credit card in his own name. An initial probe finds a minimum of $250,000 in misappropriated funds, but that's not counting all of the lost and discarded receipts. Gluckin is thrown under the bus, forced to resign, and deemed a sociopath by Tassone, but her transgressions are only scratching the surface of what's going on with some administrative staff at Roslyn. That's especially true with Tassone, who's also been living on the school's credit line for years and has an endless list of secrets and a partially fabricated past--no spoilers, but no one seems to have any recollection of his wife who "passed away a long time ago"--that he desperately tries to keep a lid on but can't quit behaving in a reckless and stupid fashion. And like Gluckin, he wants the wealth and privilege that Roslynians like Spicer are enjoying, and has grown so accustomed to getting away with it because everyone is so happy and complacent that he's become sloppy and isn't even bothering to cover his tracks anymore.
Oozing charm and slick confidence, and constantly maintaining Tassone's impeccable appearance, Jackman turns in one of his best performances, a complex balancing act that shows Tassone juggling several illusions for years on end while keeping his dark secrets hidden behind a mask--a mask that he symbolically maintains with a touch-up facelift over Christmas break (of course, he puts it on the school's credit card). An indie screened at last year's Toronto Film Festival and picked up by HBO, BAD EDUCATION was written by Mike Makowsky, who attended Roslyn High a few years after the scandal, with the aftershocks still being felt years later. Makowsky and director Cory Finley (THOROUGHBREDS) tell the story in a straightforward and darkly comedic fashion that recalls Alexander Payne's ELECTION, though its humor is less cynical and more just the shock of the events that transpire. It stays generally faithful to the story, though Viswanathan's "Rachel Bhargava" is a fictional composite of several student reporters who secretly did the digging, checked and corroborated their sources, uncovered the extent of the criminal activity, and broke the story in the school's own Hilltop Beacon newspaper.
BOMBSHELL (US/Canada - 2019) Directed by Jay Roach. Written by Charles Randolph. Cast: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Allison Janney, Malcolm McDowell, Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, Mark Duplass, Liv Hewson, Brigitte Lundy-Paine, Rob Delaney, Stephen Root, Robin Weigert, Amy Landecker, Mark Moses, Richard Kind, Holland Taylor, Alanna Ubach, Anne Ramsay, Andy Buckley, Brooke Smith, Ben Lawson, Josh Lawson, Nazanian Boniadi, Brian d'Arcy James, Alice Eve, Elisabeth Rohm, Bree Condon, Ashley Greene, Tricia Helfer, Jennifer Morrison, Lisa Canning, Ahna O'Reilly, John Rothman, Tony Plana, Kevin Dorff, P.J. Byrne, Spencer Garrett, Michael Buie, Marc Evan Jackson, Katie Aselton. (R, 109 mins)
A chronicle of the Fox News sexual harassment scandal that brought down chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, BOMBSHELL belongs to that same "ripped from the headlines" subgenre that gave us THE BIG SHORT and VICE, generally decent films that provide easy Oscar bait for big-name actors to do uncanny impressions of ubiquitous figures. BOMBSHELL is very much in line with those films, and could make an unofficial trilogy with director Jay Roach's two previous HBO political docudramas, 2008's RECOUNT and 2012's GAME CHANGE. Those were instant Emmy and Golden Globe magnets, with RECOUNT giving Laura Dern a chance to do a remarkable take on Florida Attorney General Katharine Harris, and GAME CHANGE showcasing Julianne Moore and Ed Harris as dead-on versions of Sarah Palin and John McCain, respectively. But because these stories are so recent and the 24-hour news cycle so constantly there and in our faces, BOMBSHELL falls into the same trap as the rest of these kinds of movies: it entertains but offers nothing that we don't already know. Given Roach's history with HBO, it's surprising that BOMBSHELL is even in theaters. It follows the same formula and style as RECOUNT and GAME CHANGE, eschewing the snarky smartassery that Adam McKay brought to THE BIG SHORT and VICE, opting instead for occasional fourth-wall breaking while generally keeping it straightforward and serious.
The Fox News scandal broke in 2016 and BOMBSHELL is already the second 2019 project to tackle Ailes as a subject, following the Showtime limited series THE LOUDEST VOICE, with Russell Crowe as Ailes and Naomi Watts as Gretchen Carlson, the fired Fox News personality who was the first to sue him for sexual harassment. THE LOUDEST VOICE was more about the entire Ailes story, starting with the establishment of Fox News, while BOMBSHELL just deals with the scandal, with the focus being on Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), who finds herself under fire as the film opens in 2015, just after her debate scuffle with Donald Trump that led to his infamous "blood coming out of her...wherever" comment. Ailes (John Lithgow, with prosthetic jowls and a NUTTY PROFESSOR fat suit) sympathizes with the way Trump supporters are raging at her on Twitter, but wants her to play nice, as Fox and Trump are well on their way to a perpetual state of symbiotic co-dependence. At the same time, Carlson (Nicole Kidman) is ruffling feathers on the afternoon dead zone she's been given after being bounced from the highly-rated morning show FOX & FRIENDS, and when she's eventually fired, she decides to blow the doors off the worst-kept secret in the building: that Ailes is a serial sexual harasser and all-around creep, and that the network's "boys club"--the costly harassment settlements of Bill O'Reilly (played here by Kevin Dorff) are unspoken common knowledge among the grunts in the newsroom--has made for a toxic work environment. The mood is also fueled by deranged, right-wing paranoia that comes straight from Ailes, who at one point makes an off-the-cuff remark to his legal team about an Obama White House plot to have him murdered, a comment so batshit crazy that even his attorney Rudy Giuliani (Richard Kind) is seen looking away in incredulous discomfort.
The third figure in the story is the most problematic in that she's a wholly fictional creation of Roach and screenwriter Charles Randolph (a co-writer of THE BIG SHORT). Margot Robbie is the improbably-named Kayla Pospisil, a composite character meant to show the kind of treatment given to established vets like Kelly and Carlson when they were ambitious youngsters at the network. Composite characters are very often a necessity with dramatic narrative recreations, and while it's no fault of Robbie's, the script just requires Kayla to be too many things at once. Ostensibly an "evangelical millennial" with a repressed upbringing in a staunchly far-right church family, Kayla is at Fox News to be a voice for young conservatives. She's first shown in a control booth, demonstrating no knowledge of the Eagles or classic rock in general when she puts a photo of Don Henley on the air to accompany a breaking news report on the death of Glenn Frey, blaming the gaffe on "never listening to secular music." The next time we see her, she's telling Carlson that she's leaving her staff to work for O'Reilly (wait...when was she on Carlson's staff in the first place?). Right after that, she's hopping into bed with a closeted lesbian cubicle mate (Kate McKinnon), who's a secret Hillary Clinton supporter. It's rightly disgusting and infuriating when we see ambitious Kayla requesting a meeting with Ailes and ending up being subjected to his degrading requests that she pull up her skirt for him, and the squirm-inducing scene is played very well by Robbie and Lithgow. But Robbie simply can't assemble a believable character out of the wildly disparate pieces she's been given.
Kidman has a good amount of screen time, but her story generally takes a backseat to what goes on with Robbie's Kayla and Theron's Megyn Kelly. Theron is definitely the MVP here, with just the right amount of subtle prosthetics combined with an astonishing mimicry of Kelly's voice, cadence, and speaking style. It's one of the most believable transformations of an actor into a real-life figure in recent memory. There's been some chatter online complaining that the film makes Kelly a hero, but that's another discussion for another time. No one deserves to be a victim of sexual harassment, and BOMBSHELL isn't about Megyn Kelly's dubious comments as a Fox News personality or during her short tenure at NBC. Briskly-paced and well-acted (except for the one scene between Theron and Robbie, which comes off as strangely clunky), with Theron and Lithgow being the standouts, BOMBSHELL also boasts a very large supporting cast, including Malcolm McDowell as Rupert Murdoch, Allison Janney as Ailes attorney Susan Estrich, Spencer Garrett as Sean Hannity, Tony Plana as Geraldo Rivera, a perfectly-cast Alanna Ubach as Judge Jeanine Pirro, Mark Moses as the loathsome Bill Shine, Anne Ramsay as Greta Van Susteren, Bree Condon as a Mean Girl-ish Kimberly Guilfoyle, P.J. Byrne as Neil Cavuto, and Connie Britton as Ailes' endlessly supportive wife, introduced scoffing at an employee for eating "liberal" grocery store sushi. Like RECOUNT, GAME CHANGE, THE BIG SHORT, and VICE, BOMBSHELL is perfectly fine entertainment and it'll almost certainly be up for major awards (Theron and Lithgow are both deserving). But once you get past the dedication and diligence of the performances, do these films have any lasting impact beyond that first viewing? THE BIG SHORT was great, but have I thought "I need to rewatch THE BIG SHORT" even once in the four years since I saw it in the theater?
MA (US - 2019) Directed by Tate Taylor. Written by Scotty Landes. Cast: Octavia Spencer, Juliette Lewis, Diana Silvers, Luke Evans, McKaley Miller, Corey Fogelmanis, Allison Janney, Missi Pyle, Gianni Paolo, Dante Brown, Dominic Burgess, Tanyell Waivers, Tate Taylor, Heather Marie Pate, Margaret Eaton, Kyanna Simone Simpson, Matthew Welch, Skyler Joy, Nicole Carpenter. (R, 99 mins) Octavia Spencer won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 2011's THE HELP and she reunites with that film's director Tate Taylor for MA, a wildly entertaining, hard-R horror outing from Blumhouse. It's refreshing that neither lets their prestigious resumes--Spencer has logged two Oscar nods since, and Taylor went on to direct GET ON UP and THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN--keep them from going all-in on this, as MA does a commendable job of emulating the kind of crowd-pleasing, audience-participation genre offering that was commonplace in the '80s. Spencer has a blast here, bringing to mind Isabelle Huppert's performance in this year's earlier "(blank)-from-Hell" '90s throwback GRETA, as well as Kathy Bates' unforgettable turn as Annie Wilkes in MISERY. MA has a shocking and disturbing event at its core, one that has haunted the title character and influenced every decision she's made since, but it never loses sight that its primary function is being a solid summer horror flick. And a surprising one at that, as it gets unexpectedly darker and more deranged as it goes on.
16-year-old Maggie Thompson (BOOKSMART's Diana Silvers, who looks like the Leelee Sobieski to Anne Hathaway's Helen Hunt) has just moved from San Diego to her mom Erica's (Juliette Lewis) podunk hometown in Ohio after her parents' bitter divorce (the specifics are never mentioned, but the fact that they went across the country and Maggie is starting at a new school in February are indicators that they're getting as far away from her father as quickly as possible). Shy Maggie becomes fast friends with an unlikely clique consisting of snarky troublemaker Haley (McKaley Miller), nice guy Andy Hawkins (Corey Fogelmanis), dudebro Chaz (Gianni Paolo), and affable sidekick Darrell (Dante Brown). With nothing to do except get drunk and high at the rock quarry, they hang out in the parking lot of a carryout and manage to convince lonely, middle-aged veterinary assistant Sue Ann Ellington (Spencer) to buy beer and liquor for them. This becomes a regular thing to the point where Sue Ann, nicknamed "Ma" by the crew, offers her basement to them as a safe place to hang out and party. Maggie immediately gets a strange vibe from Ma but goes along to get along and soon, word gets around the school that Ma's is the place to be. But everyone has to follow Ma's rules, the most strict being that the rest of the house is off-limits.
Of course, Ma is a lunatic who's barely hanging on by a thread. She's always dropping the ball at her job, unable to focus, and pissing off her boss (Allison Janney, another Oscar-winner in a strangely minor supporting role). Ma spends her free time stalking Diana and the others on social media and texting them and sending videos at all hours ("Don't make me drink alone!"). She even manipulates them by fabricating a story about having pancreatic cancer when they decide to ditch her following a violent outburst after Maggie and Haley have to use the upstairs bathroom when the basement one is occupied. There's a method to Ma's madness, and it all stems from a traumatic event from her past, when an awkward, teenage Sue Ann (Kyanna Simone Simpson) was the victim of an unspeakably cruel prank pulled off by Andy's dad Ben (Luke Evans in the present, Matthew Welch in flashbacks) and his friends--which included a young Erica (Skyler Joy)--that made her the laughingstock of the high school.
Obligatory De Palma split diopter shot, as required by law
This connection between the adult characters is established fairly early on, and doing it that soon is really the only major flaw of the film. The fate of one of them, Mercedes (Missi Pyle), a bitchy mean girl who grew up into a bitchy mean alcoholic who still blows Ben in a parked truck on his lunch break, seems like something's missing, or that it should have some additional resolution, considering how small the town is and how the local sheriff (director Taylor) already seems to have Ma on his radar. Logic lapses and minor quibbles in the big picture, but by fumbling these sorts of small details, it makes MA seem like a film that could've benefited from being maybe 10-15 minutes longer. It's small enough that it doesn't really detract from the effectiveness of MA, which counters its subject matter with some big laughs, whether it's a hard-partying Ma doing The Robot to Lipps Inc's "Funkytown," or flooring it and mowing someone down with her truck and muttering "Fuckin' cunt" into the rearview mirror while Earth Wind & Fire's "September" blares on her radio, a priceless Octavia Spencer moment that's undoubtedly going viral soon. There probably isn't much room for MA among the summer product rolling off the CGI assembly line, but it's one that will unquestionably enjoy a long life on streaming and cable.
