TIFF: A Good Time with "Bad Education"

by Chris Feil

Long Island public school administration corruption comes to light in Cory Finley’s Bad Education, a sharp examination of early 2000s secrets hidden in plain sight. A young school paper reporter Rachel (Blockers’ Geraldine Viswanathan) first goes looking for a quote on her high school’s flashy new building project. What she ultimately stumbles upon are records that reveal an embezzlement scheme funneling millions of taxpayer dollars into the interests of those at the top, including Hugh Jackman’s chief administrator Frank Tessone.

Based on an actual case of massive fraud, Bad Education is less salacious than you might expect and much more humanely interested. Mike Makowsky’s script starts with the big picture and focuses towards the personal, detailing not only the slippery slope of petty to major financial theft, but also the landmine of Tessone’s closeted sexuality in a culture that forces him into interiority. The film has a strong, smoothly told grasp on the finer points of the story, such as economic inequity, gender imbalance, and personal relationships allowing people to look the other way.

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"Hustlers" Collects the Cash

We're baa-aaack. We haven't done a box office post in two weeks due to our TIFF jaunt so we're dying to know what you've been watching while we were cramming fall and winter movies in. Next weekend things get VERY competitive with the Brad Pitt led sci-fi drama Ad Astra, the leap to the big screen for Downton Abbey, and yet another Sylvester Stallone milking-his-franchises sequel Rambo: Last Blood all arriving to compete with Pennywise and JLo for the box office crown.

The weekend estimates for all 14 pictures in wide release and the corresponding top platform titles are after the jump along with a few notes...

Weekend Box Office Sept 13th-15th (Estimates) 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = recommended
WIDE RELEASE (800+ screens)	PLATFORM TITLES
1 IT CHAPTER TWO $40.7 (cum. $153.8)	1 🔺 BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON  $1.5 on 757 screens (cum. $3.8) REVIEW ★

2 🔺  HUSTLERS $33.2 *new* REVIEW ★	2 🔺 LINDA RONSTADT: SOUND... [DOC] $734k (cum. $889k) on 220 screens

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Silly irreverent "JoJo Rabbit" wins TIFF's People's Choice Award. Is Oscar next?

by Nathaniel R

The Grolsch People's Choice Awards at TIFF has always been a strong omen for good Oscar fortunes.  Last year Green Book was a surprise winner (it wasn't even on most Best Picture prediction charts before the screenings started, it's sudden popularity in the Oscar race came via festival debut with little pre-release buzz). This year's winner is less of a shock to the Oscar system (TFE has at least been predicting it in multiple categories since the April Foolish predictions). The winner for 2019 is Taiki Waititi's "anti-hate satire" JoJo Rabbit about a young boy and his imaginary friend "Adolf Hitler".  Noah Baumbach's moving and surprisingly funny Marriage Story and Bong Joon-Ho's brilliant Parasite, which both played to packed satisfied houses, were the runners-up. Both of those pictures are also gunning for Best Picture citations come Oscar time, though obviously Parasite has a steeper hill to climb to get there given its subtitles as Oscar's hesitancy in embracing Asian cinema. Most of the people I spoke with in Canada were actually predicting that Parasite would take the win as TIFF had to keep adding screenings. But JoJo Rabbit it is...

Though the folks at Fox Searchlight are surely celebrating JoJo Rabbit's win the road to Oscar will be much more difficult...

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TIFF: "Lucy in the Sky" Flung Out of Taste

by Chris Feil

Fargo and Legion’s Noah Hawley makes his big screen directorial leap with Lucy in the Sky, a loosely transcribed true story stripped of its sensationalism. But despite this diaperless retelling of the infamous story of an earthbound astronaut’s struggles with mental illness and her eventual attempt on her lover’s life, Hawley still flattens the drama for this would-be intense character study. Even with Natalie Portman at its forefront, doing another of her signature bold, safety-net-free characterizations, Hawley’s more pseudo-humane vision is defined by its inertia. It’s too boring to be embarrassing...

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What will win Outstanding Comedy Series at the Emmys?

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

There are many factors that go into the way Emmy voters choose the winner of their top awards. Since we already covered drama, today we’re taking a look today at where the Best Comedy Series contenders stand from a statistical and recent history perspective.

Barry (Season 2 – 17 nominations)
HBO’s black comedy about a hitman who becomes an actor saw its nomination total increase by four from last year. Bill Hader and Henry Winkler both won last year, and now they’re joined by three other cast members. The show earned the requisite directing and writing bids, only one of two shows in this race to do so, and it’s evidently beloved by many. Some might not love the violence and dark nature of its story, but even if this isn’t the frontrunner, it has a good shot at being the potential spoiler in a competitive category...

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