I don’t know why I forgot to watch Bad Education on the HBO screener site, but it may have been a combination of exhaustion due to wall painting, general pandemic depression and day dreaming about sailing the South Seas. Then again it premieres two hours hence (8 pm Eastern) so I’ll catch it then.

Great reviews (RT 92%) during last September’s Toronto Film Festival, and yet — this is a minor point — of all the reviews I’ve read not one has mentioned that the aspect ratio of Bad Education is 2.39:1. Not one.

“Based on a real-life scandal, Bad Education is a small and economical movie, but not slight, as it gives us a good taste of the banality of greed and entitlement, never turning its compromised characters into easily dismissed comic monsters.

“Written by Mike Makowsky and directed by Cory Finley, it shows us just how good Frank is at his job and just how much he cares about his young charges, before it lets us discover the extent of his vanity and self-serving needs. Finley and Makowsky achieve a tone that swings expertly between pathos and dark humor.” — from Matthew Gilbert’s Boston Globe review, posted on 4.23.

And it’s not a six-parter! It actually does the job in less than two hours.