|

Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search
Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

34
10,000 B.C.
55
Baby Mama
62
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The
36
College Road Trip
xx
Dark Knight, The
31
Deception
41
Drillbit Taylor
57
Forbidden Kingdom, The
67
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
54
Get Smart
49
Hancock
34
Happening, The
57
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
xx
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
71
Horton Hears a Who!
61
Incredible Hulk, The
65
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
79
Iron Man
xx
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
35
Jumper
73
Kung Fu Panda
24
Love Guru, The
37
Made of Honor
xx
Mamma Mia!
58
Mist, The
48
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
55
Nim's Island
22
Postal
69
Redbelt
44
Ruins, The
53
Sex and the City: The Movie
76
Shine a Light
37
Shutter
37
Speed Racer
61
Stop Loss
47
Strangers, The
55
Street Kings
33
Superhero Movie
93
WALL-E
64
Wanted
36
What Happens in Vegas...
54
You Don't Mess with the Zohan
93
WALL-E
79
Iron Man
76
Shine a Light
73
Kung Fu Panda
71
Horton Hears a Who!
69
Redbelt
67
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
65
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
64
Wanted
62
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The
61
Stop Loss
61
Incredible Hulk, The
58
Mist, The
57
Forbidden Kingdom, The
57
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
55
Street Kings
55
Nim's Island
55
Baby Mama
54
You Don't Mess with the Zohan
54
Get Smart
53
Sex and the City: The Movie
49
Hancock
48
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
47
Strangers, The
44
Ruins, The
41
Drillbit Taylor
37
Made of Honor
37
Shutter
37
Speed Racer
36
College Road Trip
36
What Happens in Vegas...
35
Jumper
34
Happening, The
34
10,000 B.C.
33
Superhero Movie
31
Deception
24
Love Guru, The
22
Postal
xx
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
xx
Dark Knight, The
xx
Mamma Mia!
xx
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

83
Alexandra
80
Band's Visit, The
76
Beauty in Trouble
47
Bella
80
Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
59
Blind Mountain
55
Bra Boys
60
Brick Lane
70
Caramel
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
83
Chop Shop
83
Chris & Don. A Love Story
78
Counterfeiters, The
52
Diminished Capacity
64
Dreams with Sharp Teeth
73
Duchess of Langeais, The
84
Edge of Heaven, The
52
Elsa & Fred
79
Encounters at the End of the World
62
Expired
64
Fall, The
51
Finding Amanda
57
Flawless
86
Flight of the Red Balloon, The
63
Foot Fist Way, The
60
Fugitive Pieces
45
Full Grown Men
55
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
69
Go-Getter, The
74
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
63
Gunnin for that #1 Spot
68
Heartbeat Detector
34
Holding Trevor
68
Honeydripper
55
Irina Palm
69
Jellyfish
60
Jihad for Love, A
68
Kabluey
62
Kiss the Bride
63
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
82
Last Mistress, The
38
Life Before Her Eyes, The
70
Love Songs
64
Married Life
30
Meet Bill
33
Miss Conception
53
Mister Lonely
74
Mongol
52
Mother of Tears, The
52
My Blueberry Nights
71
My Brother Is an Only Child
84
My Winnipeg
61
On the Rumba River
69
Operation Filmmaker
61
OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83
Paranoid Park
72
Priceless
51
Promotion, The
55
Quid Pro Quo
29
Red Roses and Petrol
79
Reprise
71
Roman de gare
xx
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
56
Sangre de mi sangre
51
Savage Grace
76
Shotgun Stories
66
Son of Rambow
70
Standard Operating Procedure
62
Stuck
72
Surfwise
81
Tell No One
56
Then She Found Me
xx
Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic
71
To the Limit
54
Tracey Fragments, The
70
Trumbo
72
Tuya's Marriage
83
U2 3D
56
Unknown Woman
86
Up the Yangtze
79
Visitor, The
62
Wackness, The
37
War, Inc.
64
Water Lilies
66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
55
Without the King
72
Woman on the Beach
64
XXY
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75
Young@Heart
86
Up the Yangtze
86
Flight of the Red Balloon, The
84
My Winnipeg
84
Edge of Heaven, The
83
Chop Shop
83
Paranoid Park
83
Alexandra
83
U2 3D
83
Chris & Don. A Love Story
82
Last Mistress, The
81
Tell No One
80
Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
80
Band's Visit, The
79
Reprise
79
Encounters at the End of the World
79
Visitor, The
78
Counterfeiters, The
76
Beauty in Trouble
76
Shotgun Stories
75
Young@Heart
74
Mongol
74
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
73
Duchess of Langeais, The
72
Woman on the Beach
72
Priceless
72
Tuya's Marriage
72
Surfwise
71
To the Limit
71
My Brother Is an Only Child
71
Roman de gare
70
Standard Operating Procedure
70
Trumbo
70
Love Songs
70
Caramel
69
Go-Getter, The
69
Operation Filmmaker
69
Jellyfish
68
Kabluey
68
Heartbeat Detector
68
Honeydripper
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
66
Son of Rambow
66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
64
Married Life
64
Dreams with Sharp Teeth
64
XXY
64
Water Lilies
64
Fall, The
63
Foot Fist Way, The
63
Gunnin for that #1 Spot
63
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
62
Stuck
62
Expired
62
Wackness, The
62
Kiss the Bride
61
OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
61
On the Rumba River
60
Fugitive Pieces
60
Brick Lane
60
Jihad for Love, A
59
Blind Mountain
57
Flawless
56
Unknown Woman
56
Then She Found Me
56
Sangre de mi sangre
55
Quid Pro Quo
55
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
55
Irina Palm
55
Bra Boys
55
Without the King
54
Tracey Fragments, The
53
Mister Lonely
52
Diminished Capacity
52
Elsa & Fred
52
Mother of Tears, The
52
My Blueberry Nights
51
Finding Amanda
51
Promotion, The
51
Savage Grace
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
47
Bella
45
Full Grown Men
38
Life Before Her Eyes, The
37
War, Inc.
34
Holding Trevor
33
Miss Conception
30
Meet Bill
29
Red Roses and Petrol
xx
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
xx
Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Bad Education
Sony Pictures Classics
FILM:
MPAA RATING: Not Rated
Starring
Gael García Bernal,
Fele Martínez,
Daniel Giménez Cacho,
Lluís Homar,
Javier Cámara,
Petra Martínez,
Nacho Pérez,
and
Raúl García Forneiro
In the early 60s, two boys - Ignacio and Enrique - discover love, movies and fear in a Christian school. Father Manolo, the school principal and Literature teacher, both witnesses and takes part in these discoveries. The three characters come against one another twice again, in the late 70s and in 1980. These meetings are set to change the life and death of some of them. (Club Cultura)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
Foreign
|
Suspense/Thriller
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Pedro Almodóvar
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Pedro Almodóvar
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: April 12, 2005
Video: April 12, 2005
Theatrical: November 19, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
105 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
Spain |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
Spanish (with English subtitles) |
Original title "La Mala Educación"

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
A rapturous masterwork.

100
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
Bad Education is a voluptuous experience that invites you to gorge on its beauty and vitality, although it has perhaps the darkest ending of any of the films by the Spanish writer and director.

100
New York Post
V.A. Musetto
From the Hitchcockian opening credits to the final frame, Almodovar has Hitch on his mind.

100
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
Almodóvar has created a dense, audacious film in which layers of cinematic artifice lovingly camouflage (at least for a while) its characters’ dark, damaged heart.

100
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
This is a brilliantly structured hall of mirrors that wraps Catholicism and the movie industry into a tasty film noir.

100
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
The result is one of Almodovar's darkest films since the early days of "Law of Desire" and "Matador," and certainly one of his finest.

100
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
To watch Bad Education is to revel, along with Almodovar, in the power of cinema to take us on journeys of breathtaking mystery and dimension and beauty.

100
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Bad Education, in this light, is Almodovar's "8-1/2" or "Day for Night," a lens through which all of his movies appear as a seamless whole. It's not the story of his actual life but, more excitingly, the deft, witty, bittersweet story of the life of his art.

100
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
With Bad Education, the great Almodóvar delivers the finest movie of his career.

91
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
It's a film noir that grows more potent as its secrets are revealed.

90
The New Yorker
David Denby
Complex and devious beyond easy recounting, Bad Education is about the fallout from the ending of a "pure" love between boys, consecrated in an Almodóvaran temple--a movie theatre.

90
Variety
Jonathan Holland
Superbly orchestrated, visually impressive.

90
LA Weekly
Scott Foundas
It's the director's most complexly ordered film to date - a labyrinth of ids, egos and alter egos waiting around blind corners - and may be the movies' most deliriously inventive narrative spiral since "Adaptation."

90
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
With Bad Education, Almodóvar is at his most breathtakingly complex and mature, and at his most pessimistic.

88
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Almodóvar has never been shy about experimenting with plot structure, but Bad Education is the closest he's ever come to a metamovie, the sort of self-reflective, hall-of-mirrors contraption on which Charlie Kaufman has built his career.

88
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
In this cross between film noir and melodrama, there's lust, need, camp and betrayal.

88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
A masterful epic charting love's labyrinths.

88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Pedro Almodovar's new movie is like an ingenious toy that is a joy to behold, until you take it apart to see what makes it work, and then it never works again.

80
Chicago Reader
Staff (Not credited)
If you're a fan of professional bad boy and Spanish gender bender Pedro Almodovar, far be it from me to dissuade you from enjoying this elaborate Chinese-box narrative, which boasts an especially resourceful performance by Gael Garcia Bernal.

80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
In accounting for Almodóvar's identity as an artist and a man, Bad Education comes together like a bold and far-reaching summation of his career to date.

75
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Spain's most important living filmmaker isn't at his very best in this complicated tale, but it raises still-timely questions well worth pondering.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
Intoxicating and flawed.

75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
Even when the plots of sexual confusions, transgression and tragedy became absurdly complicated and arbitrary, there was always the mise-en-scène to die for.

75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
A big change of pace for the bad-boy Spanish director. Like his other work, it's kinky and proudly gay, but this time it's not a comedy. It's a serious neo-film-noir, and a pretty darn good one at that.

70
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
By turns enthralling, seductive and deeply disturbing.

70
New York Magazine
Ken Tucker
May be at once too gimmicky and too sincere. But it still exerts an uncanny power: Like the best of Almodóvar’s work, it throws you a first-love sucker punch that will stagger your heart, mind, and soul.

63
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Ultimately, Bad Education must be considered to be a minor effort from a major director.

63
Chicago Tribune
Robert K. Elder
If only Bad Education engaged the heart as much as the head, Almodovar's fractured tale might have risen above its alienating noir conventions.

60
Dallas Observer
Melissa Levine
Begins as comedy, morphs into drama and only belatedly introduces the noir requisites of subterfuge, cunning and death--none of which, by that time, is necessary or even welcome. There is a great deal of life in this movie, and also promise, but its creepy ending betrays its sincere and painful core.

60
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
There's something dull and evasive at the film's center--for one thing, contrary to its festival buzz, Bad Education tiptoes around the issue of priesthood pedophilia; lovelorn gazes are as desperate as it gets.

50
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
After two flat-out triumphs in a row, "All About My Mother" in 1999 and last year's breathtaking "Talk To Her," Pedro Almodóvar hasn't done it again. Yet lesser Almodóvar -- in this instance "Bad Education" -- is better than most of the movies we see.
50
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
Leaves the viewer with the sense of a writing-directing talent concocting complexities. Everything he touches is well-turned, but he now feels compelled to put the pieces together in something other than a lucid design.

50
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
The movie gets as overblown and masochistic as the worst Joan Crawford vehicle. Its saving grace is that Bernal really does have his own deep-set, smoldering variation on Bette Davis eyes.

10
Film Threat
Phil Hall
Such garbage that taking a shower at the Bates Motel is a more appealing alternative.


The average user rating for this movie is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 40 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Read more user comments...
Discuss this movie in our forums |
|