I miss school, now that it's out, mostly because I spent a lot of time this year thinking and writing about it for a Star series on public education. Luckily, there's the summer movie, Bad Teacher. People like me, who are on the left or, as Alexander Cockburn wickedly says, "pwogwessives," are supposed to hate it because it portrays teachers negatively at a time when they're under right-wing attack for being the chief cause of U.S. education failure. But I adored the film.

Terrence Malick's film, The Tree of Life, opens today. It won the Palme d'or at Cannes, a big prestigious deal. Like his others, it inspires something nearer reverence than mere respect: for its "audacity and vision" in "excavating primal, eternal meanings" and for its "sheer beauty."

These abstractions are like the solemn voice-overs in his films, which scatter words like evil, wicked, "the spark." There are always gorgeous shots of nature that you tend to be aware of as gorgeous. I don't mean there's anything phony in his obsessions; he's a Christian seeker who makes lush films he agonizes over. For critics they may come as relief after too many movies about hangovers and superheroes.