Also caught up on the 2016 Jackie, which stars Natalie Portman in an Academy Award nominated performance as Jacqueline Kennedy. Very good performance in a pretty mediocre film.
Set immediately before, during, and at various points within a couple weeks after the assassination of JFK, the movie follows Jackie Kennedy as she deals with the fallout. The weird structure of the movie seems to be trying to hide how dull it is. It constantly jumps between an interview she gives two weeks after the death, to her dealing with the funeral procession, to her immediate shock after the shooting, to her talking to a priest right before the funeral, and to her filming the White House tour she’s was famous for. The time periods covered were so close to each other as to make the movie feel not confident in the story.
But Natalie Portman does a good job showing the kind of annoying breathy persona Jackie used in public and the slightly more steely (but still kind of passive) presentation she used in private (I guess).
But Portman is not enough to save the flick. It just wanders around its jumpy structure, gives a lot of portentous and important speeches, and winds up awkwardly worshiping “Camelot” (though its possible the movie is cynical about that presentation). Also, we get JFK’s exploding brain… which is both tasteless and impressive that the movie went that dark and gory.
It’s possible you may like it more, depending on your memories of the Kennedies (of which I have none that isn’t based in popular culture’s worship).
Score: 65