Posted: 12/3/16 at 12:18pm
Scrambling to catch this as soon as I can! I'm out of town this weekend, and the fact that it's only currently in "select theaters" pains me. Can't wait for it.
Posted: 12/3/16 at 2:38pm
Pompous and pretentious, the Emperor's New Clothes.
Posted: 12/3/16 at 2:44pm
I don't think I've ever disagreed with you about anything. But wow.
Posted: 12/3/16 at 6:20pm
Maybe I'm too much of a Kennedy purist. To me, it just felt like a British production of Sondheim.
Updated On: 12/3/16 at 06:20 PM
Posted: 12/3/16 at 8:59pm
Ouch
Posted: 12/4/16 at 1:38am
It's my favorite film of 2016. A truly legendary performance.
Posted: 12/18/16 at 2:16pm
Saw it last night, and I'm with Pal Joey. This is awful. It's like watching someone do a laughably bad Jackie Kennedy impression for 90 minutes. You're all just pulling a Florence Foster Jenkins and just pretending she's good, right? How cruel. Natalie deserves to know the truth.
Posted: 12/18/16 at 2:19pm
Da fuk are you even talking about?
Posted: 12/19/16 at 9:42pm
Who do foreign filmmakers keep thinking they understand America?
Ugh, that was bad.
Posted: 12/20/16 at 2:21pm
Oh, thank God. Saw this last week and thought it was painful. I'm glad others agree.
A real chore to sit though. I kept thinking to myself "where are they going with this?" What was the film trying to accomplish?
Emma Stone remains the one to beat.
Updated On: 12/20/16 at 02:21 PM
Posted: 12/20/16 at 10:09pm
Stone is not the one to beat. It's another season of Natalie winning the televised precursors. They'll both win Globes, as they are in separate categories, but Portman is the one to beat on Oscar night.
Posted: 12/21/16 at 10:09am
I loved pretty much everything about this film. The gorgeous production design, the tense score, Portman's inscrutable Jackie, the film's chilly and unsentimental tone. I'm shocked people here are turning their noses up.
Posted: 12/21/16 at 11:55am
I hated the score and hated Portman. It was such a weird and awkward performance. I felt like she was playing Jackie as a schizophrenic with a narcissistic personality disorder. I was alternately laughing to myself and squirming in my seat. It's like she was trying to mimic Jackie but lacked either the grace or basic understanding of her personality and manner of speaking to pull it off. I really think it's one of the worst performances I've ever seen in a major motion picture, so I have no idea what movie everyone else saw.
Then on the opposite end of the spectrum was Peter Sarsgaard, who didn't even try to mimic Bobby and looked nothing like him, either. Weird, weird movie.
Updated On: 12/21/16 at 11:55 AM
Posted: 12/21/16 at 2:45pm
I feel like this board rarely enjoys anything, especially films. So I rarely post.
Portman received rave reviews across the board. The film itself was warmly welcomed by the majority of critics and publications.
To this viewer, there was no sign of an impersonation. I felt like Portman took it beyond what we've seen other actresses do with that role in the past. I was strangely transfixed the entire time, and was never hyper conscious of the fact that I was watching Natalie Portman -- something I struggle with in regard to any successful film actor. I adored the performance, and the film at large. She is on track to another Oscar win for this performance.
Posted: 12/21/16 at 4:24pm
Whether she wins or not, this is a performance for the ages. I liked that it was a character study about a woman dealing with unshakeable grief and the aftermath of a horrific moment in the public eye. And I thought Larrain was exactly the kind of director to not treat Jackie Kennedy as an icon but rather as a very specific character in this film (and I didn't think the film was trying to pretend this was the "real" version of what happened or who she was, but rather a very subjective take). Portman's performance is one of the greats in my book, I just loved every single choice she made, I found it so bold and surprising and mesmerizing. And the cinematography, the score, the script, the ensemble, Greta Gerwig directing Jackie to smile! Easily in my top three movies of the year.
Posted: 12/21/16 at 4:35pm
I think it's a generational thing. To people who never knew the real Jackie, Portman's performance and Larrain's direction are mesmerizing.
To people old enough to have known her or been inspired by her fierce courage in the face of the paparazzi and sparkling wit and intellect (when she became a publisher) and visionary leadership (when she stood up to the Trumps of New York single-handedly saved Grand Central and created the concert of urban preservation), the movie and the performance are lackluster and simple-minded.
Posted: 12/21/16 at 4:59pm
I get that. But the film only covers, what...four days in the life? It's not a miniseries. If it had been, Portman would have never gotten near it, and it would have been just like all the other films on her life. Sentimental, and earnest. I loved, loved, LOVED how the "character" was handled in those few days featured in the story being told. It could easily be a generational thing, but nearly every person who has seen the film has raved about the film and Natalie. I hadn't heard anything less than until I read the reactions on this board.
Posted: 12/21/16 at 5:15pm
It still reduces her character to a coma-like simplification of the frightened Jackie we saw during her televised White House tour in February 1962.
During the 21 months between that tour (which Portman and Larrian obviously studied) and the assassination we saw her grow into a dynamic woman.
The film failed to capture that dynamism--or chose not to.
Posted: 12/21/16 at 7:02pm
Okay, but the film doesn't tell the story of the woman between the tour and the shooting. It is not meant to. We are shown pieces of time where she was ill at ease at the beginning of the administration, and then the destroyed but still getting by for the sake of everyone woman in the days following her husband's murder. The film deliberately uses those chunks of time to show the strength and backbone she eventually found when she seemingly had no other choice. This is all my opinion of course. The film could have fleshed out the character more, but what would have been lost is the brisk running time and I believe the power and immediacy of the action shown. This is not a by the numbers biopic, rather very much an art house, even abstract way of telling an all too familiar story. What we see as a viewer is just enough.
Posted: 12/21/16 at 9:57pm
PalJoey said: "
I think it's a generational thing. To people who never knew the real Jackie, Portman's performance and Larrain's direction are mesmerizing.
To people old enough to have known her or been inspired by her fierce courage in the face of the paparazzi and sparkling wit and intellect (when she became a publisher) and visionary leadership (when she stood up to the Trumps of New York single-handedly saved Grand Central and created the concert of urban preservation), the movie and the performance are lackluster and simple-minded.
"
I don't know. I'm 28. Portman was fine, I suppose. It just all meandered along for what felt like forever.
Not that it means anything, but Stone has been ahead on Goldderby for just about all of this awards season.
Updated On: 12/21/16 at 09:57 PM
Posted: 12/21/16 at 10:37pm
But if you look carefully, you will see that Portman has closed in on Stone in those "predictions." Stone seemed the easy win being in a Best Picture front runner. And then Jackie screened more, and the tides began to shift. Not much else will change in the coming weeks as they're both going to win Globes. But if Portman takes SAG, it's a done deal. She received Blanchett in "Blue Jasmine"-like reviews, and is racking up critics wins by the day.
Posted: 12/21/16 at 10:56pm
east side story, I really appreciate your commitment to this film and Portman's performance! I've yet to see it, but I'm hoping that I'll finally be able to catch it this weekend, and I'm really looking forward to it. I do want to ask though, have you seen La La Land yet? Emma Stone's performance totally knocked me over in it, and it's hard to imagine anything coming close to it this year—though I'm holding out until I see Jackie. Just wondering if you've seen it yet and can actually compare!
Posted: 12/22/16 at 12:55am
Yes, I have seen LLL. I thought Emma Stone was enchanting while taking a one dimensional character on the page and bringing wonderful life to it! I think in a less competitive year she could win. While her film will easily pick up a wagon full of gold men this season, Best Actress will not be one of them. Side note: I strongly disliked her in her last Academy Award nominated performance. I thought she was awful in Birdman. She totally redeemed herself in La La Land, a film I enjoyed as a whole but was not totally in love with. I walked out of Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, and yes, Jackie, on a much bigger high. Or more inpressed? LLL strikes me as more of a directorial and technical achievement. The lead performances are entertaining, but not especially noteworthy. The leads have charm in spades, but neither are Oscar-caliber. While he is on the shortlist, I actually would not be totally surprised if Gosling was left out come nomination day.
Jackie is likely to only go home with one Oscar, but it's a marketable, above the line win. Portman is the film, and the film is Portman. Her winning is reward and award enough.
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