Jackie.

Chilean filmmaker Pablo Lorrain has made some very good movies including Tony Manero in 2008, Post Mortem in 2010 and No in 2012 but his latest movie, his first in the English language, is certainly not up to the standard of these three and to my mind nowhere near as good as the hype would have you believe. Jackie (2016) has been nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Costume Design, Best Original Score and a Best Actress Nomination for Natalie Portman, if this years BAFTA's is anything to go by, will probably manage to win Best Costume Design and certainly not Best Actress for Portman who mumbled her way through the talky role making it very difficult to understand what she was saying.

This biographical drama, originally conceived as a HBO miniseries, basically deals with the week between John F Kennedy assassination on the 22^nd November 1963, his burial and when his wife and two children Caroline and John Jnr, who died in a plane crash in 1999 at the age of 38, leave the White House for the last time. Noah Oppenheim's lack lustre screenplay is partly based on Theodore H White's Life magazine interview with Jackie Kennedy a week after her husband’s death. It was during this interview that inappropriately the delusional ex First Lady compared the Kennedy years with King Arthur's mythical Camelot - the first American president to encompass the celebrity culture and to spend $2 million on the restoration of the White House, not quite the Knights of the Round Table.

 

The fatal last journey.

Larrain's movie is a rather hollow look at the period and at times minds numbingly boring not helped by the Journalist (Billy Crudup) interview that adds nothing to the film and would have been better without it. The drama is non-existent only the scene in Dallas when JFK gets shot during the motorcade shows any pretence of the story coming to life.

 

The infamous blood stained pink suit.

The film also stars Peter Sarsgaard as Robert F Kennedy with whom Jackie seems to have a rather intimate relationship, although who can blame her when her husband spent a minimal amount of time sharing her marital bed and John Hurt as Jackie's father confessor, this was his final film release before his death in January 2017and shows why he will be missed and to be quite honest the only actor in this charade to earn his salary.

Night Moves.

Far from perfect and not the directors best film, Night Moves (2013) is the story of three miss matched environmental warriors who set out the blow up a hydroelectric dam by purchasing a boat, from which the film gets its name, and packing it with fertiliser. The three protagonists are the dour environmentalist Josh played by an equally dour Jesse Eisenberg an actor that does not have ‘smile’ in his repertoire and tends to be typecast as the ‘defeated human being’, Dakota Fanning is the little rich girl who has dropped out of college, and the brains behind the project is ex marine Harmon a role that really suits actor Peter Sarsgaard. In the first half of the story we witness them planning the action, moving the boat up to the dam and attaching a timer device to carry out their act of sabotage. In the second part we observe how each of them deals with the aftermath of their environmental activism and what effects it has on their fundamentalist mind sets.

 

Peter Sarsgaard provides the brains behind the operation. 

I’m sure director Kelly Reichardt, who co wrote the movie with her regular writer Jon Raymond; set out to make what she deemed to be an important cinematic statement in which she poses a morale question ‘would we be capable of carrying out acts of terrorism to coincide with our own personnel beliefs’?  Admittedly we can all sit at home and become cyber worriers but have we got the bottle to carry out a direct action that could endanger your own life and possible others in the collateral damage that normally follow’s such an action? Reichardt’s movie is telling us what we already know, our world is deemed to be in danger, in peril, and would we act, how do we value human life, most of us will value it highly but others may be of the opinion that the end justifies the means! Radicalism[1] is the description that the media would give this group of three people who join forces to carry out the political act demonstrated in the film. The films narrative, as I have opined, involves the affect that this type of act has on the people involved, who admittedly start out with an enthusiastic zeal that may or may not last after the incident. The director admits that film does not deliberately set out to mimic any other political group of the present or in fact of the past and is deliberately set in a post 9/11 world where the penalties are very high for acts of terrorism, - environmental or otherwise.  

 

Dakota Fanning provides the finance.

and Jesse Eisenberg  never smiles!

I did not have a great deal of time for Reichardt’s Old Joy (2006), but both Wendy and Lucy (2008), a road movie without a car and Meeks Cutoff (2010), a western without a cowboy, are fine examples of Independent American film making. But this latest movie, although thought provoking, did not grip me, which I believe is partly down to the non-charismatic portrayal of the characters.  A better movie that cover’s similar territory, and one I would urge you to see, is Zal Batmanglij’s The East (2012).

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[1] Politics advocating major changes.

An Education

Jenny and her friends.

If Nick Hornby is responsible for a screenplay then you can bet that the script will include some great lines, some of the best are reserved for Rosamund Pike as the dippy Helen and Emma Thompson as the Headmistress in An Education (2009). Directed by the Dane Lone Scherfig this movie on a second viewing is still a joy from beginning to end. Set in 1961/62 and based on journalist Lynn Barbers autobiographical article about her schooldays. This coming of age drama stars Carey Mulligan, who is a breath of fresh air as Jenny a very bright 16-year-old in her final year at school studying for a place at Oxford. One a wet afternoon on her way home from orchestra practice she is picked up by the suave David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard) in his rare Bristol 405 sports car. What follows is her seduction, not only by the ‘charming’ David, but also by the seemingly carefree lifestyle that he and his friends Helen and Danny (Dominic Cooper) enjoy. Jenny must decide where her future lies and does not get a lot of helpful advice from her lower middle class parents played by Alfred Molina in his best East Cheam manner and Cara Seymour as the rather more astute parent. This British movie was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actress (Carey Mulligan) and Best Adapted Screenplay.