I very much look forward to this, believing it may do both Jackie and Camelot some justice, long past due. [youtube]pZTXv5NpgaI[/youtube]
I like Natalie Portman. Met her when she was attending Harvard. Very down to earth, glad she's been successful.
I had an opportunity to tour the Kennedy childhood home in Brookline MA. Very interesting and worth the time. https://www.nps.gov/jofi/index.htm
Coach, don't you have more pressing things to do than peruse a forum, particularly a non-football forum?
Overall, a 6 out of 10. And that's being somewhat generous. For the casual viewer who didn't know most of these happenings, it will likely fare much, much better - say 8 out of 10. Portman is excellent, but there isn't enough there to warrant serious Oscar consideeation, save she gets almost purely sympathy and nostalgia-driven votes. Both her role and the movie were just plain lacking in substance and direction. The film is told from Jackie's vantage point, but weaves the action via her re-telling of events to a reporter, meaning, it's not a linear style movie, but more like a setup / intro to snippets or vignettes of actual scenes, and frankly, quite a lot is lost. Overall, some of the scenes were fantastic, but just as you'd be immersed in one, another scene with the reporter would yank it away, anew. It missed a deep and wide opportunity to tell Jackie's story had it done more than merely followed her from assasination through burial, disjointed as it was. Both her pre and post-assassination life would have been spectacularly better. This seemed contrived, small, and but a momentary and largely fractured picture of her and her time. The choice for JFK - a notoriously difficult figure to cast - was ok, for the most part (although he was several notable inches too short). The choice for Bobby - also a difficult person to cast - was one of the worst I've ever seen in any film, bar none, and cost the film 1-2 points on my scale, alone. I honestly think that the sheriff from Blazing Saddles would have been better. Or Barney. Maybe that's hyperbole, but it was a terrible casting job, maybe the worst ever. He was a great Bobby, except he completely failed to look, sound or act anything like him, at all. It's like the film had failed to ever research Bobby, to have seen him, and hoped that no one else would have, either. There were plenty of examples of artistic license, but none of a particularly egregious quality.
