Less a biopic than an intimate character study, “Jackie,” sees Natalie Portman play one of the most famous women of the twentieth century, first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. DirectoPablo Larraín personalizes the reaction to assassination of John F. Kennedy, presenting a portrait of grief that values rawness over slick sentimentality.
Focussing on the events immediately following November 22, 1963, the film cuts through the carefully constructed image Jacqueline Kennedy presented to the world. Instead it shows her as a grieving widow struggling to fulfil her personal responsibilities under the scrutiny of the American people and White House staff.
Larraín employs a standard biopic starting point—an interview with a journalist (Billy Crudup)—to frame the tale, but then throws all other familiar biographical approaches out the window. Kennedy’s story is a tragic one played out on the world stage and yet the film is never mawkish. It is a look at the end of “Camelot”—the musical and the ideological state of mind it personified for the Kennedy administration—as a psychological portrait of the woman at the very centre of it all.
Portman plays Kennedy not from the point of view of history—she is remembered for her grace and dignity—but as a woman fraying around the edges as she ponders the gravity of her situation and the legacy that will be left behind. She doesn’t look like Kennedy but, in a performance largely captured in close up, creates a portrait that seamlessly blends the poised, public Kennedy persona with a woman on the verge of a breakdown. It is often harrowing and certainly shows a different side of Kennedy than any other look at the subject.
“Jackie” is a bold film that values visceral feelings over glossy convention. It presumes much in its efforts to peer into the cracks of history, taking abundant artistic licence with what some will see as an intrusive look into Kennedy’s life. This is not “Camelot,” it’s the flipside of that romantic fairy tale.
Natalie Portman is best known as an actress, an Oscar winner for portraying the dark side of perfection in “Black Swan,” and a box office champ, recently playing comic book heroine Jane Foster in the “Thor” movies. In “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” she expands her resume to include director.
Based on the worldwide Amos Oz best-seller, this Hebrew language film is an ambitious debut that details the beginnings of the State of Israel. The story centers on Oz (Amir Tessler), a child of six-years-old when we meet him in 1945 as Israel is comes into being. His parents, librarian Arieh (Gilad Kahana) and devoted mother, Fania (Portman), soon find that after years of persecution the peace they hoped for is just out of reach. Violence and the First Arab-Israeli War take a terrible toll on Fania.
By necessity Portman, who also wrote the script, has condensed the ideas in Oz’s book, stripping away some of the coming-of-age elements and political commentary to present the personal of a woman’s struggle as seen through the eyes of a child. The film does not lack for sincerity and never feels like a vanity project. This is a deeply felt film that deals in sensitive and complex feelings. Frequently it realizes Portman’s ambition to make a personal film about a world event. The stories Fania tells her son are beautifully rendered but “A Tale of Love and Darkness” is less successful in its attempts to portray the mother’s building depression.
Overall “A Tale of Love and Darkness” is a handsome film that relies a bit too heavily on narration to forward its story. As an actor-turned-director Portman aims high, taking chances and never allowing the weight of the material to bog down the film.
Sometimes it can be hard to be a Terrence Malick fan. At their best the director’s poetic films are soulful investigations of the human spirit. His greatest movies—“Tree of Life,” “Badlands”—are masterworks of spiritual introspection but his worst work crosses the lane into pretention in a way that makes Kanye West’s Twitter account look humble. It can be a struggle to actually enjoy some of his work, but never have I battled with a Malick movie the way I did with “Knight of Cups.” Fought to stay in my seat until the end. It’s a cure for insomnia not unlike watching expensive, glossy paint dry.
Broken into chapters with titles like Judgment, Death and The Hanged Man, the film stars Christian Bale as Rick, a successful but desperately unhappy Hollywood screenwriter. Like an extended episode of “Seinfeld” were nothing happens, Rick wanders around the screen accompanied by a series of beautiful women—Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Isabel Lucas, Teresa Palmer and Freida Pinto—but ultimately cannot find joy with any of them. He strolls through life with a sad sack expression on his face that makes Sad Keanu seem jubilant, moving from woman to woman, rueing, “All of those years living a life of someone I did not know.”
Apparently inspired by the 1678 Christian allegory “The Pilgrim’s Progress” and the passage “Hymn of the Pearl” from “The Acts of Thomas,” “Knight of Cups,” is, I suppose supposed to be a dreamy look into one man’s life, but is this a sense memory visualized for the big screen or is it just the self-indulgent ramblings of an auteur? As Helen (Pinto) tells Rick, “Dreams are nice but you can’t live in them.”
Part of the problem is Malick’s storytelling, or more rightly, lack thereof. The film follows Malick’s trademarked impressionistic style but seems to have been assembled by a Random Shot Generator. Indiscriminate images of Los Angeles flood the screen—wild parties, an Antonio Banderas cameo, earthquakes, palm trees, movie studio back lots—accompanied by mumbled dialogue and Bale’s grim face.
It’s hard to feel compassion or anything else for Rick as he stumbles through relationship after relationship because we are never given any clue as to who he is. He’s a cipher, the walking conundrum with an attitude. If I wanted to spend two hours watching someone having a mid-life crisis I’d look in the mirror rather than spend another minute concerning myself with Rick’s troubles.
I gave “Knight of Cups” one out of five stars because there is something there. I’m just not sure what it is and I’m not sure Malick does either. Tedium, thy name is “Knight of Cups.”
Richard’s new Cineplex.com column is now up and running!
“Making love on camera is such hard work,” says actress Julie Christie, “that there is no time for the libido to take over.”
Maybe so, but some good-old-fashioned romance does manage to blossom on movie sets. Just ask Brad Pitt or Goldie Hawn or Ben Affleck. Each of them met their current paramour while making a movie.
Let’s take a look at some of the greatest Hollywood on-set romances… READ THE WHOLE THING HERE!
In the first “Thor” movie Marvel superhero (Chris Hemsworth) and his magical hammer fell in love with Natalie Portman, argued with his father Odin, the one-eyed King of Asgard (Anthony Hopkins) and saved Earth from the super chill Frost Giants.
This time around he’s still in love with Portman (who plays astrophysicist Jane Foster) and fighting with pops but now he must not only save Earth but all Nine Realms from an ancient enemy.
Led by Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) these evil Dark Elves have a bone to pick with Odin. Thousands of years ago Odin’s father banished the Elves and seized their secret weapon, the Aether, a deadly WMD with the power to destroy the universe. Unable to extinguish the Aether the folks of Asgard bury it in a secret location “between the realms.”
Eons later Thor’s girlfriend Foster discovers the Aether in an abandoned warehouse in London, attracting the attention of the vengeful Malekith and his army of angry Elves.
You know what comes next. Hammer time! Thor makes a deal with his untrustworthy (but undeniably compelling) brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and hatches an elaborate plan to save Jane, defeat the Dark Elves and save the universe from the Aether.
“Thor: the Dark World” is a much better movie than 2011’s “Thor.” The love story that bogged down the middle of the first movie is replaced with more double crosses, vengeance and daddy issues into its two hours than any three Norse myths.
There’s a lot going on, but “Game of Thrones” director Alan Taylor nimbly juggles the mythology and the action, peppering the movie with amusing cameos from Stan Lee and a certain other superhero and some light comedy.
It feels slightly generic, as though bits and pieces were cribbed from the Superhero Blockbuster Playbook, but redeems itself in the inevitable showdown between Thor and Malekith. It’s wildly entertaining as they zip to and fro through wormholes, literally punching one another into next week—or at least into a new dimension. It’s tighter and way more fun—check out Thor on the subway!—than the endless dustup that bogged down the last forty-five minutes of “Man of Steel.”
Hemsworth and Hiddleston, the film’s yin and yang, are charismatic and while they don’t do anything much different than they did in the first movie or in “The Avengers,” they both seem to really grasp the film’s semi-serious tone.
“It’s not that I don’t enjoy our little chats,” Loki says to Odin. “It’s just… that I don’t.” It’s a good line and Hiddleston delivers it with perfect timing, half villain, half comedian.
Unless you’re a comic book geek you might need a quick trip to https://marvel.wikia.com/Thor to make sense of the first twenty minutes of “Thor: The Dark World” but once the movie gets the exposition out of the way and gets into the gags and the action it hammers home the good stuff.
Despite starring in two movies based on a Marvel hero Natalie Portman says, “I’ve never gotten in to comic books.”
This weekend she reprises the role of Jane Foster, scientist and love interest to the God of Thunder in the Thor: The Dark World.
Portman may not have spent time reading comics but she can understand the obsession fans have with Thor’s characters because she was once a fangirl herself.
“The one thing I ever got into like that is really dorky,” she says. “Until I was twelve or thirteen I was obsessed with the Babysitter’s Club, a series of books for girls. There was a new book every month and the day the book would come out I had to go to the bookstore and get it and read it on the way home.
“The writer’s name was Ann M. Martin and my friends and I would look in the phone book and call every Ann Martin trying to get her.
“One time she came to our bookstore and did a signing. The week before I wrote a packet about what her next book should be about, with drawings, and I waited in line for three hours and gave it to her and she was like, ‘OK weirdo.’”
Playing heroine Jane Foster is miles away from her Academy Award winning role in the dark psychological drama Black Swan. Portman admits she “never thought I’d get the chance” to act in a superhero movie, “which is why whenever they ask I say yes.”
Also appealing is the chance to work with Anthony Hopkins, who she describes as “a giant among actors.” She shares several scenes with the veteran actor and says she was “completely intimidated” by him.
“I kept messing up lines around him because I was so nervous but he was so sweet about it. He’d say, ‘That’s a really hard line to say.’”
Many of her scenes with Hopkins take place on Asgard, the celestial planetoid home to Thor and family, which raises the question, Do you believe there is life on other planets?
“That question makes me think of another movie. In Antz all the insects are around a campfire,” she says, laughing, “and they say, ‘Do you think there’s something bigger than us out there?’
“It totally feels like that. Of course there has to be something else out there. I don’t know what it is but it would be completely silly to think that we’re ‘it.’”
Thor: The Dark World opens in theatres, bringing with it Chris Hemsworth as the sledgehammer wielding superhero with his rippling muscles, crazy mythology and Dark Elves.
The Marvel comic series borrowed the character from Norse mythology, coopting the God Of Thunder’s most famous weapon, the Mjölnir. In myth the name translates to “that which smashes,” and refers to his hammer, a fearsome club capable of leveling mountains, causing lightning flashes and boomeranging back when he throws it.
“The power within Mjölnir,” he says, “doth rage like the winter storms bursting upon the shore in furious assault!”
According to Nordic legend the mallet was forged by dwarven brothers Sindri and Brokkr but Marvel embroidered the lore, adding to the story the fictional Asgardian metal uru as the main component of the basher and an inscription that reads, “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.”
The image of Thor flying through the air, propelled by Mjölnir, is the iconic picture from the comics and movies, but not from mythology.
According to legend Thor’s preferred mode of transport was a chariot drawn by two 1700-pound warrior goats named Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder. But they didn’t just provide transport, they also frequently provided dinner as well—literally.
After a long day of battle a tired Thor would be too tired to hunt for food, so he’d kill and eat the goats. When he was done, he’d carefully wrap the bones in their pelts, wave Mjölnir over the bloody mess, and before you could say “By the Hammer of Thor!” the goats would come back to life, ready for more adventures.
In the comics Thor has unlimited power when it comes to controlling the mighty hammer, unlike in mythology where he often used a magical belt called a Megingjörð and iron gloves to give him the strength to employ Mjölnir to its full effect.
The hammer has also had an influence outside of the movies, mythology and comics. The sci fi show Stargate SG-1 used the Mjölnir as a plot device, The Thor’s Hammer Organization are the bad guys of the Silent Storm video game series and the dramatic lyrics “And out of the forge of dwarfs, To hold in your hand now, And for evermore, I give you the Hammer of Thor,” came from the Viking folk rock band Týr.
In a world where wonder is in short supply, Mr. Margorium’s Wonder Emporium is an oasis of amazement. Located in an unnamed city (one that looks an awful lot like Toronto) it’s a Rube Goldbergesque kind of toy store where sock monkeys come to life, giant basketballs dwarf the kid customers and a mobile made of real fish hangs from the ceiling. In short, it’s FAO Schwartz on steroids and such an astonishing place even Kermit the Frog shop there!
The shop is run by Mr. Magorium (Dustin Hoffman) a 243 year-old “wonder aficionado” who sleeps upside down, wears too-tight Mr. Dress-Up suits and once played Jumping Jacks with Abe Lincoln. Years ago he bought enough shoes in a store in Tuscany to last his whole life. He’s now on the last pair and wants to get his affairs in order before he leaves the world.
He plans on leaving the store to his manager, Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman), a young piano prodigy who lacks confidence in herself. His first step is to bring in an accountant (Jason Bateman) to audit the store—no records have been kept since the 1770s—and take care of all the paperwork. The accountant, or Mutant as Magorium calls him, is a workaholic with a distinct lack of wonder in his life. As Margorium’s last day approaches Molly must come to grips with the loss of her mentor, a magical store that is literally throwing a temper tantrum, a young misfit who doesn’t have any friends and the skeptical Mutant. In the end Molly learns that anything is possible—even magic—if you believe in yourself.
Mr. Margorium’s Wonder Emporium is a rarity—a kid’s movie that doesn’t try and cater to an adult audience by slipping in jokes that the little ones won’t understand. It is a gentle fantasy with corny jokes, some magical images, but none of the mean-spirited edge that crept into the similarly themed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The tone is sweet throughout, and while Hoffman’s performance borders on annoying—think Uncle Bobby on helium—the film’s sense of wonder and G-rated sensibility should have great appeal to kids.
“No Strings Attached,” the new R-rated rom com from director Ivan “Ghostbusters” Reitman is a modern movie for a generation of text and sex couples terrified of commitment.
Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman play 20-something Los Angelenos who slowly realize that sex is easy while love requires a lot more work. She’s a “relationshiphobic” workaholic. He wears his heart on his sleeve. At first they agree to a friends-with-benefits set up, arranging trysts by text and keeping it informal but when the l-word—that’s love—rears its head it threatens to blow apart their casual connection.
“No Strings Attached” is one of those rare movies where the main characters are the least interesting people in the movie. Natalie Portman (who stars and is one of the movie’s producers) is having an interesting year professionally. In “Black Swan” she hands in one of the most memorable performances of the year only to follow it up with a dull offering a movie that she seems miscast in. This seems more like a Kathryn Hiegl movie than a Natalie Portman vehicle; a movie with leads that could have been played by any number of Hollywood rom com regulars. Insert Heigl and Paul Rudd or Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel and this would have been pretty much the same movie.
Worse, despite the bouncing bed springs and many, many shared sex scenes, Kutcher and Portman don’t seem to have much chemistry. The pair generates so little heat you may want to bring a blanket with you to the theatre.
Luckily the supporting cast has more to offer than the above-the-title stars. Who knew Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges had such a light touch? He has a small, recurring role and knocks it out of the park every time he’s on screen. Ditto Greta Gerwig, the former indie darling who impressed in “Greenberg” and now has the funniest line in this movie and will someone please give Lake Bell the lead in a comedy. She’s beautiful, funny and pulls focus from whoever she shares a frame with. As the neurotic television producer she has the funniest almost-love scene we’ve seen in ages and adds some much needed zip to the predictable and occasionally even dull story.
Go to see Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher sorta naked. Stay to see Lake Bell, Ludacris and Gerwig bring the funny.
