lralbright1

Manchester By The Sea tells the story of Lee Chandler, an ordinary man who goes to work as a custodian and comes home from work. His pattern only deviates by a visit to a bar to down a few beers. He's a man who's drowning in grief and guilt that is only exacerbated by a call that his brother is in the hospital, only to get there and find out that he's passed away. Lee takes care of funeral arrangements and attends the reading of the will and is shocked by the revelation that he has been chosen as the guardian of his brother's son, Patrick.

I want to preface this review by saying that I really liked Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me and loved Margaret (the extended version). I thought both were excellent movies that showed ordinary characters dealing with ordinary life, some coming-of-age due to a trauma (Margaret), or two siblings still marred by the tragedy of childhood (You Can Count On Me) but this? This was horribly disappointing.

There is no real arc or progression with the character of Lee. He changes slightly at the end, in a way that's understandable and realistic, but also wholly unsatisfying. It certainly doesn't justify the running time of almost two hours and twenty minutes. The movie starts as a series of scenes that establish Lee as a character and never really changes gears, nothing ever really builds, scenes just happen.

A lot has been written about the performances here, but each and every performances is held back by the script. Michelle Williams, while very good, is relegated to maybe five to ten minutes of screen-time. The most talked about scene in the movie where she and Lee stumble upon each other in the street is the movie's best, but because the movie takes so long to get there, it dampens the impact the movie wants the audience to feel. Casey Affleck, who I consider a very good actor, doesn't have much to work with. He plays the character in the best possible way but it's not worth all the accolades that have been thrown his way. Lucas Hedges plays precocious and annoying well, I'll give him that. Some say the same about Anna Paquin in Lonergan's previous film, Margaret, but at least that movie gave us enough of a reason why. Here, Hedges' Patrick shows one moment of grief for his father, has one uncomfortable lunch with his mother, and spends the rest of the movie bickering with Lee or trying to have sex with one of his two girlfriends. His character feels more like a stereotype, and a plot device, rather than a fully realized character.

There could've been a great movie made out of Manchester By The Sea. If the script had been shortened and extensively revised, taking out the repetitious bickering between Lee and Patrick, and the 'cutesy' character moments that were supposed to be humorous only to fall flat on its face. Somewhere within the movie, the elements exist for, at the very least, a good movie.

Jackie Kennedy is possibly the most famous first lady to have entered the public consciousness in recent history. Even her name conjures up the image of her pink suit and matching pill box hat. The media's representation of her is fixated on the upper crust side of her; the fashionable woman with the affected accent. Jackie, however, offers a rare glimpse at the woman underneath the myth.

Jackie begins after the events that make up the meat of the story. It's after the assassination, after the burial, that Jackie gets a visit from a reporter (played by Billy Crudup) who wants to interview her about John F. Kennedy's murder. This interview provides Jackie its framework as it crosses back and forth through time.Throughout the interview, Jackie is often seen telling the interviewer dark truths but quickly saying, her bitterness rising after the reveal, "You can't write that." Jackie knows that the only hope that her husband has left now is what history will write so she uses words and uses imagery to spin a fairy tale that people will believe.

Though much has been said about Natalie Portman's performance, deservedly so, I think Pablo Larrain's direction is extraordinary here. I haven't seen his prior work, but he is one to keep an eye on. He uses 16mm film to give Jackie a grainy, almost documentary-like look that's coupled with breathtaking hand-held tracking shots for lengthy periods of the film that makes it feel as though the audience is a part of the surrounding chaos.

Jackie, however, wouldn't work at all if it wasn't for Natalie Portman's performance. She is in virtually every frame of the movie, bristling with anger, a few moments of crying all while walking in a haze of grief. To call it, or the film, 'Oscar-bait', is reductive and ridiculous; her performance is undeniably great. Yes, her mannerisms, movements and voice are all near exact but it isn't a performance built on a bag of hollow tricks; it's the very definition of embodiment.

Jackie maybe about a public figure in our recent history but if you strip away the Kennedy myth and name, the movie's beating heart, its very core, is the story of how grief feels and how it's handled. It's tumult seeming to never end, like a hazy bad dream. Jackie captures every moment of that bad dream.

It was a strange coincidence this past Sundance when two movies about the same subject - Christine Chubbuck - played in competition. Christine, the other movie, is a conventional biopic, one that I found to be the best movie I've seen so far this year; this take on Christine Chubbuck is a documentary approach. Kind of.

Kate Plays Christine centers around Kate Lynn Sheil preparing for the role of Christine Chubbuck in a low-budget biopic. We follow her through the preparation period, which consists of research, getting a tan, getting fitted for a wig, calling Chubbuck's former news station in order to gain access to archive footage of Christine, and interviews with locals from Sarasota Florida about Christine. This all is interspersed with footage from this biopic in-the-making.

This is where the film's premise is going to confuse an average viewer, this biopic that's being filmed isn't actually "real". There is no movie actually being made within this 'documentary' to be seen, though what little is seen, looks terrible.

Kate Lynn Sheil also, I was surprised, by how bad her performance is in these scenes. Yet, as I continued to watch the movie, I began to realize, that was the point.

In Christine, we see Rebecca Hall's take on Chubbuck as someone who wants to be a reporter in a bigger market, but her actual aptitude for being a reporter, as portrayed by Hall, leaves you wondering why she chose this particular field in the first place. A co-worker of Christine's even says, before presenting rare footage of the actual Christine Chubbuck giving an interview says, 'she wasn't the greatest interviewer'. Which leads me to believe that Kate Lyn Sheil is playing this part badly on purpose to imitate Christine Chubbuck's failure to be a reporter the way that she wanted to be. The "movie" within the documentary is bad as a statement that a biopic about someone truly unknowable, like Christine Chubbuck, shouldn't be made.

Though the execution of this concept isn't perfect, it has enough to admire within it to give it a watch. Though I disagree with the statement that's most likely being made about Christine, and even to some extent, itself, I respect why the filmmakers would take that stance.

Robert Greene and Kate Lyn Sheil are the reasons this movie works, with a lesser director and actress, this could've easily been a complete disaster, but somehow, this tricky material finds its way.