Less than a month ago, I would have said Natalie Portman (Black Swan, Brothers) was the one lock for an Academy Award win. Her portrayal as the grieving Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the wake of her husband’s assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald. Portman just looked the part, and it felt like this was the role she was born to play. Portman is a fantastic actress, and she did an above-average job in Jackie. But this movie was so flat and depressing that I wonder if it’s going to be enough to take out Emma Stone in La La Land, the movie that has been gaining lots and lots of steam in recent weeks. As I look at this list of contenders for Best Actress, I’m not overly impressed. This definitely helps Portman. This film only had to be pretty good to convince me that she should win. Unfortunately, the movie did not live up to my expectations at all. While I learned a lot about Jackie Kennedy, her relationship with her family, the media, and the people of America, and the events that occurred on November 22, 1963, and the week afterward, I felt this movie overall was very dark and very dull. Though only an hour and a half, it felt like a three-hour snoozefest. It’s hard to recommend a movie that felt more like a history lesson that you should be required to watch in your 11th-grade US History class.
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