Jackie

Now that the seemingly infinite hell of election season has reached its merciful end, it’s time to move on to what is pretty much the election season of movies: awards season! The Golden Globes, Oscars, industry guilds and various critical bodies will soon hand down their rulings on the best films, performances, and technical achievements of 2016, but before that ball gets rolling and flattens all nuanced criticism in its way, the Independent Spirit Awards will have their say. The nominations for the slightly left-of-center awards program were announced yesterday, and the unusually stellar lineup provides a nice reminder that the whole “2016 was a disaster at the movies!” narrative only applies to Hollywood studio pictures.

Among the usual biopics and awards season fare, Jackie has emerged as an intriguing contender — an atypical biopic about one of America’s most famous tragedies, told from the perspective of our most iconic First Lady, and directed by a Chilean filmmaker (who has not one, but two biopics hitting theaters this December). Following its premiere at TIFF in September, Jackie immediately became one of our most anticipated films of this awards season, and this new trailer isn’t making us any less patient for its release.

If you look back on the last few years of the New York Film Festival, you’ll find a common, though unsurprising theme: a lot of male-dominated narratives, often about white men’s woes and triumphs. Last year’s line-up had The Walk, Steve Jobs and Miles Ahead, 2014 was notable for the premieres of Inherent Vice, Birdman, and Foxcatcher, and the 2013 fest debuted Her, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and Captain Phillips. There have been some notable exceptions, like Carol, Clouds of Sils Maria, and Gone Girl, but overall stories about women have been a relegated to the background at the fest. That is, until this year.

In the first trailer for Pablo Larraín’s Jackie, Natalie Portman recites part of the First Lady’s 1963 interview with Life magazine. The interview, which took place the week following John F. Kennedy’s assassination, marked the origins of the presidential Camelot reference...

Peter Sarsgaard often plays guys you can’t help but hate. From his ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ character to his ‘An Education’ con man to his Chuck Traynor in ‘Lovelace,’ Sarsagaard has mastered playing seedy jerks who pray on the weaknesses of others. In Antoine Fuqua’s ‘The Magnificent Seven,’ Sarsgaard takes on the role of the bad guy once more.

ScreenCrush’s Matt Singer and Erin Whitney are back from the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. You can read all of their coverage so far here, but if you want the digest version, they compiled this list of some of the fest’s highlights: the best performances, the biggest surprises, and the worst disappointments. What are the movies people are going to be talking about this fall? These. (Except the ones they didn’t like, of course.)

Glowing reviews of Jackie have been pouring in from TIFF, where Pablo Larrain debuted his biopic about the eponymous First Lady, starring Natalie Portman in a role that will undoubtedly secure the actress an Oscar nomination — if Jackie hits theaters in time. And it looks like it will, as Fox Searchlight has secured the distribution rights to the buzzy biopic, with plans to release Jackie this December, right in the middle of awards season.

Adios summer, the fall festival season has begun! On the heels of the Venice and Telluride film festivals, the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival kicks off this week with a handful of films we can’t wait to see. The fall festivals are a time when we can finally put the ugly remnants of summer movie season behind us (especially this year), and get a look at the movies that may redeem the year in cinema.

Natalie Portman has some interesting projects on the horizon, including the long-delayed Jane Got a Gun and Jackie, the latter of which has revealed its first official photo featuring the actress as former First Lady and widow of President John F. Kennedy. It looks about as you’d expect, though Portman does make for quite the lovely leading (first) lady.

Dang, Natalie Portman, slow down. This week, Portman has lined up roles in a Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic and a new French horror film, and she’s not slowing down. The actress has added another biopic role to her quickly growing to-do list: playing the part of America’s favorite former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. And when you think about it, that role is kind of perfect for Portman.