By Debbie Schlussel

Only one good new movie in theaters this weekend, and it’s one of the best of the year.

* Rogue One: A Star Wars Story – PG-13: As I noted in my review column on this earlier in the week, this is a long, slow, boring, lightweight, politically-correct rehash of the Star Wars story with dull, uninteresting characters who lack magic, charm, and charisma. On top of that, the casting is racist, with all of the villains being old White males and all of the heroes minorities and a chick. Read my complete review.

HALF A REAGAN PLUS ONE DARTH VADER

* La La Land – PG-13: This is truly one of the best movies of the year. Don’t let the label “musical” scare you (especially you guys–I promise you you’ll like this a lot–probably love it). Although modern musicals are generally horrible, this is the exception. I love this.

It harkens back to the “golden age” of Hollywood, when movies starring Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Ginger Rogers entertained and captured the magic and glamor that is lacking in most movies and TV shows today. Although stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling aren’t Kelly, Astaire, or Rogers (they don’t even come close), they are charming enough and make a really good effort. Although their voices aren’t strong and their dancing is amateurish compared to the aforementioned talents of yesteryear, they entertain well enough, and their acting and the story carry this movie a long way. So does Gosling’s fabulous jazz piano playing. That’s really him on the keys. It’s a great, wholesome film, the kind we haven’t seen in years–no decades. I’d say this is a great movie for families (and it is), but there is a single F-word thrown in for no reason. It’s the only part I don’t get because it doesn’t belong here.

Emma Stone is an aspiring actress in Hollywood. She spends her days working as a thankless barista at a coffee shop on a studio lot, occasionally getting coffee spilled on her. And she also goes to a lot of auditions, where she’s working up her emotions in a scene, and just in the middle of all that, the studio exec interrupts her to take a phone call (or something like that). But, audition after audition, Stone never makes the cut and she’s stuck rooming with several other aspiring showbiz types.

Ryan Gosling is a very talented jazz pianist and composer. He, too, aspires to something bigger using his talent to entertain. He dreams of opening a jazz club and restaurant where he can show off his compositions and music to the masses. But for now, he, too, is stuck–stuck playing boring elevator music at a restaurant, where his boss won’t let him play jazz or play his compositions. When he tries to defy that order, he’s fired. And then he gets stuck playing for a very commercial pop artist whose music he hates. A guy’s gotta make a buck.

Gosling and Stone have unknowingly had several brushes with each other at the beginning, but now they consciously meet. She’s gotten dressed up and entered the restaurant as Gosling is playing his own music and getting fired. She’s impressed with the music and his talent, but he’s just lost his job and needs to earn a living. Soon they get together and share their dreams, trying to help and support each other reach those dreams.

While none of the songs are that memorable and–as I noted–their singing voices aren’t the strongest, it’s all good enough and better when you see this movie. You’ll be mesmerized by the scenery, the cinematography, the script, the story. It all comes together in a very magical, truly entertaining way. I especially loved the last scene. It’s just so well done. If you love the old-style Hollywood movies, you’ll especially love this. But even if you don’t, you’ll still like this a whole lot.

A REALLY GREAT MOVIE! A rarity. You gotta see this.

FOUR REAGANS

Watch the trailer . . .

* Jackie – R: I’m not really sure what the point was here. This long, slow bore is supposed to show you what Jackie Kennedy was saying, doing, and feeling in the week (and later, the months) after her President husband was assassinated. But that’s what I hate about movies like this: they are fiction that may not bear any similarity to what really happened. This is all imagined–all made up. Made up conversations, made up behavior. And, plus, I just didn’t care.

The only real thing in this movie is the White House tour Jackie Kennedy gave for the TV cameras. But you and I can see the actual tour on YouTube. So why pay ten-bucks-plus to see Natalie Portman pretend to be doing it? No idea. Portman gets the distinctive Jacqueline Bouvier patrician accent down pat. She also resembles her in some of the iconic, recreated Chanel and other designer looks. There is great attention to fashion and detail here, and I love that. But the story: Yaaaaaawn.

We see Kennedy speaking to a reporter from LIFE Magazine who is writing a profile of her at what seems to be a month or two after the assassination of her husband. The interview is at a ritzy mansion on the water. She tells the reporter how she felt in the days following the assassination and what he can and can’t write about it. Then, we see flashbacks to the day of the assassination—before, during, and after the assassination, and then the plane ride back. We also see Jackie in the White House, living there for a week or so after the murder. We see her moping around and drinking and smoking and feeling sorry for herself. Also, we see her dour self getting into the White House residence shower and then into bed. Who cares? Ho hum.

We also see Jackie arguing with the Kennedy family members (including Bobby), the Secret Service, and her and her husband’s staff about whether or not there should be a stately funeral and a procession down the streets of Washington, DC, and whether or not his grave should be in a Brookline, Massachusetts cemetery or something more grand.

In the end, Jackie’s attention-whorism and selfishness wins out. Her husband was President–Dammit!–and she’s going to have a procession and march in the streets to his funeral. Damn the security risks cited by Bobby and the Secret Service. Also, she’s going to have her husband buried in a prominent spot at Arlington National Cemetery. A Brookline plot isn’t fitting for a President, especially one that was married to her.

None of the scenes are in an orderly, linear assemblage. The flashbacks, flash-forwards, the scenes from the day of the assassination–the before, the during, and the after, the scenes from the White House, and the scenes from the interview with the magazine reporter are mish-mashed together in no particular order, making it confusing and hard to keep track of. It’s kind of herky-jerky in that way.

But I just didn’t care about any of this. The Kennedys and Jackie O are the most unnecessarily lionized figures in U.S. history, in my opinion. What did they ever do? And regardless of that, this movie–it’s pointless. It’s silly. And it’s just a waste of nearly two hours of your life that you’ll never get back.

And that’s why all of the tasteless, mind-addled mainstream (a/k/a liberal) movie critics just love it. When they gush over something, you should know by now to run like hell in the opposite direction.

***

Full “disclosure” on my six degrees of separation to Jackie: My uncle’s uncle, Maurice Tempelsman, was Jackie Onassis’ boyfriend for more than the last decade of her life. He invested her and her kids’ money and made them zillions from it, much richer than the other Kennedys (whose fortunes have dwindled as they have to spread over ever-growing numbers of kids in further generations). I once interviewed with and was offered a job by him and his son. And when my uncle and aunt got married, their engagement party was at Tempelsman’s apartment. A lot of press was outside the building, thinking Jackie was there. She wasn’t. I never met her. And don’t care.

TWO MARXES PLUS TWO MICHELLE LAVAUGHN ROBINSON HUSSEIN OBAMA IDI AMIN DADAS

Watch the trailer . . .

* Collateral Beauty – PG-13: The “My Six Year Old Died of Cancer and My Friends Blackmailed Me Feel-Good Movie of the Year”! No, they want you to think that, but it’s really nearly 2.5 hours of crap. There’s absolutely no beauty here–“collateral” or otherwise. And what the heck is “collateral beauty” other than some dumb, pretentious, meaningless phrase someone made up in order to write a manipulative, maudlin, sleep-inducing waste of time? Sounds like some uncreative idiot in a Madison Avenue ad agency made it up . . . like “Fahrvergnügen” in those old Volkswagen ads in the ’90s. On top of that, the “heroes” of this movie are “friends” who defraud and frame another friend in order to blackmail and extort him into doing what they want. Wow, that’s friendship!

And speaking of New York ad agency idiots, the vastly overrated Will Smith plays a successful New York ad agency owner whose six-year-old dies of cancer. Thereafter, he becomes withdrawn and spends his days at work in an out-of-it existence, building those domino lines (where one domino falls on the other and so on). He spends his night angrily biking on New York’s bridges and then sitting in the dark in his apartment. His partner (Edward Norton) and top employees (Kate Winslet, and Michael Pena) are fed up. They are losing business and money and want to sell the agency to a buyer, before they lose everything. But they can’t get Smith to sign off on anything or engage in any business matters. So, they resort to blackmail and extortion and defraud their friend and partner, Smith.

The partner and employees learn that Smith has written letters to “Love,” “Time,” and “Death.” So, they hire three actors (which include Helen Mirren and Kiera Knightley) to portray Love, Time, and Death, and confront Smith on the street. As each actor is confronting him, Smith’s associates have hired a private investigator to videotape it. Then, they edit out the actors and show it to Smith, telling him he’s going crazy, talking to the air. They use that to extort and blackmail him into signing the agreement to sell the agency, so they can make their money. Like I said, it’s all very manipulative. But, yet, this movie makes these three into heroes for their successful scheme to defraud their friend. Charming.

This movie is bitter and hopeless like Michelle Obama, and it’s out of place in a time of hope and joy. It bored me to tears, and it movies glacially slow. On top of that, there’s a lot of stupid crying and pouting. Who wants to pay to see that? Who wants to pay to see people mourning and crying over their six-year-old daughters? Especially right before Christmas.

Come on, Hollywood.

TWO MARXES PLUS TWO MICHELLE LAVAUGHN ROBINSON HUSSEIN OBAMA IDI AMIN DADAS

Watch the trailer . . .