Jackie

I'm sure I'm not the only one to head straight to YouTube after seeing Pablo Larraín's Jackie to see if Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis really did talk like that and realize that Natalie Portman gets her highly unusual accent and intonation spot on. Portman had ample resources for research including the televised tour of the White House recreated in the film and over 8 hours of interview recordings Jackie gave just months after her husbands assassination.

I've always been fascinated by the events of Dealey Plaza on 22nd November 1963 but never fully comprehended how awful it must have been for Jackie, who was still suffering from depression having lost their third child earlier in the year within just two days of his birth.

Mica Levi follows up her work on Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin with another remarkable score. The jarring strings a perfect match to the pain and confusion Portman portrays as she wanders around an empty White House in shock, her alien movement channeling Edith Scob in Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face.

Jackie proves that a biopic doesn't necessarily need to cram a whole lifetimes worth of drama into a narrative when concentrating on such a small timescale in great detail can be so rewarding and reveal so much.