An astonishingly bad movie from start to finish. Well, almost. The first 25 minutes or so are pretty harrowing, as they center around a school shooting and set the stage for the remainder of the film, but after that there's very little to recommend. Vox Lux is about a girl who, after suffering a tragedy, goes on to become a hit pop singer. Natalie Portman stars as the grown-up Celeste and Jude Law plays her character's manager. Neither seems well suited for the role, particularly Portman (one of six executive producers of this mess), who just doesn't fit as a volatile musician. Here's a fun fact. The actress playing the young Celeste is British and makes no effort at an American accent (the movie is set on Staten Island, NY). This would be fine if the grown-up Celeste also had a British accent, but no. Instead we have a grating, nasally overdone approximation of a New York accent from Portman, who (it should be said) is not Meryl Streep when it comes to accents. The final half hour or so is wildly anticlimactic and feels pointless. As does the entire film, to be frank. A lot of this may be a by-product of the director (Brady Corbet) adapting his own screenplay; the turgid, overwrought narration (by Willem Dafoe) introduces plot elements and dismisses them just as abruptly. Oh, and if you're the kind of person who loves credits, you're in luck! The first ten minutes include the credits - all of them, it would seem - playing over the movie's lead-in to the school shooting. Now you don't have to wait 'til the end to see who helped with this monstrosity. If you want to see Natalie Portman play a haunted artist, see Black Swan instead. This dreck isn't worth your time.
Review of Vox Lux
