LBJ
⋆⋆ out of four stars
Rated: R for profanity.
Director Rob Reiner's "LBJ," starring Woody Harrelson facially encased in latex and makeup best categorized as a good try, is a passably engaging biopic focusing on a few short and hugely eventful years in the life of our 36th president. But we wouldn't be paying so much attention to Harrelson's prostheses and makeup if the drama carried more urgency.
Decked out in the requisite lobe job, hairline and horn rims, Harrelson valiantly creates a performance halfway between impersonation and suggestion. He's often touching, and he clearly enjoys the ribald side of Johnson. But he never fully relaxes into an easy-breathing performance; he's locked inside a second-rate makeup job, and all too aware of expectations involving the portrayal of an extremely famous figure.
More successfully, although confined to the edges of the screenplay, Jennifer Jason Leigh's Lady Bird Johnson suggests several sides of her character simultaneously: comforter, manipulator and dimensional human being. "You knew what you wanted," she tells her insecure husband at one point. "And you got it."
The plot returns to the JFK assassination at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, over and over, as a motif. The final product is a straightfoward, frustratingly mild portrait of a man who, in "Hamilton"-speak, wanted to be in the room where it happened, but who really just wanted to be loved and respected.
michael phillips, Chicago Tribune
Jane
⋆⋆⋆ out of four stars
