Vox Pop – 3.5

The opening ten minutes was a bracingly, convincingly staged school shooting and aftermath that gave me hope for an original, relevant film. The pre-Natalie Portman Celeste character then sings her original song in response to the terror, it goes You-Tube viral and the film collapses into cliche and the movie version of life. Her song is about one-quarter as good as the equivalent moment in A Star Is Born. Worse, however, is Natalie Portman, who takes over the character 15(?) years later. She not only sings songs as bad as the later music in A Star, but she is the most unattractive figure I can remember seeing in a movie: her looks, her hairstyles, her mannerisms, her actions, her interpersonal relations, her public persona are all painful to sit through. Willem Dafoe, fresh off At Eternity’s Gate, narrates.