Passage to power

LBJ

Crit

What an odd movie. From a production standpoint, it's basically a big Halloween party: lots of people with clothes and makeup and prosthetics and accents trying to impersonate famous politicians and members of their families and circles. Thus it's cheesier than all the cows and ewes in Texas could account for, if Texas went in for sissy shit like cheesemaking.

But if Robert Caro's biography (astonishingly not given even a thank-you in the credits that I noticed) is to be believed, this is historically accurate far beyond the Hollywood biopic standard and could serve as an excellent primer to anyone hoping to understand how a son of the Confederacy could be the best civil-rights president we've had since Lincoln, and how he managed to bend his fellow southerners in the Senate to his will.

It also helps that Woody Harrelson, though the Dumbo ears and all the crap they put on his face make him look ridiculous (and sometimes disconcertingly less like Johnson than like his successor in office), brings his usual level of conviction to the role, and that goes a long way. And Jennifer Jason Leigh, as Lady Bird, is the one element of the film that never seems false in any way.

Trailers

• 12 Strong--Bruckheimer patriotism.
• Just Getting Started--Looks like a waste of Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones.
• The Leisure Seeker--This, on the other hand, looks as if it could be a good fit for Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren.