Vox Lux

Vox Lux (2018) is Brady Corbet's music drama starring Natalie Portman, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It tracks a pop idol built out of trauma and a country's appetite for spectacle.

The film opens in 1999, when teenage Celeste survives a school massacre. The grief-stricken song she and her sister Eleanor write turns a wounded girl into an arena-filling star. Cut to 2017: Celeste is 31, scandal-scarred, raising a teenage daughter, and propped up by her manager (Jude Law). Raffey Cassidy plays the young Celeste; Portman takes over as the adult — and the gap between them is the whole point.

Corbet skips the standard rise-and-fall biopic for something colder, with narration by Willem Dafoe and original songs by Sia. It won't be for everyone — brittle, deliberately abrasive — but Portman's closing concert tears the roof off. Stream Vox Lux (2018) online on iFILM.