The Story of the Very, Very Earnest Black Swan

My review of a very, very missable movie.

http://eyeblister.blogspot.com/2010/12/story-of-very-very-earnest-black-swan.html

I've seen the trailer a couple of times, and despite the raves the film has been getting,
something about it made me queasy.

I normally enjoy "thrillers" but I sensed something unhealthy about this one -- Something

mean-spirited and mysogynistic.

Your review confirms my resolve not to see it...at least in theaters.

very, very much for your very, very excellent review. :thumbsup: I will try very, very hard to miss this apparent turd of a movie.

what blasphemy!

Everyone around me is raving about this, and I'm sitting back going, "looks like another really, really cool-looking and annoyingly over-blown Darren Aranofsky movie."

It is cool-looking, but it's overblown and empty.

Cronenberg.

That was fairly well done in Black Swan but oddly unconvincing at the same time. It seemed contrived to me. It felt done by the numbers, rather than truly boiling up from the ballerina's deep, dark side.

with most of D.A.'s work, going all the way back to Pi. Very contrived. For whatever reason, I just can't suspend disbelief for his stuff.

...that movie probably ever will.

I trust your review and I love knowing a movie is bad and then watching the trailer, alone. Because the trailer, of course, tries to tell the compelling story that a movie like that, ultimately, didn't.

In this case the trailer itself was pretty bad- I can only imagine what the movie's like!

Thanks for the review!

PB

I guess someone didn't like my review. :)

I just rec'd it again.

The thing looks just bad--your review reinforces my initial impressions from the trailers I've seen.

And it was vastly more entertaining, I imagine, than the movie could hope to be.

You must have been disappointed, it would be like going to see Taxi Driver and expecting Travis to spend the entire film hanging out in front of JFK.

I found the dancing and the overarching environment of a professional ballet company providing a decent foundation into the relationship between Nina (Portman) and her mother (Hershey) but all in all it was pretty secondary to the character development. Aronofsky took the melodrama way over the top in Black Swan and I think that detracted from the film, I'm not a big fan of melodrama. My wife felt that the melodramatic excess led well into the elements of self-fantasy and Nina's relationship with Lily (Kunis).

Center Stage managed to be a good movie about characters and also a terrific dance movie. That movie is probably my benchmark.

:evilgrin:

Enough said.

The kisses weren't convincing, but even straight kisses tend not to be convincingly done on screen.

..

as I don't enjoy that very much.

Instead, I was very much taken-in by narrative, meta-narratives, objective correlative, Lacanian psychology, and all the other artsy auteuristic junk going on.

I enjoy that kind of stuff.

The film was designed to make you queasy... where it occasionally falls flat is where those avenues are not fully-explored.

The Wrestler is still by far his best film, although I also enjoyed The Fountain.

I gave it 4 out 5 on Rotten Tomatoes...

If you like art flicks and/or Aronofsky films, it is definitely worth a viewing.

Portman's performance while very good didn't reach that level.

I think Aronofsky misses on a lot but he finally nailed it.

haven't seen a better total film than 'Social Network' this year.

I loved Black Swan for all of the artsy reasons I mentioned, but it didn't hit me as the best of the year.

do a great job. I too loved the artsiness and psychological thrilling aspects of Black Swan. I really liked the character of Nina and felt I was able to identify with her. I haven't been thrilled by Aronofsky's other films (although I hear Pi is really good and haven't seen that). I liked the Wrestler but thought the ending was weak. Black Swan just got inside my head and effed things up, which is awesome. Very well done. The music was haunting and was well blended with the original Swan Lake score.

:)

that I've tried writing reviews of movies I liked, but I couldn't do it with any energy or enjoyment. When I look forward to a movie (as I did with this one), then I get some kind of perverted pleasure out of writing a review that trashes it. Making up for my disappointment and my admittedly unjustified sense of betrayal, I guess.