Black Swan - Tim

Directed by Darren Aronofsky, 2010

"Well, nobody's perfect" ranks #48 among the most famous movie quotes. But even a good 51 years after Joe E Brown stated the obvious in Some Like It Hot, a lot of us still strive for perfection in a dog-eat-dog society. Although after seing Black Swan (twice!) I should say danseuse-eat-danseuse. At first glance, the plot is simple enough as a sacrifice-everything-for-success story, like Aronofsky's previous picture The Wrestler: Nina (Natalie Portman), who dances for a New York ballet company, competes for the lead role in a new version of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Under pressure from her mother (Barbara Hershey) and the ballet director Thomas (Vincent Cassell), her uncompromising self-sacrifice seem to be driving her over the edge. Or is someone really out to get her? Thomas rejects this notion, telling her 'the only person standing in your way is you', and recommending masturbation as a way for Nina - perfectly apt to play the white swan - to discover the dark, lustful side she must unleash to embody the black one as well.

Black Swan is built on an awe-inspiring centre performance by Natalie Portman, whose amount of preparation for the role even dwarfs those of Robert de Niro for Raging Bull or Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler: 6-12 months of ballet training, putting in the occasional 16-hour day have paid off when you see the end result. It is hard to imagine any other actress playing this part, fragile innocence on the one hand - an insane, even violent will to suceed on the other.

Sharp contrasts are the recurring theme of the film. There is company newcomer Lily (Mila Kunis) who possesses all the emotions Nina desires - lust, independence, self-indulgence, humour - and effortlessly inserts them into her dancing. There is the contrast between the safe but restrictive flat Nina shares with her mother and the cold, dangerous, but exciting and liberating world outside. There is Thomas who plays hot and cold in an all but revolting manner and whose office, a visit to which is an unavoidable stopover on a young dancer's way to fame, holds no colours except black and white. Lastly, a vital role is played by mirrors. Whether in the changing rooms, at home, on stage or the underground, Nina cannot escape from the fact that sooner or later, her face on the posters will be replaced by a younger one and she will no longer be summoned to the ballet director's office. It is this sneaking, insufferable realisation that makes her hate herself - and break the mirror.

Black Swan is likely to win the following Academy Awards:
Best Picture
Best Actress: Natalie Portman

Kevin Costner - a Tribute

I was playing trivia the other night with some friends at a bar and one of the bonus questions was designed to award points to the team that could name the most movies featuring Kevin Costner. My team won. I named 14. I figured I needed to do something about this. I mean, if you figure that each movie is at least 90 minutes and that I have seen Robin Hood, a low ball, 20 times, Tin Cup - 30 times, Dances With Wolves - 10 times, Bodyguard - (somehow) 5 times, Field of Dreams - 15 times, Bull Durham - 10 times, well, then, I have spent a decent amount of time watching Kevin Costner movies. As a result, this is the first in a series of posts wherein an actor's filmography will be discussed and ultimately ranked. So here is to Kevin Costner!

My rankings of the 14 Costner movies I named in the bar:

1) Tin Cup

I hate when people ask me what my favorite movie of all time is. I usually answer differently each time. I would say, though, that I have answered Tin Cup more than any other movie. It is one of the most fun movies every made. I'm indebted to all those involved with its making.

2) Field of Dreams

I've never rooted for a protagonist more than I have Ray Kinsella.

3) Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

This movie shaped who I am and want to be. Only Swiss Family Robinson and Last of the Mohicans were more formative.

4) Dances With Wolves

Game changer. Took epics to a new level. It re-made an archetype better than those before it and has been re-made by others only in vain.

5) Bull Durham

Only Costner and Sarandon can weave baseball and romance without seams.

6) The Bodyguard

Impossible not to get sucked into this thriller every time it is on TBS.

7) Waterworld

I have never been more confused in my life as I was when everyone hated this movie. I am consistently baffled when people bash it.

8) For The Love of the Game

I love how much Kevin Costner loves sports.

9) JFK

Probably the best performance of his career.

10) Open Range

I thought going in that I wouldn't believe him. I believed him and I believe that he is still out there somewhere in Montana.

11) 13 Days

I only trusted that Kevin would lead us out of this mess.

12) The Gunrunner

A lesser known Costner movie. Yet, I think, the movie that made the rest of them possible. He needed to leave Bull Durham behind, get in touch with the deeper Costner and then deliver on Ray Kinsella - the meshing of a drifter and a baseball lover.

13) Rumor Has It...

I have seen it twice.

14) The Guardian

I mean this movies was terrible but I loved the crap out of it.

Again, here is to Kevin Costner, always consistent and always A-OK in my book.

Browning Version - James King

For: Stephen Samson, classicist

“I may have been a brilliant scholar, but I was woefully ignorant of the facts of life.”

-Professor Andrew Crocker-Harris

I could think of reasons ad infinitum why one mightn’t want see the Browning Version. For starters, it’s in black and white—an olden film about an ag-ed man. Not only ag-ed but sadly—an olden film centered around an ag-ed, sadly man. Now consider that this film is set in an English boarding school—a place inaccessible from our sunny, small, Southern public schools. Here, light never penetrates the walls of classrooms or repressed feeling. Expressions of human warmth and kindness could barely heat a kettle. Emotional Reticence is always the lesson of the day.

Ok, now I want to tell you why this movie is great and you should netflix it (advantage to the netflix age is that you could never find BV at a Movie Gallery, that being said, I very much miss the J’ville Movie Gallery—Thanks for the Memories).

v Acting ~ Every role is played to perfection. None more so than Micheal Redgrave in the lead as Andrew Crocker-Harris. Being desensitized by reality television and formulaic melodramas, it’s startling to see how much a talented actor can convey without histrionics or the need to blurt out feelings. You see something so much deeper by watching for subtle expressions or the things left unsaid.

v Simplicity ~ It’s a simple story of a retiring professor looking back over his life and realizing that he had somehow gotten it all wrong. Is it too late or can he yet atone and begin again?

v Entertainment ~ No drugs, explosions, or 3-way kisses, but somehow, someway this movie keeps you engaged to the point of riveted from beginning to end. Maybe the powerful, understated movie is now a lost art, the cinematic equivalent of ‘Greek fire’ (Stephen, yes!).

I do hope that you give poor Professor Crocker-Harris and his story a chance. Sometimes it’s the gloomy, colorless, difficult things that have the most to offer those willing to look.

The Hurt Locker - Rob Culpepper

I'm surprised no one has reviewed The Hurt Locker. As you probably remember it won the Oscar for Best Picture last year over Avatar and Inglourious Basterds, among others (it also won Best Director). So here goes.

I had really high hopes for this movie. Not only because of the awards it won, but also because everyone I talked to said it was really intense. I had a couple people tell me they couldn't watch it again. So I was freaking ready. And yes, the first half was intense. I perspired a little. But after a while I found myself used to the tension and relaxed a bit more. At some point I realized the writer was not about to let this character he was really proud of get blown to smithereens.

Some critiques I had heard of the film include: the sniper scene (bomb defusers would not have a fat clue how to effectively use a sniper rifle), the Bagdad-at-Night scene (no way someone would have done that or made it back alive), and the second Bagdad-at-Night scene (after the tanker truck blows up...no one would do that and put his comrades in that kind of danger). It's got to be hard to make a war movie these days because you can see actual combat footage online, on any news station, and in docs like Restrepo and others. Moviegoers just know too much about how things are actually done to buy into un-realities like you have in The Hurt Locker. I'm not saying cavalier people don't do crazy things in the military, but to put them all on one character in the span of a two hour movie pushes the believability into negatives.

Speaking of the characters, I felt like they were pretty one-dimensional. Jeremy Renner (as William James, badass) played what is undoubtedly a fun character. He has no fear, no concern for others or protocol, and no reservations about anything. He's a cowboy in a foreign desert. We know everything we need to know about him in the first 30 seconds he's on screen. But he doesn't grow. He's impervious to the conflict around him. Then there's Anthony Mackie's character (named Sanborn) who acts a foil to William James. He's responsible and courageous, but he's not James's equal. The worst part of the movie, in my opinion, was supposed to be one of the emotional high-points, when, after a bomb almost kills them all, Sanborn tearfully tells James, "I want a son, I want a little boy!" Really? No, really? you've got to be kidding me. Perhaps what James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow shared in common was their love of terrible dialogue (cf. Avatar). The third main character, Eldridge, was played by Brian Geraghty. He's the coward who has to be told he's doing ok and will make it, etc. Again, another tired role, though perhaps not unfounded on the field of battle. He does finally stand up to James, but only after James is responsible for almost killing him. The only other character we meet from the whole company is a hapless colonel who gets himself blown up.

As for the plot, what else can I say? It had it's moments, but its arc was weak. The one interesting thing about the movie is the collection of bomb parts Renner's character keeps under his bed. It becomes fodder for a bad joke (Eldridge finds James's wedding ring in the box and asks "what is this?" to which James replies "like I said, things that almost killed me.") Since plot-realism was thrown out early, it would have been cool to have this squad of bomb defusers coming up against the same bomb maker and playing a bit of cat and mouse. There's this scene where they're trying to defuse a bomb and someone is videotaping the scene from a balcony. You think: are the bombmakers learning how the defusers work, how they operate? this could be really interesting. But that's the last of it. That story is never explored. The moviemakers instead opt to make the movie about the people and not the plot. Which doesn't have to be a bad decision. But the characters just aren't interesting enough to keep it going for 2 hours.

Decent movie about war? Sure. Best Picture? Hardly.