Undescribable Perfection

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Darren Aronofsky is probably one of the best directors working today. He has made masterpieces, good movies, and not so good movies. But I think Black Swan is his best film, right next to Requiem For A Dream. Let's talk about Black Swan today, and I'll try not to spoil much. Black swan stars Natalie Portman, and she won an oscar for playing the character Nina Sayers in this movie. She completely deserved it because she did things in this movie that just made me say "woah". That's all I'm going to say about the absurd things she did in this movies, and she was amazing, probably her best performance. The conflict that Natalie Portman's character deals with is starring in a ballet performance and she becomes obsessed with this role. I won't tell you what happens to her in this movie to be spoiler free, but some stuff goes down. This movie even scared me at times. Her ballet director is kind of a creep but he completely cares about the performance and Natalie Portman's health and well being. She also has competition for this leading part and some stuff happens with that as well. Mila Kunis was also in this movie, and she actually acted really well. I don't really take her seriously as an actor, but she was really good in this movie. The ending is yet thrilling and terrifying, and the last shot in the movies says so much with so little. The script has a very good narrative and structure, and I don't think this movie gets enough praise for that. This movie definitely deserves my perfect score. 5/5

I will admit up front that I am no fan of ballet and failed to appreciate the pains that Natalie Portman endured to become a convincing dancer for this role. But it didn't matter. She absolutely earned her best actress award through conveying three metaphors behind the wrapper of a ballerina's quest for perfection:1. Perfection requires balance. You cannot appreciate the beauty in light without darkness. There is no sunrise without sunset, no day without night, no good without evil. Nina's struggle to understand this was the focus of her conflict with Thomas.2. Personal growth happens when you expand beyond your comfort zone. Nina had mastered the white swan because the role was so consistent with her daily life; continuing to practice it was a waste of time. Only when Lily inspires her to pursue the black swan does she unlock the path to perfection.3. Once you've stretched outside your comfort zone you can never go back. Personal growth changes you forever. Nina, in her quest for perfection, loses her innocence forever.Yes, perhaps the story could remain powerful without the gratuitous gore that hurled a dark drama into the horror genre. But this film is worth watching just to see Natalie Portman shatter all the boundaries of her acting career up to that point. A powerful performance, particularly memorable in the final scenes in which she successfully transforms into the black swan.

The most compelling moments in 'Black Swan (2010)' come when the sanity of the central character is called into question, with several sequences featuring stunningly surreal imagery and bizarre body horror that means that the validity of almost anything onscreen can be questioned. Rather than becoming frustrating, this instead becomes a gripping look into the damaged psyche of the perfectionist protagonist. The story is compellingly told with a confident cinematic verve. 8/10

It was unbearably painful to sit through this trash clocking in at unbelievable 1h50m. My only motivation was: I, numbskull that I am to have believed in cheap media propaganda, paid good money for this. There was a time (seems like ages ago now) when psycho-oriented thrillers were made -- by people like Alfred Hitchcock, for instance -- that not only included a plot (which in itself would be far more than this horrible one-dimensional flick has to offer), but also one with some suspense in it and -- believe it or not -- even a couple of likeable characters!!! Way back then the world was definitely NOT a better place than today, nor was human nature any better (or worse). So why is it that certain self-appointed "Arthouse" directors dare to torture audiences with such utterly depressing, unattractive, emotionally and morally deranged caricatures of the human species? I quite liked Aronofsky's 1998 experimental b/w thriller "Pi" because the bodily and mental sufferings of the paranoid protagonist were conveyed with the help of shocking, yet effective filmic techniques. For such nostalgic reasons my rate is 2/10.