Black Swan (2010)

5/5

Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is honestly one of the most terrifying movies I have ever seen. It envelops you in the psyche of an unstable, damaged woman. It traps you there without escape. Yet you cannot turn your eyes away. You can only watch in horror as she gradually disintegrates. You are left staring at scenes that will disturb and disgust you. You witness her fears come alive as hallucinations; you witness her ecstasies turn cruel and nightmarish. When her paranoia completely engulfs her, I was literally trembling with fear.

The movie is arresting in all its technical aspects. Its stark lighting and black and white palette is visually stunning. It frequently tracks characters' movements, more often rough, nauseating, and immersive instead of the more typical smooth, dreamlike voyeurism to which we are accustomed. The editing is pitch-perfect: it gives us fluid transitions alongside beautiful compositions, it integrates plot progression with taut suspense. The thematics are compelling and powerful, revealing Aronofsky's focus on central concepts that likely mirror his own life. The story shares the same basic framework as all of his other films. An outcast discovers a hobby or talent. It becomes an addiction that soon consumes their life. It finally metamorphoses into an obsession for which they will sacrifice everything they used to cherish.

Aronofsky's Black Swan, for all its technical prowess and thematic underpinnings, is a movie that ultimately rests on the actors' shoulders. Winona Ryder, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, and Vincent Cassel shine in their roles, but none of them take your breath away quite like Natalie Portman. She delivers a phenomenal performance. She plays the timid, virginal ballerina to perfection. Her ultimate reversal into the sexually uninhibited black swan seems equally effortless. She simply becomes her character--none of it is acting. She is the reason to stop whatever you're doing right now and see this movie. But no matter when you see it, now or ten years from now, I have no doubt that it will still be hailed as a masterpiece.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0947798/

Read My Lips (2001)

4/5

Read My Lips is a nail-biting, character-based French crime thriller. In it, we see a painfully real portrait of an average woman wanting to be more attractive, more successful, but above all more normal. As the movie progresses, these layers are revealed in a subtle, nuanced performance by Emmanuelle Devos. It reminded me very much of the protagonist in Walter Salles's Central Station--imperfect, making mistakes, and changing ever so slowly. The other characters are somewhat less developed in my opinion, but her partner in crime is played pitch-perfectly by Vincent Cassel. I wasn't as impressed with his performance here as I have been in other movies he's been in, but it was still remarkably spot-on.

In comparison to the other Audiard movie I've seen (The Beat That My Heart Skipped), this one is more plot-oriented and less of a character study. That being said, it still has incredibly strong and believable characters. And a tense, engaging plot from the very beginning. I knew nothing about the story going in, but was pulled in and couldn't escape its grasp until released at its finale. This is in large part due to unerring editing and pacing, matched by beautiful cinematography and evocative aural and visual post-production choices. Still, some plot elements at the end didn't make much sense. And I didn't understand the side story with the parole officer looking for his wife. It was just bizarre. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys tense crime thrillers and/or Jacques Audiard.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0274117/

Ocean's Thirteen (2007)

4/5

Ocean's Thirteen is entertainment of the guiltiest form. Although far from an artistic endeavor, it keeps you hooked. You know what will happen, but you watch anyway because the ride is so much fun. With its wonderful tongue-in-cheek style, you can tell just how much the actors were enjoying themselves. The numerous self-references, movie references, and in-jokes prove this. (I am a sucker for Godfather references.) I think Soderbergh really hit home with the style. From the 60's credits to the wipes and zooms, it truly felt like the movies it stole from. The pacing worked exceptionally well and I loved how the stories interweaved. Ocean's Twelve unevenly favored a few characters while most of our favorites were imprisoned and helpless. Here we see everyone working their magic the way we first met them, in perfect synchrony and balance. In this movie, Soderbergh fixed all the mistakes present in Twelve. And Pacino is great as the bad guy. It's a fun movie, so check it out if you liked the others (or at least the first one).

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0496806/

Eastern Promises (2007)

4/5

David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises took me by storm. I was entirely underwhelmed by A History of Violence, so I came into the theater wary. But his new movie blew me away. In addition to a compelling and engrossing plot, believable and realistic characters portrayed through precise acting, it has quite possibly the best fight scene I've ever seen put to film. The cinematography is brilliant, as is the set design, costuming, and make-up. You cannot turn your eyes away from this film. The story unfolds effortlessly and draws us in with perfect pacing, building with twists and turns until its unforgettable climax. That's what she said.

A number of things bothered me though. First, the subtitles. Sometimes they subtitled English dialogue, or sentences spoken half in English and half Russian. This should not be so. Second, the graphic violence. Most of the time it was gratuitous, by which I mean excessive and unnecessary. There is one scene where a dead man's fingers get cut off, which isn't particularly gruesome, but it occurs after the scene has wound down and ended. This ties in with my third complaint: the editing. Every single shot and scene went on just a half second too long. It made the acting and dialogue sometimes seem stilted and staged as shots set up and rest on characters during dialogue instead of seamlessly transitioning between them. Fourth, the ending shot, which would have been cool if The Godfather movies had never been made. All in all, however, these are mostly small, nitpicky aspects and did not affect my enjoyment of the movie. What did affect my enjoyment of the movie was the idiotic family who sat behind us and treated the movie theater as their own living room, kicking seats and discussing banal topics and generally ruining the mood and ambiance. Cocksuckers.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0765443/

Irreversible (2002)

3/5

Despite its title, Irreversible is told entirely in reverse. A violent act of revenge preceded by a vicious rape and the events that led up to it. This movie is not for the faint of heart because it is unflinching in its documentation of said brutalities. It is a disquieting tale of things that happen beyond our control and it reaches us because we feel so helpless. We realize that it could be us, no matter how different our lives are, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Its realistic depiction is aided by single-takes. Its use of music effectively ratchets up the tension and speeds up your pulse. I love a scene near the end, where the two people who become tangled up in violence and rape are instead entwined in each other; evil is replaced by love.

But there is so much to hate about this movie. From beginning to pretentious, baffling, experimental end, the camera rotates and swirls around to a fever pitch. Your stomach literally churns; I could not imagine seeing this in a theater, especially not an IMAX. The camerawork feels like a gimmick to physically make you as sick as the disturbing events do at a mental level later on. There was a decidedly unnecessary and gratuitous amount of nudity, sex, and violence in this movie; some of it was essential, but as a whole it became almost exploitative, as if its extensive presence had the sole purpose of shocking the audience.

I don't think the reverse chronology worked for this movie. Much like 21 Grams, it diluted the emotional build-up and climax and the film lost a lot of its overall impact. One of the main character's shift in demeanor, when told backwards, almost feels like a devolution; you like him much less. And the end extends for far too long. The problem with most movies that go backwards is that you never really reach a point where it makes sense to stop. Normal movies reach a climax and then tie up loose ends, but where do you go once you've told the start of a story? The intro is almost never as compelling as the finale, and it isn't in this movie either. Some of the dialogue that would have worked in a normal chronology seems contrived and forced when told backwards (about events being decided beforehand and having no control over them, for example). The backwards time line did have one good aspect, however. You saw the act committed first, and then you see all the parts of the story in which one different word, one different action, one different choice could have prevented all this. It becomes so much more painful.

Despite my rating, I cannot make a blanket recommendation of this movie to anyone. You have to know what to expect and have to be ready to take it all in. It is hard to digest, but not without merit.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0290673/

Ocean's Twelve (2004)

3/5

Ocean's Twelve was an enjoyable comedy/heist movie. The heist elements were pretty subpar for the most part with a couple cool things thrown in here and there, but I thought it was just so funny. My expectations were so low because everyone came out disappointed (because the first one was so good) that I actually had a really fun time watching this. The acting as always was great, the laughs consistent and solid, and the directing light and fun. There are cameos and big names like nothing you've ever seen before. And, for the most part, it just works. You let go of small inconsistencies because you're entertained.

However, the plot was pretty pitiful, a fact that cannot go ignored; it felt like it was trying to construct a story around the actors' schedules and not the other way around. Because of that, I was actually impressed when all the actors were on the screen together. But the story's limitations really hinder it, considering it's a crime movie with more than twelve main characters in it. Each character really should have some fundamental role in the narrative, and they don't. They're merely accessories. This is what is lacking in this movie that people seemed to love about the first one. Anyway, I greatly enjoyed myself while watching it, and if you're interested you should definitely check it out.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0349903/

La Haine (1995)

4.9/5

La Haine is stunning, creative, artistic, beautiful, predictive, bleak, uncompromising, and provocative. The crisp black and white cinematography provides both a documentary feel and brings an intangible beauty to the roughness of the urban underbelly. The shot composition was masterful, the camera movement emotive. There is one shot that compares with Citizen Kane in its magic. The camera peers over Vincent's shoulder as he looks at himself in the mirror, then it continues moving forward over his shoulder until it's a straight-on close-up on his face. In the mirror. But where is the camera? This is just one aspect of the scene. I didn't even mention that he was quoting De Niro's Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, the cinematic definition of self-destructive, repetitive behavior leading to explosive violence. In so doing, Kassovitz not only fleshes out the character, but also questions the influence of both America and cinema (both of which are revisited later on) on the ubiquitous hate and violence in the film. There is great depth and meaning in such a superficially simple scene.

The messages in the movie were told from a unique perspective as metaphors or stories, which added to their weight because it made you stop and think. This movie asks a lot of bleak questions and answers many of them in the unfortunate affirmative. The story of the man falling down a 50-story building: As he passes each floor, he keeps telling himself, "So far, so good. So far, so good." But it's not the fall that matters. It's how you land. So, like Travis Bickle, the aggressive, rebellious youth continue their repetitive, self-destructive habits. But it's fine, 'cause they're still alive. But it's not the fall that matters. It's how they land. And eventually, they will land. Hate pushes against hate, but it's all good until it explodes. "Do you believe in God? That's the wrong question. Does God believe in us?" Are we capable of redemption, grace, and forgiveness? Or does hate just breed more hate? Unfortunately, Kassovitz thinks it's the latter. This movie is powerful and meaningful, but without hope.

Some scenes felt repetitive or drawn out. Even though I loved Kassovitz's central message and the metaphor of the falling man, its presence was a bit excessive and almost overbearing. The editing occasionally vexed me, but only slightly.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0113247/