Reviews

An anonymous NYC ballet company takes on a bold new interpretation of 'Swan Lake'. Unfortunately, the production, aside from some visually arresting moments, is anything but. The fact that Mr. Aronofsky, whom I greatly admire, was unable to deliver even a simulacrum of a new swan experience may be at the heart of why the film falters.

Having been a dancer myself, I am reflexively attracted to all things dance but even the hypnotic effect of Tchaikovsky's music couldn't save the film. Aronofsky uses the mirror image both as a visual device and as a plot device but in neither case is he able to get past surface reflection. Where in the 'Wrestler' and even in 'Requiem…" he deftly navigates the 'mind' field of human weakness, strength, depravity, longing, and loneliness, here there are only incoherent fragments. Nina (our protagonist) is a woman whose age I continue to wonder about. The room she occupies, in her overbearing mother's apartment, remains prepubescent and it's highly likely that this very beautiful woman/child is still a virgin who has never even masturbated. It's not that this scenario is completely implausible but it's disturbed enough to need some substantiation. Perhaps Aronofsky has only a two dimensional view of women and their interests portraying them as strippers with hearts, prostitutes with hearts and in this case childlike, suicidal 'little princesses' with hearts.

Though Ms. Portman gives it her best, and I applaud the effort, I keep thinking that this movie would have been more credible if he had chosen to work with an actual mid-level, aspiring ballerina. I believe we would have forgiven unpolished acting for the more authentic experience. Actually, I've never been a fan of Ms. Portman's and Darren surely leaves her in a lurch with this wafer thin study of an emotionally stunted and psychologically complex character that is well beyond this actresses ability to make coherent. That said, I enjoyed Barbara Hershey's performance, and found myself thinking, "I've missed her", more than once during the showing. It doesn't seem worth mentioning any of the other performances.

There are some thrilling visual effects throughout but a few too many trite mirror phantoms that, unfortunately, overshadow the truly awe inspiring transformation of Nina/Odette into a black swan in the third act.

Sadly, over it's entirety, the film lacks arc and believability, and I very much wanted to swoon over this film.

I have a pretty high standard when it comes to the re-interpretation of dreams (or the workings of the mind in general) by filmmakers which is likely due to the fact that I myself am a dreamer. There is nothing more irksome than these half-conceived, mostly contrived dalliances that are gobbled up by the ever passive viewing public as if they were shedding a bright light on the subject. I could go on about how not one of the characters is developed enough to overcome the films main flaw of not being LIKE A DREAM or how Nolan couldn't seem to make up his mind which movie to make; the more psychologically gripping tale of multiple lives lived in an endless cascade of dreams or the non-stop, high octane espionage tale which would have been super fun if it had actually taken place IN A DREAM (but keepin' it real, the action sequences we did see were pretty standard). I won't, however, because I can't let go of the glaring inadequacies of Mr. Nolan's literal, linear, unimaginative, and perhaps disinterested efforts to delve into the dream world proper.

While walking out of the theater, I got into a quick chat with another member of the audience. I stated that, :in the main the film was predictable" and he replied, "I think it was supposed to be". Really, since when are dreams predictable? Mein Gott! We're getting soft. People, we're not supposed to walk out of a movie concerned with this both known and unknowable subject matter rock-steady. On the contrary, we should all be wearing deeply puzzled yet deeply satisfied looks on our faces as though we'd been led across some great gulf and left there to work our own way back.

The takeaway message here is that it takes more than the latest CGI to deliver a reasonable simulacrum of the sub-conscience. And for the proof of that remark one need only look at the work of Michel Gondry and of the master, David Lynch. Your mind will reel indefinitely.

...And to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure the premise is so super duper either.

We are presented with a rather cliché', overly dramatic (soap material?) storyline. A frustrated, middle aged man/chemist/genius/teacher/part-time car washer with cancer, a pregnant wife, and an impaired child decides that with little else to live for he will, at least, make certain that his kid gets to go to college before he dies. He will do this by finally putting his talent to good use cooking Meth. Okeedokee.

The 'jackpot of despair' aside, what is more disappointing is how so many shows utilize the same 'Rucken Figure' facing the abyss motif. It's predictable and perhaps past its effectiveness. It was more purposeful when Bresson and Tarkovsky used it and in its update offered to us by Bela Tarr. I know that every time Walt stares off into the distance with his maudlin masked face I am left to deal with a very palpable awkwardness. This 'awkwardness', permeating the series, can be felt in the writing, the gimmicky camera work (example: a shot where we see Jesse digging a hole in the desert from a physically impossible position beneath the earth's surface), quirky comic effects like music videos and weird advertisements (example:the appearance of Bob Odenkirk in a Mr. Show skit abrasively appearing on Jesse's T.V.). Don't misunderstand me, I applaud experimentation and I loved Mr. Show but in Breaking Bad everything feels forced and slap dash and I'm never really allowed to lose myself in the story.

Clearly, there is a lot going on here so there is just enough time to offer up two dimensional characters with hints of a third. Everyone does well within their narrow parameters but Bryan Cranston seems unable to suggest even the possibility of a hidden persona behind the ever present wounded, self-pitying, ne'er do well.

There is something missing here. Heavy reliance on stylization seems to be a trademark of AMC, I'm thinking Mad Men here, but it's not a replacement for intricate, intimate storytelling and real innovation.

I have just watched "The face of another" twice, and am still feeling the reverberations of it's meaning. The emotional/psychological insights of Abe and Teshigahara, spoken through the characters of Okuyama and the psychiatrist, will give you more than enough to ponder. What are we in relationship to others if we are faceless; characterless? How are we to measure ourselves if our experience has no relativity to the world outside? Right from the beginning, the film establishes it's goal of revealing, heartbreakingly, the insecurity of the individual. Okuyama tries hard to laugh at his fate but the truth of his dependence on acceptance wears him thin and forces his well meaning wife and colleagues to the brink of their own prejudices. Tatsuya Nakadai, perfectly takes Okuyama from voluntary, shamed exile to hiding in plain sight, seeming to miss how that transformation might have occurred. While Mikijiro Hira goes for the ride, with a scientists abandon for the experiment, despite his very clear understanding of the pitfalls of invisibility.

There is a small story within the larger one, that of a young girl whose face, on one side, has been horribly disfigured (the other side is startlingly beautiful) by the bomb at Nagasaki. The first viewing of this left me feeling that this section was curious but disjointed. The second viewing had me considering, a bit more, some of the accompanying imagery that we see in these scenes. What really stands out are the images of soldiers in an asylum, the fire range and the strangely pictorial images of her and her brother at the beach. There is also her constant fear of another war. I began to see her story as a metaphor for the changing, perhaps now horribly disfigured face, of Japan itself. Coupling this idea with some of the urban crowd scenes in the main story or the body parts in vitrines in the doctor's office I began to feel the two stories weave together.

For the avid film lover, this movie is also a treat for the eyes with stunning set designs, doppelgangers, mirrored scenes and well placed, well timed editing twists.

A must see!!!

I am even questioning a 6 out of 10 for this but I have to give points for the return to that 70's grit which Lumet had exploited so well, way back when. The cinematography, with all that beautiful available light feel, made this film bearable. I went there with expectations soaring( a definite no-no)but came out feeling that age and Hollywood had finally overwhelmed Lumet's sense of reality. This is not good news for those of us who are aging fast but still want to be artistically relevant. Everything felt too Hyper-real. the drama was too forced with too many neat little packets of despair, from the cry baby, little brother to the predatory like, cocaine addicted older one. And how about the purely pornographic role played by Tomei or the appearance of a cocaine dealing ghost from the Studio 54 days? The final achingly debilitating straw: our beloved Albert Finney walking sloowwly down a looongg corridor. I missed the straight forward feel of Lumet's docu-drama style films: Twelve Angry men, Network, Dog Day Afternoon etc. and went to the theater to mourn that loss, hoping to witness one of the last films of it's kind.

I still love Sydney. He is still one of the greatest American Directors; alive or dead.

i was mesmerized by this movie. the cinematography is breathtaking. most of the scenes should be listed in the credits as part of the cast and the james taylor score whisks the viewer right along into the couples naive dream. but its malicks writing and the characterization, done to perfection by spacek and sheen, that makes this movie sing. anyone who thinks this is about a couple on a crime spree is taking this movie at face value only. the slice of cruelty, i speak of, is the unhappiness of a reality that says you're a garbage man(and not even that because you've just been fired) and you're an unloved daughter. both of them live in worlds where they feel they have little say and question their own value. then they find each other, they feel connected and that breathes life into their love. once that happens, what else can they do but feed it and protect it. take a close look at the two houses. what's really being burned to the ground with the first one and what's really being built with the second one?

this movie is a 10!!