Black Swan

Plot summary:  Struggling ballet dancer Natalie Portman is cast as both the innocent White Swan and the lustful Black Swan, and the role slowly creeps into reality as her sanity disintegrates under the pressure.

Word on the street was that this movie was really good but "intense" and "disturbing." One out of these three descriptors is true: it is a very intense film that did a good job of keeping me on the edge of my seat during the climax. That's pretty much the high point, though.

First, the good parts: The two best performances come from Natalie Portman (who has been playing similar roles for a while now) and Tchaikovsky, whose score for Swan Lake imbues the cliché-ridden and heavily padded plot with undeserved gravitas. Actually, the casting is good overall, but the scope of the action is so narrow and the motivations so hastily sketched that it's tough for anyone else to make an impression.

After discussing Black Swan with a couple friends, the consensus was that this movie had a lot of potential but failed to deploy it, due either to the script or the director. I'm inclined to lay the blame at the feet of Darren Aronofsky, whose determination to imbue every scene with the themes of Sex, Black vs White, Reality Distortion and Parallel Characters breaks the suspension of disbelief about halfway in. Like a video game where the secret island base is patrolled by blue ninjas instead of the red ninjas you fought at the dojo, the first couple sex scenes were dramatic and sensual but the next ones trigger only a raised eyebrow.

Another key limiting factor is the script's unwillingness to show character development that isn't summarized in the first four lines of the movie. Bad girl Mila Kunis is eternally (for no apparent reason) eager to make friends with our heroine, whose level of craziness is pretty much the same for the entire film. Other standard ballet movie tropes (the sexually irresistible teacher, the creepy domineering mother, the jilted rival, the ambitious climber, the contrast-heavy backdrops, arriving late for practice) stay at the same level of dramatic intensity throughout, and it is only Portman who manages to make us care. Again, this is a failure of directing, as the same eerie music and shaky-cam shots are given to the petty coincidences of minute 5 as the full-blown crazy of minute 90. The pacing is also off: several scenes have no relation to the plot but were just too good to cut, so they are haphazardly thrown in

This isn't to say that Black Swan is a bad movie. It's just that you can see glimpses of a great drama behind it, and I'm frustrated that it never really gets there.

Movie News: Buffy Reboot

Recently announced plans to reboot late-90s TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer without director/writer Joss Whedon have thrown devoted fans into a tizzy. I think it's a bad idea, but not for all the usual reasons.

First, Buffy was very well-received in its original run, which is recent enough to remain in many potential viewers' minds. Recent popular reboots have generally rescued previously lackluster franchises like Batman, not tried to follow up shows that are already making top ten lists. The subject matter (vampire teen drama) is also a declining fad. As a result, the movie will be in for a lot of undeserved criticism even if it is excellent - not the best place for a commercial venture.

Second, the best parts of Buffy were either expert iterations of the show's core premise - "high school meets horror with a strong heroine" - or experimentations with the form. The first category lends itself very well to an iterative format where the characters develop but the plot doesn't - i.e. a TV show, not a two-hour movie. The second category is pretty much the exclusive province of serial narratives like TV, books or comics, where a sea of largely forgettable exposition can be cashed for great moments that require a prior investment in the series - the musical episode, the silent episode, the grief episode, the puppet episode, etc. To play with the movie form, you want an original IP, not something that has to stop and wink to the fans every 15 minutes.

Third is the cautionary tale of Buffy's slow slide into fantasy schlock. Like its cousins Harry Potter and Twilight, the show flounders almost immediately upon leaving behind the main setting, the main love triangle, and half the supporting cast. Further high points in the storyline all revolve around the dramatic return of characters from back when the show was good, now freed of their earlier plot shackles. The reboot is "not the same old high school Buffy" - but unfortunately, the true potential of Buffy was when she could be described in those terms. Past that, you're just putting Hellboy in a push-up bra and saying, "Hey guys! I crack wise and banish demons to the pits of Hell! Why doesn't everyone want to see this movie?!?"

Inaugural post

I was recently introduced to this name, which struck me as a perfect catchphrase that no one else had jumped on yet, and also very video-game-y, so I had to reserve some space on the Internet. Ideally, this blog will contain my more "official" thoughts to differentiate them from my Livejournal account.