Black Swan

It’s not often that a movie comes along that is virtually impossible to review based on a single viewing therefore today that wonderfully incompetent combination of lack of talent and lack of understanding will collide in order to created an even more incoherent than usual review - it is the turn of the Black Swan.

PLOT: Natalie Portman plays Nina a talented ballerina who has been given the coveted role of The Swan Queen in a new performance of Swan Lake. Things of course are not that simple as Nina a grown woman in her twenties lives in an apartment with her sinisterly overprotective and domineering mother but is in every sense of the word a child. Nina is able to play the innocent White Queen with ease but struggles when it comes to the darker Black Queen. After striking up a friendship with the new girl Lily (Mila Kunas) Nina starts to unleash her adult side and explore her sexuality which enables her to throw out her stuffed animals and get to know herself on an intimate level. As Nina gets to grips with adulthood and grows into her role as the Black Queen she becomes paranoid and believes that Lily is trying to steal her role. Nina’s mental state is called into question as she prepares for opening night and gives the performance of a lifetime. END PLOT

Natalie Portman is one of my favourite actresses and even before I watched the movie I was all for giving her the Oscar based on that reason alone but in the Black Swan she is simply fantastic. She plays the innocent Nina well and her transformation over to her darker side is just amazing to watch.

As good as Natalie Portman was she was almost out shone by Barbara Hersey who played Nina’s mother who was over bearing and down right creepy as the over protective parent. There were some very disturbing glimpses into their relationship which implied on occasions that the mothers relationship and obsession with her daughter was deeply inappropriate.

The supporting cast were all strong with the exception of the perennial weakest link that is Winona Ryder who popped up in a miscast cameo.

The plot was fine although it was Natalie Portman’s performance helped strengthen the usual “she is out to get me” side of the story. The Black Swan is more about Portman than plot.

I really liked that the colour was sapped and the hand held shaky camera helped to emphasise that Nina’s panic and paranoia. I loved ever present use of mirrors and that they were used to show the White Queen/Black Queen face off.

The Black Swan is the first Darren Aronofsky film I have ever watched and I’m impressed and I am sure that Mr Aronofsky will rest easy knowing this. I will finally give in and watch The Wrestler and Requiem for a Dream and all his other movies which don’t actually appeal to me but will now be given the benefit of the doubt due to Black Swan.

The Nerdy Trio left the Black Swan with one loving it, one hating it and the other on the fence - for a trio we managed to split ourselves right down the middle on this one but as the member who loved it I am the one who is correct.

The Black Swan is a great movie which follows the progression of a woman finally becoming an adult which ultimately leads to her to find freedom in the most tragic of ways……or it shows that masturbation leads to craziness either way it deserves to be viewed more than once to be fully appreciated. 9/10.

127 Hours

It’s only Tuesday but due to the mass release of awards ceremony movies a sneaky midweek trip to the cinema was required in order to keep up - the sacrifices one must make in life are truly what makes us great - so off we went, some of us without dinner, to see 127 Hours.

PLOT: The over confident, too cocky for his own good charmer that you would have either hated or crushed on in high school goes out for a run through big, secluded canyons in Colorado only to fall down a hole and get his arm caught between a rock and a hard place. We spend the next 127Hours with Aron Ralston played by James Franco as he tries to free himself. During this time he experiences flashbacks, hallucinations, premonitions and the urge to saw off his own arm with a pen knife. He gets trapped. He think about cutting himself free. He drinks his own urine. He thinks about cutting himself free. He cuts himself free. END PLOT

There are two directors I love and can say I own practically all their movies - Guillermo del Torro (all dvd’s will be owned when I finally get around to getting Blade 2) and Danny Boyle who I have loved since the Trainspotting Days so I was looking forward to this movie on the basis of it being another Boyle picture regardless of its content.

My love of Danny Boyle almost waned slightly during the god awful three way split screen opening credits. It was cheap, it was nasty and although he did a good job in pulling together the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack I thought AR Rahman’s choice of music was completely wrong.

Good musical cues are a big part of Boyle’s films and after the dodgy opening choice the music came back to form with a really brilliant use of “Lovely Day”.

The movie did not get off to a good start but it picked up with James Franco charming and smarming his way through the canyon with a couple of girls he managed to hook up with.

James Franco is an actor who is totally off my radar - I liked him in Pineapple Express and although I have watched the Spiderman movies I do not remember anything particularly remarkable about him in them. Ryan Reynolds stunned us all by managing to lie in a box for ninety minutes completely alone and he pulled it off. In 127Hours Franco has hallucinations, flashbacks and his imagination to help fill in the movies ninety-four minute running time and he just about manages to get by.

This is where I have a problem - Franco was fine with what he was able to do and you could feel and see that Ralston was beginning to lose it towards the end but his progression from big fuckin’ hero (his words not mine) to the realisation that the only way to survive would be to amputate was broken up too much by the flashbacks and hallucinations to have any major impact. If all the flashy shots etc were removed from 127Hours I don’t think Franco could have lasted for ninety-four minutes.

There were some nice little touches with a calm Aron taking stock of his inventory and some of the video recordings he made to his family were quite sweet. The Gollum/Smeagol style interview/confession to the video camera shows that Franco is perhaps not a serious dramatic actor and should stick to comedy or find a quirk slightly off camber Brad Pitt style career.

It is common knowledge that in order to survive Aron Ralston had to chop off his own arm and I was prepared for graphic blood splattering horror but instead we got the real life version wherein Aron deliberated for a day or two before making his first half hearted attempt.

They say that in moments of life or death you find out what sort of person you truly are and during his experience in the canyon Aron Ralston discovered that he is the kind of man that will do whatever it takes to survive. I discovered during my time in the canyon that I am the sort of person who will watch a man amputate their own arm without flinching yet will be unable to cope with the sight of the same man drinking a bottle of his own urine. I learned a lot about myself in the canyon.

It is awards season and I think 127Hours should count itself lucky to be nominated in all of the categories it has found itself to be in. It is a good movie and it gets a 7/10 but it is nothing more than a good movie.

On the Danny Boyle scale of awesome movies it ranks much higher than A Life Less Ordinary but it sure as hell isn’t another Shallow Grave.

The King's Speech

If I am going to the cinema I like to see big noisy films as let's be honest they aren’t going to look and sound half as good on even the highest quality home theatre system. The problem with this lifestyle choice is that sometimes dramas get pushed to the back of the queue. It’s nice that Oscar Season arrives during the post Christmas lull and I use the opportunity to see movies, such as The King's Speech, that would in all likelihood get lost during the busy Summer Season.

PLOT: Prince Albert (Colin Firth) is second in line to the throne and is happy to be so as it keeps him out of the public eye however after his father King George V dies and his brother King Edward VIII abdicates in order to continue his relationship with Mrs Wallace Simpson, Prince Albert takes up the crown and becomes King George VI.
The problem is Prince Albert suffers from a stammer which is exacerbated by the pressure of public speaking and with his sudden placing on the throne and the country on the brink of war he is expected to become the voice to calm the public. Albert’s wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham-Carter) enlists the help of Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) a well respected yet unorthodox speech therapist who tries to get to the bottom of Albert’s stammer.
The two work together in order to prepare Albert for various speeches. I work at not crying my eyes out for the best part of two hours and a King is born. END PLOT

I have never been so emotionally engaged with a movie as I was during The King’s Speech. It was great to watch Albert, or Bertie as Lionel insisted in calling him, and Lionel’s friendship grow with scenes ranging from down right funny to emotionally traumatising especially the moment when Albert breaks down believing he is not a worthy King.

I have never been a big fan of Colin Firth but that changed today as he is absolutely fantastic as Prince Albert. Firth not only raised the bar but reset the standard and it will be a brave decision not to give him the Oscar for his performance.

Geoffrey Rush (a strong contender for Best Supporting Actor) was also brilliant as was Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth in a much smaller role than expected.

There was no weak link with the supporting cast and the movie contained a nice little moment between Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, the quintessential Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett, meeting for the first time.

It has been a long time since I sat in the cinema as engrossed as I was during The King’s Speech. It is just excellent film in every way imaginable. If I was to pick a flaw it would be that it ended.

There were no tricks in The King’s Speech. There were no special effects. There was just Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush acting and as it turns out the simple drama was the noisiest film I have seen in a long time. 10/10.

Season of the Witch

There are times I go to the cinema just hoping that a movie will be every bit as bad as I dreamed it would be, that it would be so unintentionally funny it becomes borderline genius and that a new Pathfinder would be found so it was with nervous anticipation that The Nerdy Trio left Spanish Class twenty minutes early to attend an “appointment” also known as the day we skipped class to see Season of the Witch

PLOT: Nicolas Cage played Behman an unashamedly America Knight who fought in the Crusades with his best pal Felson (Ron Perlman). The two friends decide that they are no longer interested in partaking in this religious war any further after Behman kills a woman in the heat of battle and subsequently blames God for his own incompetence.
Behman and Felson travel through a rather muddy Europe which has been infested with American Accents and the Black Plague which has also arrived about a century too soon.
Our fearless heroes are told by a stranger that the suspected death toll from The Black Plague is between “three and four”. I misunderstood the gravity of the death toll as I found this to be not bad going but Nicolas Cage was attempting to portray shock and alarm.
Behman and Felson are arrested for desertion and are given the choice of impending death or escorting a witch to the Mountain Where The Monks Live in order that she can be tried as the witch solely responsible for The Black Plague.
They unfortunately choose the latter and off they set.
There are bad CGI werewolves, a rickety suspension bridge which creates an unsuspenseful set piece, possessed Monks, Demons, exorcism incantations and in an unusual turn of events the Church isn’t evil. END PLOT.

Jeez, where to begin?

History was never my strong suit but even I know that the Crusades and the Black Plague did not take place in conjunction with one another but as I am not a Historian I don’t particularly care. I appreciate that the Black Plague wasn’t the most pleasant of times to be living in but it is the one natural disaster that I cannot take seriously thanks to Monty Python as every time I see the death, destruction and misery which that fateful disease spend amongst the people all I can hear is Eric Idle repeating “Bring out your dead” over and over and over again.

As hard as it is to believe the plot did have potential as did the premise of the movie but it just couldn’t figure out what direction it should be taking. It was heavily implied that the Church was evil and the witch was innocent then it flipped around showing the witches powers by killing two relatively innocent members of the group. It then transpired that the witch was a demon pretending to be a witch who has caused the Black Plague in order to be taken to The Mountain Where The Monks Live to destroy the only copy of the Book of Solomon which in turn is the only book that can destroy the demon.

The only person who was more bemused at this turn of events than my good self was poor old Nicolas Cage.

The movie looked dark and dirty which I suppose was in keeping with the time period but the special effects were only so-so. The Black Plague victims looked over plagued and the CGI werewolves were embarrassingly fake as was the winged demon who reminded me of the djinn from The Wishmaster series without any clothes on.

Nicolas Cage has built a career on being god awful in absolutely everything so when that rare performance comes along once a decade where he isn’t soul destroyingly bad the masses are crying out to give the man an award. In Season of the Witch Cage looks even more drained and tired than usual and this enhances the abundance of flaws in his performance. I am not even going to go into detail about his wig of choice for this movie as it speaks for itself:

Ron Perlman shows up as Felson the unlikely best pal. I enjoy watching the Sons of Anarchy (despite their bastardisation of the Irish accent) and accept that if Guillermo del Torro likes you enough to work with you four times then you must be doing something right but believing that he could stomach being the pal of Nicolas Cage was pushing my ability to suspend belief.

Aside from a little cameo from Christopher Lee, in what I suppose was an attempt to give the movie some class, the cast were unmemorable.

My major gripe of the movie was the Book of Solomon. What was the point of having this magical book but just keeping it up The Mountain Where The Monks Live and more to the point when Solomon was writing the damn thing why did his magical spell for dispelling a demon run to three pages? Time is surely of the essence when fighting an all powerful demon so a short and snappy limerick or even a haiku would be much more appropriate.

I tried to find the unintentional humour in the Season of the Witch but it was nowhere to be found. It is just another bad Nicolas Cage movie.

Season of the Witch gets a 4/10 and The Nerdy Trio’s never ending hunt for our next Pathfinder trundles on.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe as a kid and that is as much as I ever immersed myself into the literature of CS Lewis so technically the Narnia movies should not be on my radar but today I took the ten and eight year old cousins to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

PLOT: Lucy (Georgie Henley) and Edmund (Skander Keynes) the two interesting Pevensie children have been abandoned by Peter and Susan who have absconded to America. They, along with their annoying cousin Eustice (Will Poulter) find themselves transported back to Narnia in order to break an evil spell by returning the seven swords of the Lords of Narnia back to Aslan's table. They run into Prince Caspian who is out trawling the ocean blue for no particular reason. Aslan makes his traditional mid movie appearance and provides no practical help whatsoever and merely offers some pop psychology about learning to love your true you before buggering off. The gang attempt to find and seven swords. Eustice learns a life lesson. When orcs evil approaches their swords turn blue. A Kraken sea serpent is unleashed and attacks their ship. The all powerful God Aslan shows up when the hard graft is over and congratulates them on a job well done. Lucy, Edmund and the annoying cousin Eustice return home. END PLOT

The Dawn Treader clocks in at just under two hours but I didn’t feel the time go by. There is something about Narnia that draws me in and I can lose myself in the world with ease - forget Middle Earth it's Narnia that I want to visit.

The plot is packed pretty full and on first viewing I didn’t quite get the seven swords/evil island connection/the green mist is the villain. This means I will have to get the movie on dvd.....ahem.....bluray - the sacrifices I make for my craft.

There are also important life lessons to be learnt with Lucy learning self acceptance and Eustice learning not to be an annoying little prick.

The action is typical fantasy fare and although the set pieces are fine they are not particularly imaginative nor original - Prince Caspian had bigger and better battles.

I saw Dawn Treader in 3D and it looked fine although it isn’t the most spectacular 3D film of the year. The 3D effect didn’t add much but there was one nice little shot with an arrow.

The fact that actual Narnians played a big part in the first two movies is part of the reason why I love them. As the series progresses Narnia is becoming more human focused with the creatures taking a back seat. Prince Caspian had a better balance of human to animal ratio.

The cast have been culled down to Lucy, Edmund, Caspian and Eustice with some extras thrown in to look scared or row the ship.

I have always liked the two younger Narnia kids as they manage to be watchable without having a big neon "drama school" sign flashing over their heads but in Dawn Treader they are as good as ever.

Ben Barnes is ridiculously attractive and he is fine as Prince Caspian. Caspian lost his Spanish lilt between movies which upset me greatly but other than that Barnes proved that this type of movie is within his limited acting ability. He should stick to the family adventure and not attempt something grown up ala Dorian Gray.

Will Poulter who played Eustice annoyed me but in his defence that is what the character was supposed to do. I was grateful he got turned into a dragon midway through the film and pretty much stayed silent until the closing scenes.

As I haven’t read the novels I don’t know how accurate the Dawn Treader is to the original text but it doesn’t really matter to me. I have a soft spot for the Narnia series and this instalment didn’t let me down and I know that I will get it on dvd……ahem…….bluray when the time comes.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader gets an 8/10. It isn’t as good as Prince Caspian but it is a little but darker than The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. The movie ended with a hint that Eustice may make it back to Narnia but without the Pevensie children but time will tell if that ever occurs or if I will care enough about a Narnia without the Pevensie kids.

Burlesque

It doesn’t matter how clichéd the premise or how much I hate the stars involved I will go to the cinema to see a musical simply for the fact that it is a musical. Last night The Nerdy Trio attempted yet again to see Burlesque praying that this time the screen would not break thirty minutes into the film and that none of the staff members working on our first attempt were there to see us execute attempt number two.

PLOT: Christina Aguilera plays Ali a small town country girl hoping to make her way in LA as a singer and/or dancer. Upon arriving in LA Ali stumbles upon a Burlesque club and all my long forgotten dreams of dancing on a bar to The Devil Came Down to Georgia ala Coyote Ugly came screaming back with a vengeance. After forcing a dance audition on the clubs owner Tess (Cher) Ali gets a job much to the annoyance of Nikki (the criminally underused Kristen Bell). After Nikki sabotages Ali’s performance she is forced to sing live and low and behold Ali can sing. Ali becomes the star of the show. The club is almost bankrupt. Ali becomes a hit. We all forget about the love interest until he has a wonderfully toned nude scene. Cher also sings. The club is saved. END PLOT

The plot of Burlesque is neither original nor interesting but it doesn’t matter as it serves only to link each dance number to the next. The movie does lag slightly just before the final hurrah as makes an effort to tie up all the straggly threads of plot but it just about keeps it together.

Christina Aguilera is not going to win any acting awards any time soon and the only word I can think of to describe her performance is “soft” - of course when Ali starts to sing and dance the movie transforms into an MTV video. I should really frown upon this as someone who never watches the music channels on tv but I don’t care. As soon as I saw the Burlesque dancers I was hooked and more importantly I now want to be one so on that rather insane level the movie succeeded.

Cher shouldn’t have been good in this movie. Cher shouldn’t be good in anything if only for the fact that she Cher but she is ridiculously watchable on screen. It is a strange experience watching an actress try to emote without moving any facial muscles and on that rather insane level Cher succeeded. The rating of Burlesque was 12A which means we are entitled to hear one F-Bomb so kudos to Cher for also taking home this award.

The best part of Burlesque was the American version of Mark Strong aka Mr Stanley Tucci himself, popping up unexpectedly to steal the show albeit with the same style of performance but meh Stan, like Mark Strong, can pull it off with ease.

The songs were all fun and I will admit to having a couple on my I-Pod including a weird yet somehow workable cover of Marilyn Manson’s The Beautiful People.

On 1st January 2011 Burlesque wins the award for movie of the year so far; a title which is well and truly deserved. How long it will remain at the top of the pile remains to be seen although it faces strong competition from The Kings Speech next weekend but Burlesque can rein high and proud nonetheless. It gets an 8/10. It’s a guilty pleasure that I don’t feel too much guilt about liking.