Black Swan

Spoiler alert-o-meter: Some spoilers ahead.  

Natalie Portman was always a precocious actress. Starting out in movies in her early teens, she was a natural in The Professional and Beautiful Girls, commanding attention from just a smile. Then she starred in the Star Wars retreads (or is that pre-treads?) and it was hard to see the actress through epic story and CGI. She played an emo pin-up girl in Garden State, and played teenagers in Anywhere But Here, Where the Heart Is, and Cold Mountain.

She started taking more interesting parts with V for Vendetta, The Darjeeling Limited (in the Hotel Chevalier prologue), Closer, and My Blueberry Nights. With Black Swan, Portman confirms that she’s at her best playing characters that have something to hide; that are lying, putting on an act, or are in denial. In Hotel Chevalier, she plays a young woman whom we know little about, except she is the fickle object of Jason Schwartzman’s character’s desire. She meets him in the titular hotel, and seduces him. In Closer she plays a stripper, and in My Blueberry Nights, plays a prostitute. Each is a character good at deception, each played by Portman as if they had something to hide.

Portman follows in the footsteps of other actors like Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange who mesmerize when they play characters who are themselves acting. Nick Nolte was great in Down and Out in Beverly Hills, as a man who becomes all things to a rich, spoiled L.A. family, ending up a reflection of what they want him to be. Jessica Lange shone in Frances, about Frances Farmer, the actress who went nutty.

Actors are supposed to act like they’re not acting. Portman’s never done that for me. I always see a young woman who is natural and beautiful, who may be technically perfect, but a depthless shadow of an actress. And this is why she will never play a role better suited to her, both physically and emotionally, than she does in Black Swan. I cannot imagine this movie with another actress. And that’s a rare and wonderful thing.

Black Swan works on multiple levels, each fascinating. On the plot level, it’s about a ballet dancer, Nina, who is up for the lead in a “new take” on Swan Lake, as conceived by director Thomas Leroy (French smoothie Vincent Cassel). Nina nails the white swan part but to land the lead in the production she must also nail the darker, more emotionally intense black swan part. She’s technically perfect (as is Portman in the part), but has trouble bringing emotional fire to the black swan. Nina rehearses hard to dance well, to dance perfectly. Her drive to be perfect as both white and black swans leads to her undoing.

Black Swan co-stars Winona Ryder, Mila Kunis, and Barbara Hershey. So on another level, Black Swan is about the cutthroat world of actors. It’s the story of an aging beauty queen, Winona Ryder, forced to retire from the business to make room for the next generation of beautiful girls, as represented by Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis (as another dancer). Ryder is only in a few scenes as Beth, the aging dancer who was a star in her day, but like any athlete must eventually, she is forced to retire and make way for the younger generation. Winona Ryder is an excellent actress.

Her few moments on screen, especially her first scene where she wrecks her dressing room after getting fired from the company, work so well that I wanted the cameras to follow her around for a while. She is relegated to a hospital room for half the movie: a literal wreck after getting hit by a car. Barbara Hershey, whose face looks ravaged by time and facial surgery, plays Nina’s mom, who was herself a great dancer but who gave it all up to have Nina. And never lets her forget it.

But it’s not Ryder’s or Hershey’s movie. It’s Portman’s. And she’s riveting for the entire movie. Black Swan is told entirely from Nina’s point of view. So, we closely witness through her eyes her domineering mother, the intense rehearsals, the feeling of persecution that begins to dog her, and we feel keenly her psychosexual dramas unfolding in almost real-time as Nina can’t help but be attracted to both Thomas and the new dancer to the company, Lily—Mila Kunis as a tattooed party girl; the antithesis of Nina. But Nina’s not really attracted to them so much as drawn to them when they show the slightest endearment or attention.  

“You really need to relax,” Lily tells Nina at one point. But relaxing is just not in the cards, for Nina or for the audience. Director Darren Aronofky doesn’t let us off the hook, as the pressure Nina puts on herself to be the perfect black swan manifests itself in various ways. With unflinching composition, we get to watch as Nina worries her skin bloody. She comes to believes Lily is trying to get rid of her to take over her part. Nina lashes out at anyone who gets in her way. 

But toward the end, it’s not really Nina anymore but the black swan trying to fight the white swan for supremacy. For perfection. Ultimately there is only one way for Nina to find perfection in her performance. And this translates into exhilarating moments as Nina finally achieves the state of perfection she has been driving herself toward. 

Portman’s performance is based almost solely on her body and her ability to move within each frame. This is what I mean by her being perfect for the role. I almost felt I was watching Natalie Portman the perfectionist actor in a movie about herself playing a damaged character trying to become the perfect black swan. And, toward the end, during Nina’s debut on stage, Portman and Nina merge. And you see the transformation not just as the character Nina views it in close first-person narration sense, but also how those around her view it, and ultimately how the audience at the ballet (an extension of the movie audience) views it. And within this conceit, Portman, and the movie, nail it.

Stats:

Theater location: Lowell Showcase, Sunday, January 9th, 11:35 matinee. Price $8.25. Viewed solo. Snacks--Peanut Butter Builder's Bar.

Coming Attractions:

The Adjustment Bureau. Matt Damon stumbles upon an concurrent reality where exists the adjustment bureau, a league of fedora-wearing men who control to the flow of daily events. But Matt met a woman he shouldn't have, and now he and Emily Blunt are running for their lives. Or something like that. Inception lite.

Water For Elephants. A Big McHuge Hollywood adaptation of the bestselling novel about a traveling circus, starring that guy from Twilight, Reese Witherspoon, and that guy who won best actor last year. Magical whooey.

No Strings Attached. Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher play friends who end up sleeping together. And, I'm guessing from the plot twists exposed in the trailer, that he falls for her and she just wants the sex because she has a busy life as a doctor and doesn't have time for more? Could be cute, since the stars are both cute. Not sure Portman's made a rom-com like this.

Cedar Rapids. Ed Helms takes a stab at headlining a Sundance-Cute comedy. "The plot revolves around a small town Wisconsin man (played by Helms) who, when his role model dies, must represent his company at a regional insurance conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where his mind is blown by the big-town experience.” Welcome back, Anne Heche! With John C. Riley doing Will Ferrell's role.

True Grit

Spoiler alert-o-meter: Few spoilers ahead. 

The Coen Brothers are good storytellers and good filmmakers. True Grit gives them an opportunity to tell a good story well. They are stylists but here their style does not get in the way of this simple story of Mattie Ross who hires U.S. Marshall Reuben Rooster Cogburn to hunt and bring to justice Tom Chaney, the man who killed her father in the American West of the 1870s. 

Jeff Bridges plays Rooster Cogburn with perfect pitch, and acting chops he can probably summon in his sleep. He delivers, playing Rooster as drunk, crusty, and with a heart still beating under his gruff exterior.

The movie—a drama, with dollops of humor—is smart enough to veer away from the 1969 version and steer closer to the novel by Charles Portis. The Coen Brothers, in their fifties and playing the studio game for a while now, are craftsman. The directing is clean, the visuals often stark and clear in keeping with the American West landscape;  mountains and rugged valleys in the winter, snow in the mountains, cold mornings, dead men hanging from high branches. 

Mattie is fourteen, but as played by Hailee Steinfeld, she is preternaturally precocious as she takes to task anyone who won’t help her track down Tom Chaney. Chaney is played by Josh Brolin as a dense man who sees killing as just another occurrence that he stumbles through. He joins forces with Lucky Ned Pepper’s gang, and Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper – any relation?), while a ruthless robber and killer, lives by his own code. It may be the wild wild west, but even killers have priorities.

Mattie is happy enough to track Chaney herself but when Rooster takes her up on her offer, she insists on accompanying him. Mattie talks quickly, does not suffer liars and fools, and displays an intellect that outshines any adult. She travels with a gun, and is ready to use it, but talks of contacting her lawyer whenever she feels slighted. She’s a fish out of water, in a rough land, with killers. She has nothing in common with anyone, yet she somehow gets most people to help her, to see her points. It’s easy to forget she’s only fourteen, growing faster than she could ever imagine.

She ends up with not just a U.S. Marshall in her corner, but a Texas Ranger. Played by Matt Damon, the ranger is full of himself; a fly in the ointment that comes through in a pinch. It’s fun to watch Rooster try to outgun the ranger in a competition to hit cornbread used for target practice. It’s an old-fashioned kind of scene in a truly old-fashioned genre. This is not a revisionist Western, not a Wild Bunch or even an Unforgiven. It’s a straight up Hollywood Western, made by filmmakers paying tribute to the genre, not reinventing it for a new generation.

The movie, in the end, is not a comedy and not for the kiddies. The violence is depicted as sudden and real, showcasing just how dangerous America was during this period. It brings to mind other contemporary Westerns, including the Coen’s own No Country For Old Men with its violent characters in a violent land, the killer Anton Chigurh a sign of fate unavoidable. In True Grit, violence is explicit as a means to an end. In this context the gun play is meaningful. Mattie is searching for her father’s killer: Justice must be served. 

Topped off with great performances and uncluttered writing and direction, the Coen Brothers’ True Grit is funny, true, violent, bittersweet, and above all entertaining.

 

Stats:

Theater location: Lowell Showcase, Saturday, January 1st 2011, 1:10 matinee. Price $8.25. Viewed solo. Snacks--Twizzlers Cherry Pull N' Peel, Coke Zero.

Coming Attractions:

Country Strong. Popular and drunk country music singer (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) learns that country music can save your soul and make you sober. Just watching this trailer made me want a drink. Although Tim McGraw = Handsome dude.

The Rite. The Exorcist meets Anthony Hopkins, and brings this kind of devil-lives-in-innocent-kids scare tactic to the 21century. "An American priest travels to Italy to study at an exorcism school." Wow, what a boring IMDB description.

Season of the Witch. More Nicholas Cage goofiness. Has everyone forgotten this guy can really act?

Transformers, Dark of the Moon. More fun from Sir Michael Bay. Sigh.

The Mechanic. I'm not a big fan of Jason Statham, but this looks like a cut above his usual B-movie action fare. Also, is this a remake of the '70s Charles Bronson flick? Discuss.

Rango. Johnny Depp is the main voice talent for this animated kid's movie. Lush looking. Slick as money can buy.

The Fighter

Spoiler alert-o-meter: There are more spoilers on Micky Ward's Wikipedia page than in this review.

The Fighter follows a long Hollywood tradition of sports movies. It uses the classic underdog-comes- from-behind sports-movie paradigm by showing the rise, fall, and rise of boxer Micky Ward. But The Fighter hinges on much more than this simple trope. To call this a movie about boxing does not do it service, and to say it’s a movie about brothers and the ties of families takes away from the fact that it’s also a riveting boxing movie and a fiercely anti-drug movie.

Shot in and around Lowell, Massachusetts during the very hot summer of 2009, The Fighter showcases my current home city. This fact alone might lend to my subjective take on the movie. We didn’t see any of the location shooting like we did for Ricky Gervais’ The Invention of Lying, but often I’d see the arrow signs along Thorndike Street directing the cast and crew to that day’s location. Having a major Hollywood movie shoot in your town is like having your best friends crowned King and Queen of the senior prom. Mark Wahlberg, who stars as Ward, fought for the film to be shot on location. This is not simply a movie shot in Lowell, but features a story about characters born and raised here that could not be shot anywhere else and purport to be authentic.

The Fighter fully and perfectly captures the story of Micky Ward, his girlfriend, his family, and above all the relationship with his brother, Dicky. Christian Bale, who has played Batman and an American Psycho, made me forget all his previous roles. In The Fighter he becomes Dicky Eklund, Mickey Ward’s half brother.

The story starts in 1993, on the hot streets of Lowell. The title sequence alone is a killer, opening with shots of Micky and Dicky (hey, that rhymes) working on a road paving detail early one steamy morning. They’re playful while they spar and reenact Dicky’s knockdown of Sugar Ray Leonard from a 1978 bout. Micky’s a junior welterweight who hasn’t had a fight in a while, he retired in 1991 after four straight losses. He’s learned everything he knows from his brother Dicky, a former welterweight and “pride of Lowell.” But now Dicky’s a crack head, which makes him unreliable as a brother and trainer. But that doesn’t stop Micky from loving him, and believing in him.

Dicky is manic and delusional, thinking the HBO film crew that is following him around Lowell is there to document his comeback. The crew is actually shooting what would become the near-legendary (at least here in Lowell) documentary, High on Crack Street, Lost Lives in Lowell. When this fact comes to light over the course of the movie, it’s heartbreaking.

Micky’s a good boxer, but he’s in his early thirties and isn’t getting any younger. He wants to start fighting again. His mother, Alice (a blistering Melissa Leo), acts as Micky’s manager. Alice gets Micky in the ring again, but he ends up fighting a boxer who’s got twenty pounds on him and he suffers another painful loss.

He starts dating local bartender, Charlene. Amy Adams plays Charlene as a tough, sexy, college-educated woman who feels she never lived up to her potential after dropping out of college. She helps Micky see that being managed by a mother who is blind to Dicky’s debilitating drug use and who books fights based solely on the money may not be the best choice for his career.

If all this sounds rote, it’s not. Director David O. Russell (Spanking the Monkey, Three Kings ) and executive producer Darren Aronofsky (who directed Black Swan and The Wrestler), and the many writers credited with the screenplay (including Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy) leaven what could have been an average or even at times depressing story with humor and a compassion for all the characters, including Alice, Micky and Dicky’s seven sisters, and Micky’s beleaguered, henpecked stepfather.

When Dicky is sent to prison on a number of charges, Micky starts training with Lowell cop Mickey O’Keefe (who plays himself!), a mentor and longtime friend. Micky starts surrounding himself with people who know what’s best for his career. He starts getting better matches, and starts winning. Micky’s style is unique in that he will take punch after punch, round after round, until his opponent lets his guard down. Then he pummels with combination punches to the head, body, head, body until the opponent drops.

We’re never told exactly why he waits so long in a match to strike, but maybe it’s better left unspoken. For a boxer, the character of Micky Ward as played by Wahlberg is a passive guy. He’s nice to a fault, loves his mother and his stepfather, half brother, and his many sisters. Almost to a fault.

But toward the end, as he brings his newly clean brother into his corner that already contains Charlene and Mickey O’Keefe, it’s obvious Ward’s strength lies in his quiet persistence and ability to arbitrate the many facets of his personal and professional life to work together for his benefit. As any sports movie must, The Fighter builds to a final competition. In this case the bout between Ward and British fighter Shea Neary, with the winner taking home the WBU Light Welterweight Champion.

More than a movie about a boxer, The Fighter offers riveting storytelling, great acting, and exemplary location cinematography. 



Stats:

Theater location: Lowell Showcase, Thursday, December 23, 6:45 show. Price $10.50. Viewed with Liz. Snacks--Water.

Coming Attractions:

Lincoln Lawyer. Based on the Michael Connelly novel. Matthew McConaughey in full-on serious lawyer mode. Co-starring Ryan Phillippe and Marisa Tomei.

Unnamed Alien Invasion Movie. The trailer cut off before they showed the name of it. Looks like District 9 crossed with Cloverfield. After a Google search (2011 alien movie), turns out it's called Battle: Los Angeles. Looks effective and frightening. 

Thor. Marvel Comics' Thor gets the big-budget treatment. With Chris Hemsworth as the titular hero, along with Natalie Portman, Kat Dennings, Idris Elba, and Anthony Hopkins.

No Strings Attached. Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher play friends who end up sleeping together. And, I'm guessing from the plot twists exposed in the trailer, that he falls for her and she just wants the sex because she has a busy life as a doctor and doesn't have time for more? Could be cute, since the stars are both cute. Not sure Portman's made a rom-com like this.

Merry Christmas (Re-Post)

I know, I know: Where's this week's movie review? Don't worry, it's coming. I'm not quite finished with it. And you want it to be perfect, don't you?

In the meantime, enjoy this video I took at last year's Boston Bazaar Bizarre of a musician doing Santa Claus is Coming to Town on a theremin:

Tron

Although Tron Legacy, the sequel/remake/re-imagining of Tron comes out today, this week I hunkered down in a secret screening bunker in the heart of a cold Lowell December night to gather with dozens of like-minded lovers of movie cheese to watch an invitation-only showing of the original Tron.

Set the way-back machine for 1982, and all things Disney. At the time, Disney was trying to compete with the popular and lucrative sci-fi market but had only come up with The Black Hole, a static, woefully unsuccessful space-opera snoozefest, and The Cat From Outer Space. Dragonslayer, from 1981, was a step in the right direction. Then along comes Tron. As an almost thirty-year-old time-stamp, it’s pretty entertaining. As a movie that makes sense and uses good actors well, it's not so successful.

Jeff Bridges stars as Kevin Flynn, a curly-haired carefree software engineer who looks and talks a lot like Mathew McConaughey. Flynn runs a successful video arcade but holds a grudge against the computer company where he used to work. The company, Encom, canned him, and since then he’s been hacking their Master Control Program to find evidence that evil software engineer Ed Dillinger, stole his lucrative video game ideas. Dillinger's played with a torpid evil by David Warner. He’s a bad guy that doesn't have any fun at all—Come on Disney! Didn’t you learn anything from your lengthy history of great animated villains?

That’s the real world. The conceit of the movie is that whenever a character logs into this Master Control Program, the story moves to a world inside the program. Matrix/Avatar-like character doubles run around in tight, colorful body suits (lots of man buns), with black and white, or tinted skin. The Master Control Program was written by Ed Dillinger, but it's becoming sentient, and prefers to run things like the Roman Empire where little programs who never caused anyone any harm are forced to duel it out with one another on the grid.

The Master Control Program laser beams (seriously!) Flynn into the digital world where he ends up fighting for his life. He also helps security program Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) and resident Master Control Program hottie Yori (Cindy Morgan: Caddyshack's Lacey Underall!), do, um, something to get the mainframe to kick out the evil totalitarian program…Or something like that. Here's how IMDB describes it: "A hacker is literally abducted into the world of a computer and forced to participate in gladiatorial games where his only chance of escape is with the help of a heroic security program."

Before the screening, I couldn’t remember if I’d seen Tron. I knew I hadn’t seen it in the theater when it came out, but I was sure I caught it on VHS sometime in the ‘80s. The iconic image of the cyber bikes zipping across the grid were still so vivid. But as soon as Jeff Bridges appeared, with his McConaughey curls, I knew I was in a very special Disney world I'd never been to before.

As dull, lifeless, and Disneyfied as the real-world scenes are, all the scenes inside the Master Control Program make up for it. Well, just about. There’s still the bad acting, goofy dialogue, and an animated sidekick (Bit, the animated polyhedron!) all drizzled over one chase or battle sequence after another.

The set design incorporates grids, blocks, spheres, and lots of neon. Throughout are whispers of other sci-fi movies. The chases through a landscape of grooves and columns remind one of Star Wars, specifically the scenes of X-Wing fighters flying through canyons along the surface of the Death Star. The costumes look leftover from Buck Rogers, although these glow, change color, and have circuitry-like detail. The monochrome look of the character's faces hark back to Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

There are also a couple drug references which amazed me considering this is PG-rated stuff: In the Master Control Program the programs refer to the developers who created them as users. Also there is a scene whose placement in the plot defies logical explanation. It concerns a pool of liquid the characters drink from because it gives them the feeling they can accomplish anything.

Your enjoyment of Tron depends on your fondness for its elements. For me, it was entertaining to watch the animators and filmmakers struggle to forge the future of computer graphics. And chuckle at the storyline. And wonder why they cast poor David Warner in this thankless role. Tron Legacy looks like Tron remade with more money and a better graphics program. For all those big budget effects, my money's on the original Tron still standing in another thirty years.



Stats:

Theater location: Super Secret Underground Bunker. Price: Free, but donations accepted. Viewed with Liz and Amanda.
Snacks—A stick of sugarless Non Stop Mint Stride gum.

Coming Attractions:

N/A