Black Swan (2010)
Very glad that after
Shutter Island this year here’s another brilliant movie that comes with bit of an old school vibe of dark, twisted psychological thriller and the great news is this time in Black Swan the content gets unpredictably impulsive, results a shattering experience in a Roman Polanskian way. As Darren Aronofsky already admitted after making the film, there’s an adequate influence of Polanski’s
Repulsion &
The Tenant in Black Swan. And as a great fan of this sub genre I like to salute his effort & the way he make use of that ‘influence’ in his own convincing fashion.
Aronosky proved his talent in dealing with dark, sophisticated & thought provoking subject matter in his earlier films like
Requiem for a Dream &
The Fountain (haven’t seen
Pi yet). After
The Wrestler he depicts a complete different art in Black Swan with darkly gleaming looks where again performance is disturbingly demanding. It’s a daunting tale of a ballerina (or we can say BalleNina) who gets lost into a spiral web of delusional fantasy and chilling reality. Like the theatrical tragic finale of
Swan Lake, Portman remarkably delivered a ‘perfect’ & her career defining performance in this film. Kudos to the great little, powerful supporting cast who all gave a much needed perspective on Nina's slowly developing descendants into the madness.
Overall, a
nail-ripping provocative thriller indeed which is surely one of the best in 2010.
>>: A
And Soon the Darkness (2010)
1970’s original is one of my all time favorites. I like that a lot for its beautiful camera works & the way Robert Fuest developed & maintained the suspense till the end. So I wasn’t expecting that much from this remake but the thing is it had some potential to be at least decent. The production value, cinematography were good enough like the two beautiful female lead (hey V, one of them is Amber Heard!:cool:). But the disappointment comes just when the mystery begins to unfold and specially the way they wasted Karl Urban with his role at that point of the film.
>>: C+
Buried (2010)
It’s literally a 90 minute movie about a man trapped in a coffin. This may not appeal to all, but director Rodrigo Cortes made it wonderfully work with continuous several plot twists to maximize the suspense and solitary actor Ryan Reynolds delivered a pretty convincing performance (but I still think he’s the wrong choice for Hal Jordan aka Green Lantern:D) that expressively displays the nature of his terrifying ordeal. Overall, it’s an intelligent & creative thrill ride with a single character and a single setting that successfully holds the tension and toying with the viewer's anticipations from start to finish.
>>: A-