BLACK SWAN

Written by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John J. McLaughlin

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey and Winona Ryder

Thomas Leroy: Perfection is not just about control. It is also about letting go.

From my understanding, to be a true ballerina, one must always strive for perfection. Your toes, your torso, your lines must be just so. If you’re serious about ballet, you might be lucky enough to join a company. Only a select few get to be company soloists though. And so, lightly prancing about beneath the stage at any given ballet, you will find dozens of girls all striving toward an unattainable goal - some starving themselves and some hoping the soloist will take a bad fall and need replacing at the last second. It’s a microcosm, ripe with potential for drama and madness, making it the perfect setting for Darren Aronofsky’s latest, BLACK SWAN.

At the film’s start, a single spotlight rises on two feet, tightly wound in the tiniest of slippers. They begin to dance and as they land one after the other, we can see how delicate ballet is and how tortuous it must be to make it look that good. When the camera pulls away to reveal that these feet do in fact belong to Natalie Portman, it is clear just how much grace she will bring to this film. And by the time a beastly creature makes itself known to this frightened dancer, it is clear that Aronofsky is about to, yet again, give us something unlike anything else he’s done.

Portman is Nina, a dancer with the New York City Ballet who has just been cast as the Swan Princess in the upcoming production of “Swan Lake”. To do so in exactly the manner her director (Vincent Cassel) demands, she must embody the spirit of both the white and the black swan. Yes, the thematic conflict for this character is obvious at this point but Aronofsky tells it with complex visual style that jetés between jarring and captivating. And Portman, who has reportedly been in dance lessons since she was a toddler, knows the pressure of the dancer. She is to tightly wound that by the time her dark side begins to show its face, we are just as ready to release as she is. It certainly doesn’t help matters that her mother (Barbara Hershey) pressures her to succeed, a new dancer (Mila Kunis) wants her spot and the soloist she replaced (Winona Ryder) wants her just plain gone.

BLACK SWAN is as theatrical and as dramatic as any ballet that I’ve seen performed on stage. Aronofsky directs but, from behind the camera, he dances alongside the dancers as if he was part of the choreography, forming some hybrid of dance and film that begs repeat performances. It also warrants a resounding standing ovation.

TIFF Review: BLACK SWAN

Written by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John J. McLaughlin

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey and Winona Ryder

Thomas Leroy: Perfection is not just about control. It is also about letting go.

From my understanding, to be a true ballerina, one must always strive for perfection. Your toes, your torso, your lines must be just so. If you’re serious about ballet, you might be lucky enough to join a company. Only a select few get to be company soloists though. And so, lightly prancing about beneath the stage at any given ballet, you will find dozens of girls all striving toward an unattainable goal - some starving themselves and some hoping the soloist will take a bad fall and need replacing at the last second. It’s a microcosm, ripe with potential for drama and madness, making it the perfect setting for Darren Aronofsky’s latest, BLACK SWAN.

At the film’s start, a single spotlight rises on two feet, tightly wound in the tiniest of slippers. They begin to dance and as they land one after the other, we can see how delicate ballet is and how tortuous it must be to make it look that good. When the camera pulls away to reveal that these feet do in fact belong to Natalie Portman, it is clear just how much grace she will bring to this film. And by the time a beastly creature makes itself known to this frightened dancer, it is clear that Aronofsky is about to, yet again, give us something unlike anything else he’s done.

Portman is Nina, a dancer with the New York City Ballet who has just been cast as the Swan Princess in the upcoming production of “Swan Lake”. To do so in exactly the manner her director (Vincent Cassel) demands, she must embody the spirit of both the white and the black swan. Yes, the thematic conflict for this character is obvious at this point but Aronofsky tells it with complex visual style that jetés between jarring and captivating. And Portman, who has reportedly been in dance lessons since she was a toddler, knows the pressure of the dancer. She is to tightly wound that by the time her dark side begins to show its face, we are just as ready to release as she is. It certainly doesn’t help matters that her mother (Barbara Hershey) pressures her to succeed, a new dancer (Mila Kunis) wants her spot and the soloist she replaced (Winona Ryder) wants her just plain gone.

BLACK SWAN is as theatrical and as dramatic as any ballet that I’ve seen performed on stage. Aronofsky directs but, from behind the camera, he dances alongside the dancers as if he was part of the choreography, forming some hybrid of dance and film that begs repeat performances. It also warrants a resounding standing ovation.

DATE NIGHT

Written by Josh Clausner
Directed by Shawn Levy
Starring Steve Carrell, Tina Fey and Mark Wahlberg

Claire Foster: No! When he says,” vagina”, he means your face.

Before the day has even started, it is already gone. Nasal strips are ripped off your face while miniature bodies pile drive into you before the alarm even has a chance to go off. In all honesty, the alarm probably hasn’t even needed setting in years. Something will inevitably wake the Foster’s up to their routine earlier than necessary. Phil and Claire, played by the king and queen of NBC comedy, Steve Carrell and Tina Fey, sit on opposite sides of their bed and stare into the separate abysses that await them. The message is clear; being married is hard, maybe even too hard. As you look at these two comedic geniuses though, you still see hope in their nearly defeated faces – hope for both the Foster’s themselves and for the movie you’re actually about to watch. What everybody needs is a good DATE NIGHT.

I am not married and nor do I have children. In fact, I saw DATE NIGHT in the middle of the afternoon, alone. I may not be the intended audience in regard to the marital doldrums theme we have seen plenty of times before but there is a whole other audience built in to DATE NIGHT that director, Shawn Levy, plays to more often than the first. That would be the legions of Carrell and Fey followers out there, of which I easily include myself among. Before this, I essentially avoided Levy’s work altogether. I’m not saying I’m about to go back and watch the NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM series but I must commend him for rising above the complete implausibility of the film’s mistaken identity premise by allowing his stars to shine when they should. Meanwhile, getting strong character actors, like James Franco, Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis, for random bit parts also gives more credibility whenever it was needed.

Fey’s quick wit and Carrell’s endearing awkwardness may be strengths we are used to by now and just expect to some extent, but their mastery is only getting better and it is their chemistry that makes DATE NIGHT work when it so easily could have bombed. These two immensely funny people pull from their dramatic strengths to make sure the Foster’s are a real couple. They’re real because you can always see the fear on their faces – the fear that they could actually lose each other. This DATE NIGHT really needs to work. And it does.

EXTRACT

Written and Directed by Mike Judge
Starring Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Mila Kunis, J.K. Simmons and Ben Affleck


Joel: Hot girls need jobs too, right?
Dean: Do they really?

If you don’t know the name, Mike Judge, you will surely still know the work. Judge’s work is the work of the people, the little guy. From OFFICE SPACE to TV’s “King of the Hill”, Judge has always voiced those who seemingly have none and he has always done it with a simplicity that is far too base level for some but just the right note for others. With his latest ensemble comedy, EXTRACT, Judge has, uh, extracted himself from one side of the labor force and taken to the other. You might ask, how can the man who championed for the faceless cubicle schmo suddenly flip sides and give more power to the man? Judge knows though that while he may be the man, he is still a man nonetheless, and that work can be just as funny from the other side.


Jason Bateman plays Joel, the owner of an extract production company – that would be extract in the vanilla or the almond variety, in case that wasn’t clear. He has built the company from the ground up and it has afforded him a lovely house, which he shares with his equally lovely wife, played by the always hilarious, Kristen Wiig. His company is on the verge of being bought for a handsome price when the very shaky ground he has been standing on for years finally falls out from underneath him. Regardless of his own personal collapse, Joel must keep his assembly line running even though the people working it are barely working with a full set. The disenfranchised may have been given their day in OFFICE SPACE but in EXTRACT, they are the butt of all of Judge’s jokes.


Judge does not judge though. He may be laughing at these hapless folks but his hero is hardly escaping the very same finger pointing. The cast of EXTRACT – rounded out by Ben Affleck as Joel’s drug-doin’ buddy and Mila Kunis as the hot girl who gets away with being bad because she’s beautiful – are in on Judge’s jokes the whole time and you will laugh right along with them. You will laugh but Judge will also get you thinking, even if just a little, about why we work. Whether you do it hard or whether you do it barely at all, Judge wants us to ask why we do it period. He isn’t saying that we shouldn’t work, just that we should know what we’re working for. And for that, EXTRACT works just fine.

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL

Written by Jason Segel
Directed by Nicholas Stoller
Starring Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd & Bill Hader


The writer/star of FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, Jason Segel, is the kind of artist who isn’t afraid to let it all hang out there for everyone to see and subsequently appreciate or pick apart. He writes his pain on to the screen and isn’t afraid to get naked on the path to true understanding. In the writer’s world, naked is a fairly obvious metaphor for vulnerability but here it just means nude. And so, as Segal’s penis flaps back and forth against his painfully pale body, moments before Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) breaks up with him, the Judd Apatow movie machine unleashes its latest raw comedy from the mind of the modern male.

This particular male is Peter Bretter (Segel), a slob who can barely pick up after himself but somehow manages to maintain a serious relationship with a gorgeous actress girlfriend and holds down a job as a composer for schlock television. He’s not unattractive nor without his charms but he does raise the question as to how he ever managed to get himself this well positioned. He also has no trouble at all finding numerous beautiful women to help him take his mind off Sarah. And while forgetting Sarah Marshall proves much more complicated than Peter had hoped - it doesn’t help that they have found themselves both at the same Hawaiian resort – he can at least have the last laugh by vilifying her as a horrible human being before the credits role. Without giving too much away, he will have the option, as the sympathetic character, to walk away happy but Sarah, as the heartbreaker, has been doomed since Hester Prynne was sent to prison with that darn scarlet letter across her chest.


If I were Apatow, I would be a little tired of hearing my name being attached to all of these projects. If anything, he should make sure to have a firmer hand in the process in the future. FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL is not without the hilarity and genuine character development that his past productions have captured so poignantly but its bizarre subplots and many rushed moments make it somewhat forgettable.