Black Swan (15, 108 mins) Drama. Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder. Director: Darren Aronofsky.
Released: January 21 (UK & Ireland)
Natalie Portman collected a coveted Golden Globe award as Best Actress on Sunday for her tour-de-force portrayal of an emotionally fragile ballerina in Black Swan.
She deserves to win the Oscar on February 27 for this career-defining performance that required 10 months of gruelling physical preparation before the cameras started rolling.
All of that incredible will and discipline in the dance studio certainly pays off - not once do we doubt that Portman could perform the demanding solos from Swan Lake that punctuate this psychological drama.
The actress powerfully conveys the disparity between her character’s physical strength and grace, and her mental frailty when insecurities and jealousy steadily gnaw away at her self-confidence.
Director Aronofsky gracefully pirouettes between reality and fantasy as he joins Portman on this mesmerising descent into madness.
He has plumbed some very dark places in his earlier work including Requiem For A Dream, and two years ago, he guided Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei to Oscar nominations for The Wrestler.
He should enjoy even greater success with Black Swan, which puts the actors centre stage but still manages to showcase his directorial brio.
Artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) presides over a ballet company at New York’s Lincoln Center, all too aware that his productions have lost their edge.
So he very publicly terminates the services of prima ballerina Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder) and chooses Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) as her replacement to lead an erotically charged new staging of Swan Lake.
Nina is technically gifted but she struggles to express her emotions on stage, which causes friction with Thomas, who needs Nina to embrace her dark side if she is ever to play the Black Swan.
Soon after, sensual ballerina Lily (Mila Kunis) is cast as understudy to the lead role and Nina feels threatened, as if the new girl is trying to usurp her.
Harangued by her mother (Barbara Hershey), a former dancer who gave up everything to raise a family, Nina wrestles with fear and paranoia, teetering on the brink of an emotional breakdown.
Black Swan skillfully draws together elements of Aronofsky’s previous films and stokes the tension as we become immersed in this tale of delusions and dreams.
Portman’s fearless lead performance is complimented by a monstrous supporting turn from Hershey and a deliciously ambiguous performance from Kunis.
Cassel radiates a feral sexuality in his scenes with Portman, urging Nina to unleash the temptress within before he regrets his decision to cast her.
Sequences from Swan Lake are dazzlingly choreographed to Clint Mansell’s soundtrack (heavily inspired by Tchaikovsky’s haunting score), making the ballet accessible and thrilling to audiences who are unfamiliar with the story of accursed Odette.
While the heroine of the ballet struggles to take flight, Aronofsky’s film and his leading lady soar.
:: SWEARING :: SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 8.5/10
JOHN CARPENTER’S THE WARD (15, 88 mins) Horror. Amber Heard, Mamie Gummer, Lyndsy Fonseca, Danielle Panabaker, Laura-Leigh, Jared Harris, Susanna Burney, Dan Anderson, Mika Boorem. Director: John Carpenter.
Released: January 21 (UK & Ireland)
For more than 35 years, director John Carpenter has been making audiences shudder and scream in the dark with nightmarish visions including Assault On Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, Escape From New York, The Thing and Christine.
Since the release of the post-apocalyptic Ghosts Of Mars in 2001, the veteran film-maker has enjoyed a well-earned hiatus from the big screen, only venturing behind the camera for a couple of episodes of the long-running Master Of Horrors television series.
Now happily ensconced in his early 60s, Carpenter returns to the director’s chair for a very different though equally bloodthirsty ghost story penned by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen.
The Ward unfolds in a 1960s mental institution and commits the cardinal sin of wilfully cheating the audience for the sake of a final reel twist.
Unlike The Sixth Sense, which played fair and was jaw-dropping when we discovered the script’s immaculate sleight of hand, the Rasmussen brothers’ spooky tale of things that go bump in the night offers a couple of clues to its convoluted design.
However, there is very little reward for outsmarting the writers and the coda is deeply old-fashioned, employing the same primitive shock tactics as Carpenter’s earlier horror films.
Kristen (Amber Heard) is incarcerated in North Bend Psychiatric Hospital for setting fire to an abandoned farmhouse.
She is remanded to the isolation ward under the care of Dr Stringer (Jared Harris) and immediately clashes with dour Nurse Lundt (Susanna Burney) and orderly Roy (Dan Anderson), who warns the new girl: "I can be your friend or I can be a thorn in your side."
Kristen soon meets the other patients: Self-abusive Emily (Mamie Gummer), talented artist Iris (Lyndsy Fonseca), flirtatious Sarah (Danielle Panabaker) and babyish Zoey (Laura-Leigh), who signals impending doom when she whimpers, "I don’t like the dark, bad things happen in the dark!"
Late one night, Kristen glimpses a ghostly face staring at her through the window and she senses that something is terribly awry at North Bend.
Sure enough, the hospital conceals a shocking secret about a former patient called Alice (Mika Boorem) and as Kristen searches for clues, she discovers why no one leaves Dr Stringer’s care alive.
John Carpenter’s The Ward doesn’t stray too far from our expectations, slowly whittling down the cast as dark forces run rampant through the hospital corridors.
Similarities to a recent Leonardo DiCaprio thriller, which pulled the same wool over our eyes with infinitely more style, reduce the denouement to a whimper rather than a bang.
Heard delivers a solid lead performance, caught between confusion and terror for most of the film.
Death sequences are gruesome enough to warrant the 15 certificate but will not be giving fans of gore-slathered torture films such as Saw and Hostel any sleepless nights.
:: SWEARING :: NO SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 5/10
THE DILEMMA (12A, 111 mins) Comedy. Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Jennifer Connelly, Winona Ryder, Channing Tatum, Queen Latifah. Director: Ron Howard.
Released: January 21 (UK & Ireland)
The truth hurts... almost as much as seeing the kernel of a good idea poorly executed on the big screen.
The Dilemma is a curious amalgam of heart-tugging drama and buddy comedy that lurches from class to crass.
On the one hand, screenwriter Allan Loeb tests the bonds of brotherly love as he puts characters through the emotional wringer, and Oscar-winning director Ron Howard elicits strong performances from Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder as the women caught in a web of lies.
Yet, every time the film strikes a chord, we are subjected to a ludicrous scene of idiocy involving Vince Vaughn and Kevin James that begs serious questions about why two intelligent and beautiful women would ever entertain the advances of these buffoons, let alone marry them.
Ronny (Vince Vaughn) and Nick (Kevin James) have been best friends since college and now work together at B&V Engine Design, the company they both own.
They hope to pitch their state-of-the-art electric engine design to executives at a major company.
Automotive consultant Susan Warner (Queen Latifah) will oversee the project before the big pitch of the prototype, and she is excited about what Ronny and Nick are claiming they can deliver.
"I want to have sex with your words," she purrs.
While Nick works tirelessly to iron out gremlins in his design, Ronny frets about proposing to his girlfriend, talented chef Beth (Jennifer Connelly).
During preparations to go down on bended knee, Ronny makes a shocking discovery: Nick’s wife Geneva (Winona Ryder) is cheating with a tattooed younger man called Zip (Channing Tatum).
Therefore Ronny faces an agonising decision: Keep the truth from his best friend until the automotive company has signed on the dotted line or tell Nick everything, aggravate his stomach ulcer and plunge the engine design project into chaos.
The Dilemma has all of the makings of an intriguing dissection of male relationships, posing the question: What would we do in Ronny’s position?
Certainly, we wouldn’t follow the path of Vaughn’s hero, who goes to ludicrous lengths to gather proof of Geneva’s infidelity, leading to a bruising fist fight and an excruciating speech about honesty at an anniversary party.
Connelly and Ryder play their roles straight while almost all of the male actors milk laughs where they can, including pantomime tears from Channing about his stricken pet fish.
Changes in tone are jarring and by the time Howard draws proceedings to a close by uniting the characters in one location, we’re secretly hoping that the various relationships implode because we cannot see any realistic hope of a happy future.
Of course, loneliness and regret do not sit well with audiences - we have more than enough of that in our day-to-day lives - and so The Dilemma serves up simplistic, sugar-coated escapism.
:: SWEARING :: SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 5/10
MORNING GLORY (12A, 107 mins) Comedy. Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Jeff Goldblum, Patrick Wilson, Ty Burrell, Patti D’Arbanville, Matt Molloy. Director: Roger Michell.
Released: January 21 (UK & Ireland)
Laden with polished one-liners, Morning Glory is a frothy comedy based around a shambolic TV breakfast show called Daybreak.
Scriptwriter Aline Brosh McKenna hasn’t been drawing inspiration from the critically lambasted replacement for GMTV.
Instead, she breathes in the jaded air of American network morning shows, which gently rouse viewers from their slumber with a blend of news and light-hearted human-interest stories.
Against this backdrop of on-air calamity, McKenna charts the precarious rise of an ambitious young woman, drawing obvious comparisons with her screenplay for The Devil Wears Prada.
In that film, Anne Hathaway weathered the hysterical barbs of Meryl Streep’s haughty fashion magazine doyenne.
Here, Rachel McAdams’s perennially perky producer endures a verbal onslaught from a veteran anchorman, who believes that a job in front of the cameras on morning TV is far below him.
He may be right.
Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams) is one of the brightest stars at Good Morning New Jersey but her sterling efforts are rewarded with redundancy.
Unperturbed, the young producer telephones every network searching for a job to the despair of her mother (Patti D’Arbanville), who wants her daughter to give up her dream of working in television.
"At eight it was adorable, at 18 it was inspiring, at 28 it’s embarrassing. Let’s stop before it gets to heartbreaking," she counsels.
Thankfully, New York network manager, Jerry Barnes (Jeff Goldblum), comes to Becky’s rescue.
He offers her the poisoned chalice of Daybreak, the station’s breakfast show which ranks a lowly third in the ratings.
Arriving on set, Becky discovers that co-anchors Paul McVee (Ty Burrell) and Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton) are at loggerheads, the tension between them palpable in their broadcasts.
So Becky bravely fires Paul and aggressively pursues Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) as a replacement.
The veteran news hound mocks Becky for suggesting he should work on Daybreak: "Half the people who watch the show have lost their remotes, the other half are waiting for their nurse to turn them over!"
However, he eventually puts macho pride to one side and settles into the presenter’s chair alongside Colleen.
Morning Glory is a hoot, distinguished by a scenery-chewing performance from Ford as the revered news man, who gleefully sparks an on-air spat with his co-host about bangers and mash by sneering, "It’s tough to get between you and a sausage!"
Keaton gives as good as she gets and Matt Molloy is memorable as long-suffering weatherman Ernie, who is forced to deliver reports while tandem skydiving or sitting in the front carriage of a rollercoaster.
McAdams is a tad insipid and her romance with Patrick Wilson’s hunk is a trifle, but when Roger Michell’s film is focused on antics in and around the Daybreak studio, we’re laughing uproariously.
:: SWEARING :: SEX :: NO VIOLENCE :: RATING: 7/10
Also released...
NEDS (18, 123 mins)
Released: January 21 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)
Writer-director Peter Mullan returns to the Glasgow streets of his youth for this unflinching portrait of 1970s gang rivalry between boys from neighbouring housing estates. Benny McGill (Joe Szula) is most definitely a NED (Non Educated Delinquent). He rebels against authority in and out of the classroom, and is expelled from school for excessive violence. When bullies dare to pick on his shy and reserved younger brother, John (Gregg Forrest), Benny makes them pay using his fists. Tainted with the reputation of his older sibling and subjected to physical and verbal intimidation, John takes up the mantle and prowls the streets, looking for a fight. When the stand-off between boys on opposite sides of the bridge escalates into full-blooded warfare, John foolishly positions himself at the centre of the melee.
GET LOW (PG, 103 mins)
Released: January 21 (UK, selected cinemas)
Aaron Schneider’s portrait of small-town lives is inspired by a true story of a man whose past was shrouded in mystery. Felix Bush (Robert Duvall) lives as a hermit in the woods, far from the prying eyes and gossip of the locals, who believe that the old man once killed in cold blood. Out of the blue, Felix makes contact with funeral parlour owner Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) with a bizarre request for a living funeral - and he wants to invite the entire community to metaphorically dance on his grave. Frank rubs his hands with glee at the prospect of a lucrative business opportunity and enlists the services of his underling, Buddy (Lucas Back), to ensure that Felix’s wishes are met. As the fateful day approaches, the townsfolk, including local widow Mattie Darrow (Sissy Spacek), gather, eager to hear the confessions of a dying man.
BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (PG, 114 mins)
Released: January 21 (UK, selected cinemas)
Widely regarded as one of Audrey Hepburn’s finest moments, Blake Edwards’s enduringly popular romantic comedy swoons back onto the big screen. Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) is a desperately lonely socialite living in New York, who is searching rather forlornly for a rich, older husband to support herself and her brother. Her restrictive outlook on life is forever changed when she meets her new neighbour, Paul Varjak (George Peppard), an aspiring author and kept man involved in an adulterous affair with a wealthy older woman (Patricia Neal). Holly and Paul become firm friends, introducing each other to their particular worlds, but their feelings gradually turn to affection and love. Penned by George Axelrod from Truman Capote’s novel, Breakfast At Tiffany’s is a charming romantic comedy, blessed with Henry Mancini’s airy musical score (including the unforgettable Moon River written in collaboration with Johnny Mercer) and Givenchy’s era-defining fashions. Hepburn is mesmerising, playing Holly initially as an adorable airhead, but gradually dismantling her defences to reveal the pain and self-doubt which have compelled the poor girl to seek refuge in gaudy excess. The actress looks effortlessly stylish, and is complimented by Peppard’s solid turn. The pair are electric on screen together.
I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (18, 107 mins)
Released: January 21 (UK, selected cinemas)
Based on Meir Zarchi’s controversial 1978 horror film, which was banned by censors around the world, Stephen R Monroe’s low budget remake is a brutal and bloody revenge thriller that pulls no punches in its depiction of the violence meted out by a rape victim on her attackers. Novelist Jessica (Sarah Butler) heads to a remote cabin in the woods to pen her new book, where she will have no distractions. En route, she rebuffs the advances of gas station attendant Johnny (Jeff Branson) and unwittingly humiliates him in front of his friends, Stanley (Daniel Franzese) and Andy (Rodney Eastman). Johnny retaliates by attacking Jessica with his buddies plus local handyman Matthew (Chad Lindberg) and Sheriff Storch (Andrew Howard) in tow. The assault culminates in Jessica drowning in the river... however, she survives her watery grave and returns to exact revenge.
HONEYMOONER (15, 73 mins)
Released: January 21 (UK, selected cinemas)
Writer-director Col Spector follows up the low budget 2007 romantic comedy Someone Else with this similarly themed tale of love lost and found in modern day London. Four weeks before he is due to walk up the aisle, Fran (Gerard Kearns) is cruelly dumped by his fiancee and his entire life implodes. Clinging forlornly to the belief that his beloved will see the error of her ways, Fran puts his life on hold, to the chagrin of best friends Jon (Al Weaver) and Ben (Chris Coghill), who have relationship woes of their own. When Fran accepts the bitter truth, he tentatively dips his toes back into the dating pool but meeting the perfect woman after public rejection proves extremely challenging.
GENIUS WITHIN: THE INNER LIFE OF GLENN GOULD (U, 111 mins)
Released: January 21 (UK, selected cinemas)
Born in Toronto in 1932, pianist Glenn Gould became a cause celebre of the classical music scene with his unconventional interpretations of JS Bach and other composers. His virtuosity at the keys, accentuated by his eccentric performance style, galvanised his appeal around the world, leading to momentous recitals at home and abroad - he was the first of his countrymen to perform in the Soviet Union following the end of the Second World War. Documentary film-makers Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont pay tribute to this rare talent by interviewing friends and colleagues who knew him best, airing rare footage of the musician and composer before he famously shunned the spotlight and refused to perform for the final 20 years of his remarkable life
