Black Swan

Trying to describe an Aronofsky film can be almost as difficult as explaining a Pollack painting to someone who’s expecting a Monet – artists that think outside the box have a way of affecting their viewer more than any description can accurately portray. Black Swan is definitely one of those films, a story that might be as simply described as the tale of a ballerina who is pushing herself so hard towards perfection that she loses her grip on reality around her, and yet Aronofsky artfully layers the film to the extent that no simple description can capture the true beauty of this film.

Natalie Portman plays Nina, the lead role in Black Swan and though she’s been amazing me with her performances since Leon, she reaches new depths in this role; it’s one of the most devastating and brutal performances I’ve seen on screen – but that’s something Aronofsky seems to excel at fostering in his films. Portman literally breaks the boundaries of sanity before the audiences eyes as she transforms from shy core member, to dual-hearted lead.

Mila Kunis also stars as Lily, the free-spirited dancer who Nina envies as she outwardly embodies everything that Nina wishes to become. Over the past few years I’ve gained great respect for Kunis as an actor, as she seems to have grown with every role I’ve seen her in. In Black Swan she manages to be both daring, brash and domineering and yet she holds your attention on screen just as thoroughly as Portman.

Black Swan owes something very specific to Hitchcock – the ability to lie to the audience. Perhaps what makes Black Swan so tense and thrilling is that as the film progresses you are never sure if what is happening on screen is real, or if it is happening in Nina’s mind; it’s a powerful tribute to the director that we stay intrigued by this, because it brings us into Nina’s plight, we can’t trust what’s going on any more than Nina can. However, when the credits finally roll all that matters is that you’ve been pinned to your seat for the better part of two hours, anxious to see what will happen to Nina.

What I love about an Aronofsky film, including Black Swan is that you can tell every inch of every frame matters to Aronofsky. The smallest details are added together to be the most important, from the textures of fabric in wardrobe, to small visual effects that may go unnoticed by most of the audience. Aronofsky has as way of melding fantasy and reality in a way that makes the fantasy look absolutely real, and when necessary makes the reality look like the dream. Aronofsky has never done a film that hasn’t been powerful and dynamic – he’s a director with a clear voice and style, one that firmly belongs in cinema and I am sure his films will be some of the many that film scholars discuss for years to come.





Director: Darren Aronofsky


Nina: I had the craziest dream last night about a girl who has turned into a swan, but her prince falls for the wrong girl and she kills herself.

Star Trek

Star Trek Trailer
Originally uploaded by AsceticMonk

In this Trek universe James Kirk has grown up rebellious and fatherless because the day he was born his father died saving the lives of the U.S.S. Kelvin crew as it was being attacked by a futuristic Romulan ship captained by Nero. Meanwhile, Spock grows up on Vulcan experiencing a different kind of emotional rift as he is half-Vulcan/half-human and must decide which lifestyle he should choose. Spock enters Star Fleet and rises through the ranks, but Kirk shuns Star Fleet until he is shamed and challenged by Capt. Pike. Three years into the academy Vulcan sends a distress call and Star Fleet sends all of the cadets into active duty allowing Kirk, Bones, & Uhura to join the rest of the Enterprise crew. Once nearing Vulcan Kirk realizes that the disaster Vulcan is experiencing isn’t natural, but the same thing that attacked the Kelvin 25 years before.

Star Trek is unlike any Trek movie I have ever seen and it is all the better for it. JJ Abrams and his writers truly dug into the roots of Star Trek and decided to bring the series back to its core with the original characters, and they returned the original adventurous attitude as well. This is Star Fleet without rules, the impulsive space adventure we all truly want and we get the added bonus of having a Federation universe that is not at peace, it is still at war with the Klingons, Romulans and doesn’t have all the answers.

What is so remarkable about this film is the characters are perfectly acted and written so that they are instantly identified with the originals we know and love without being charicatures or far too predictable. Zoe Saldana is sultry and attitude driven as Uhura; Simon Pegg is hysterical & lovable as Scotty; Anton Yelchin is young, excitable & overzealous as Chekov; John Cho is the perfect blend of cocky & naive as Sulu. On top of that Zarchary Quinto & Chris Pine are beyond perfect representations of Spock & Kirk for a new generation. Not only do they really understand the core of these characters but they understand their relationship and how each man begins to inform the other.

That being said, the single show stealing actor is Karl Urban. Urban was born to play McCoy. From the moment you first hear him, before he ever walks on screen you know that Bones is coming and he captures your attention. He is filled with attitude, heart and that biting wit that always made McCoy a crowd favorite. This may be a bit of Trek heresy but I think that Urban is a better McCoy than Deforest Kelly. Urban is so good that you forget that the other actors are doing phenomenally as well.

What was so great about the writing for these characters is that the writers thought about how to get what the fans would expect in there without making it seem out of place or smack of cliché. Each character has their signature line thrown into the movie, but it happens so naturally that you wouldn’t realize those lines are important unless you are a fan, and eve in you are a Trekkie you might miss them on first viewing.

This movie did the impossible. Abrams has managed to reinvent the Star Trek wheel without throwing the car out of alignment. He pays enough homage to the original films that hard core Trekkies can appreciate it (if they get over their grudges and get to the theatre) but change the timeline so the original films can still be valid. Trek now exists in an alternate timeline. As if that weren’t enough, Abrams has opened Trek up, and people that are completely unfamiliar with the world of the Federation can discover it in an incredibly approachable way.

Go see this movie.

Director: JJ Abrams
Writers: Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman
James T. Kirk: Chris Pine
Spock: Zachary Quinto
Old Spock: Leonard Nimoy
Nero: Eric Bana
Capt. Pike: Bruce Greenwood
Leonard McCoy: Karl Urban
Uhura: Zoe Saldana
Scotty: Simon Pegg
Sulu: John Cho
Chekov: Anton Yelchin
Sarek: Ben Cross
Amanda Grayson: Winona Ryder

Nero: James T. Kirk was a great man... but that was another life.

Reality Bites

pizza
Originally uploaded by Rain Noir

Reality Bites starts as four friends graduate from college and enter into X generation angst; however, Lelaina, Vickie, Troy and Sammy think that they are immune to the yuppies that surround them and can conquer life after college. In true X-gen form they all falter and find their own dramas to be caught up in, dramas that remind them they aren’t as different as they think they are.

As a fan of Ben Stiller’s directorial efforts I was really surprised that I didn’t really like Reality Bites. The film felt a bit disconnected to me, with characters that lack motivation – they simply perform tasks because it’s in the script that they do so. A prime example of this is Sammy, the token early 1990’s gay man in the film, until Sammy actually came out to his mother in the film I wasn’t entirely sure he actually was gay, and he apparently came out because the character of Lelaina needed a moment from Sammy for her documentary. Sammy seems to exist in the film to be the “other” in the film, if Zahn hadn’t been in there they probably would have cast a young black actor just to have some sort of diversity amongst the friends.

I think that Lelaina’s character is actually a very large reason that I couldn’t get into Reality Bites. Going into the film I knew that the main character was a struggling female filmmaker; I think I expected to feel some sort of empathy with Lelaina because she and I are pursuing such similar goals – but I felt nothing for Lelaina. Lelaina is pretentious, argumentative, unmotivated and otherwise directionless; she isn’t close to her parents, gets everyone but Sammy mad at her, and looks down her nose at everyone except herself.

I think that Reality Bites shows definite signs of being a first feature, and obviously Stiller went through the roof; this past year he even did one of the best directorial jobs with Tropic Thunder. More than anything, Reality Bites is mired down by the time period it tried so hard to be relevant to and comment on, and though your opinion may differ I don’t think the gen X angst manages to transfer too well to today.

Director: Ben Stiller
Written By: Helen Childress
Lelaina: Winona Ryder
Troy: Ethan Hawke
Vickie: Janeane Garofalo
Sammy: Steve Zahn
Michael: Ben Stiller

Michael Grates: Have I stepped over some line in the sands of coolness with you? Because excuse me if somebody doesn't know the secret handshake with you.
Troy Dyer: There's no secret handshake. There's an IQ prerequisite, but there's no secret handshake.

A Scanner Darkly

I think that Philip K. Dick wrote stories that simply resonate with me in ways no other stories are capable of; I do not know why it is his stories that fascinate me so much but he is definitely one of the reasons that science fiction is one of my favorite genres. Dick was paranoid about the government and society and his themes often dealt with personal freedom among many other things, but his works are phenomenal and the films that are based on them can usually be just as phenomenal. A Scanner Darkly is no exception to this rule and is a fabulous addition to the movies made based on Dick’s works.

A Scanner Darkly takes place in the undefined near future, a time where the war on drugs is predominant and the government is invading peoples lives in order to stop it. Bob Arctor is an undercover narcotics agent who is so covert that he and he co-workers don’t even know what each other look like, much less their real names. Bob is trying to shut down distribution of substance D, the current drug of choice but to do so he lives undercover and has become addicted to the drug himself. As he lives his daily life with his girl Donna and friends Luckman, Barris & Freck he begins to question his sanity and if D has gotten the better of him.

What I love about this movie is that one of the main themes is paranoia. When does paranoia became a justified fear? When is paranoia a byproduct of your lifestyle? How do you live knowing that paranoia is a part of the world around you? Dick does not use his characters to answer any of these questions, but instead just uses each character to show the audience a different aspect of this paranoia steeped life and Linklater lets the actors inhabit the roles in a way that makes them utterly real and would make Dick proud.

When you talk about A Scanner Darkly you must address the visual style in which the film was made. A Scanner Darkly is one of the most visually stunning films I have ever seen. To create the stylized visuals of A Scanner Darkly Linklater shot the film with the actors, sets, etc. and then has the image animated over. The end results are absolutely stunning and bring an otherworldly resonance to the story helping to put A Scanner Darkly into a timeline of it’s own instead of setting it firmly in the here and now.

As a resident of Orange County I loved the fact that the story is set in Anaheim and Arctor is a sheriff with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. It was a treat for me to see and hear places I frequent in the movie, right down to the ugly plastic flower art on the freeways. This is my home, except I don’t live in a drug den – at least I won’t until Dick’s version of the future sets in.

I must commend Richard Linklater for creating a masterpiece of a film in A Scanner Darkly; this film is going to be a staple in my DVD collection and I must admit that as I have been working on this review it has made me want to put the DVD in all over again and watch one more time.

Director & Writer: Richard Linklater
Bob Arctor: Keanu Reeves
Barris: Robert Downey Jr.
Donna: Winona Ryder
Luckman: Woody Harrelson
Freck: Rory Cochrane

Bob Arctor: What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. I'll only wind up dead this way, knowing very little, and getting that little fragment wrong too.

Little Women

The story of Little Women has been told for generations about the March family, husband and wife blessed with four daughters as different as can be: Meg the perfect Victorian beauty, Jo the imaginative tom boy, Beth the sickly sister with a giant heart, and Amy the youngest sister who desires wealth and society. The four sisters grow up, meet men and their lives and relationships change forever both by their actions and the changing climates around them.

The sad part is I only have one hang-up with the story of Little Women both in regards to the book and the movie. It infuriates and mystifies me that Jo rejects Laurie when he proposes marriage to her; even before I was a Bale fan this act confused me. To this day I don’t understand why Jo does this when the two characters are so perfect for each other from a narrative stand point. This is the only point where I have to stand back and realize that in the end Little Women is a novel loosely based on Louisa May Alcott’s own life – so I guess she rejected the real life Laurie too.

I really appreciate the subtle hand Gillian Armstrong uses in her treatment of Little Women. Armstrong has an eye for the rhythm of Victorian life in a way that most directors might not, and I have to imagine that being a woman gave Armstrong an extra ability to empathize with the titular women and really be able to delve into the trials and joys of their lives without seeming to demean or cheapen them.

Eventually, I will have to do what I’ve never been able to do and read the novel that this movie is based on…and track the ancient film version down where the actresses are actually wearing hoop skirts and clothing strange to the era.

Director: Gillian Armstrong
Writer: Robin Swicord
Jo March: Winona Ryder
Friedrich Bhaer: Gabriel Byrne
Meg March: Trini Alvarado
Older Amy March: Samantha Mathis
Younger Amy March: Kirsten Dunst
Beth March: Claire Danes
Laurie: Christian Bale
John Brooke: Eric Stoltz
”Marmee” March: Susan Sarandon

Amy: Do you love Laurie more than you love me?
Jo: Don't be silly! I could never love anyone more than I love my sisters.