Black Swan (2010)

Last night Natalie Portman (Israeli born) won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her character Nina in Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky. The movie is about Nina, a ballet dancer that wins the lead in "Swan Lake" doing perfectly the role of the White Swan - Princess Odette - but slowly loses her mind as she becomes more and more like Odile, the Black Swan, thanks to the pressure of her mother (Barbara Hershey), who was a great young ballarina that never reached the top, her Artistic Director (Vincent Cassel) that pressures her constantly sexualy and Lily (Mila Kunis) a new dancer that impresses the Artistic Director for her role as Black Swan.

Natalie Portman

In terms of acting this movie deserves a 10, because all actors do a great job portraying difficult characters with different pressures and that depending on what point of view we take can look completely different.
The story has a lot of rhythm and is complicated to be bored, althought it may require some thinking to solve whats happening, it has such a good speed that you wont care, you will want to figure out whats going on and thats everything that will matter.
For me something that happens when im bored watching a movie is that I find my self constatnly looking at my watch. Well in Black Swan that didnt happen, and I think that a great sign of how entertaining the movie is.
In terms of Authenticity I think the movie portreys perfectly the pressure of the Ballet, and arts in general. Doing a great job showing from where it can come and how, from family, Directors or fellow dancers.
I would love to comment the end of the movie, because it can have 1000 different explanations, but I dont want to spoil it to anyone, so if you are interested in my opinion, leave me a comment and we can discuss it.
My rating for this movie is an 8. The things I didn't like is that sometimes you can get lost and you don't know how to interpret whats happening, so you take the risk of getting the whole story wrong.

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

The Bourne Identity (2002)


Today I’m going to talk about "The Bourne Identity" by Doug Liman. The story is about a man who is picked up by a fishing boat and doesn’t remember anything about who he is, where he is or why he has bullets in his back. The man (Matt Damon) finds out his name, Jason Bourne, and some information about him in a bank account in Switzerland and with the help of Marie (Franka Potente) he tries to elude assassins and to recover from his amnesia remembering everything about himself. 
The main idea behind the movie is really interesting, a man that forgets everything but suddenly remembers that he knows how to speak a lot of languages; he knows martial arts, etc. Also the fact that they try to include a love story is interesting. What I didn’t like that much is that not much happens, in terms of the story, in the movie. Except in the first and last 15 minutes, Jason Bourne doesn’t find out much about whom he is or why they are trying to kill him.
We could describe the movie as a perfect "airplane movie" because you have a lot of action scenes, for example the chase with the mini cooper (Amazing!!) that make time pass quickly (something very important in a plane), but also if you take a small nap (occurs a lot in planes) when you wake up, you didn’t missed anything important in the movie. 
We also have to understand that after this movie, there were 2 sequels, so it’s in part normal that this movie in particular doesn’t solve all the doubts about the story. And to be an action movie, the action scenes have a lot of quality, including scenes with car chase, shootings in the snow, foot race, escapes, etc. If you are an action movie lover this is a movie you have to watch.
In conclusion, I liked this movie because it has good action, mystery and love. What I didn’t like is the fact that in terms of story, not much happens in the two hours of movie. 
Rating: 7.5

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

Never Let Me Go (2010)

My first review will be about Mark Romanek´s Never Let Me Go (2010). The film, based on the book by Kazuo Ishiguro, talks about the life of three kids, Ruthy (Keira Knightley), Kathy (Carey Mulligan) and Tommy (Andrew Garfield), that grew in an English boarding school in the 70s. At first it seems like the movie may be an historical one, but in the first 10 minutes you discover that in that school the kids only live until their 30s because they are used exclusively to donate organs to other people, raising life expectancy until 100 years.
The concept of the story is interesting. Two types of humans, the ones that live 100 years and that ones that since they were born know that their destiny is to save people by donating their own organs and living a shorter life.

 Although the story is located in a science-fiction context, its really about love and about accepting your destiny. Is about trying to enjoy your life, no matter if its 100 years old or 30 years old. And that's precisely where, in my opinion, the movie fails. The speed of the movies is really slow, is like you are watching the characters (excellent acting of the 3 leads) do their life's and nothing really happens. The movie is divided in three parts, the first one is the kids growing in the boarding school, the second one is the teenagers enjoying life outside of school and the final part is the adults starting to fulfill their destiny, donating. You know that's whats going to happen since the beginning of the movie and there is no surprise at all, maybe excepting the end. I would have preferred if, for example, they tried to escape from the boarding school, or tried escaping their destiny. But it seems that wasn't the main point of the story, the main point was love and I think they didn't express it well enough.
At the end, I enjoyed the acting, I enjoyed the mix of watching a story happening in the 70s but with all this futuristic look of donors being raised and the only thing I really missed was a little bit more of action and suspense.
My rating for this movie is 6.5/10

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS