Black Swan... of the film kind

It has been a while since I have a) seen a decent film and b) shared what I have been watching with you.

I went to see Black Swan the other week, with the ever so delightful Lizzy. Friday night girls date style. To start off with a nice clean round up of what I thought... Not what I expected, crazy as hell and so damn good! Any movie, no matter how silly the story line, that leaves your heart pounding and a little shaken up must be good.

Natalie Portman is beyond outstanding and ever so deserving of those Academy Awarda noms, even if only to praise her ballet dancing, as a result of some serious commitment to the role. Mila Kunis was surprising, and spectacular in bringing the perfect amount of her very own 'girl next door, tom boy' style to her character.

The perfect amount of freaky, can't bare to watch stomach churning gore, stunning cinematic sequences that resembled the elegance of old film, the ever so subtle original Swan Lake musical score to build dramatic effect, perfect costumes and mind blowing toe pointing and pirouettes proves Black Swan has it all.

Although, I know many will argue my opinion based on the cheese factor of the 'predictable' story line, I say without hesitation that when walking into the cinema knowing you are in for a scarily new take on the age old tale (you can't blame anyone for ruining the ending), Black Swan leaves no disappointments.

Somewhere.....

I don't think there is anything I don't LOVE about Sofia Coppola. I wait, giddy with excitement to see her new film, Somewhere!



Sofia Coppola’s (Lost in Translation) new film Somewhere tells the story of Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), “a bad-boy A-List actor stumbling through a life of excess while living at Hollywood’s legendary Chateau Marmont Hotel. His days are a haze of drinks, girls, fast cars and fawning fans. Cocooned in this celebrity-induced artificial world, Johnny has lost all sense of his true self. Until, that is, his 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) unexpectedly shows up and unwittingly begins to anchor him. Johnny’s fragile connection to real life slowly revives in her presence. So when the time comes fro Cleo to leave, his sense of loss is palpable, but the gift of hope she has also brought him leads to a beautiful, poetic denouement imbued with all of Coppola’s remarkable powers to conjure mood and atmosphere.”

Hearts racing: Inception

Christopher Nolan's latest film Inception ended, the lights grew from dim to bright, myself and the 13 other people that accompanied me to the cinema were gasping, mouths dropped, hands on the sides of our heads, hearts racing, oh lord how we wanted more!

Inception is what blockbuster dreams are made of. The plot, who some have claimed involved a little too much thinking was all engrossing and got the mind ticking but was not hard to follow. Christopher Nolan exposes in front of your eyes the story of Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a master-mind of high stakes espionage who with new technologies possesses the talent to enter people's dream and extract information. It's when approached by millionaire Saito (Ken Watanabe) with a job offer that pays far more than any dollar value that Cobb begins to explore the concept of incepting an idea into someone's mind as appose to extracting it. Nolan has captured ever essence of a dream on film. It's not just that almost believable but so far from reality feeling that says dream, it's the way you are left sitting in the cinema short of breath and groggy as if you have just awoken from an intense night's sleep with the characters.

Every member of the stelar cast are on top of their game in this one. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a stand out as mastermind Arthur alongside the darling Ellen Page, although potentially half a decade or so too young for her role of recruited architect-in-training Ariadne makes it really work. Tom Hardy brings humour and charm to his role of cheeky Eames while Marion Cotillard is truly stunning in her spine chilling supporting role. Leonardo DiCaprio, as in some of his most notable performances - Frank Abagnale Jr. in Catch Me If You Can jumps to mind - steps up to the mark as Cobb demanding notation for employing the conviction that proves why an audience loves a bad guy.

Think The Matrix with one amazing zero gravity fight scene, a little bit of that bad guy doing it for good lead character from Swordfish and a whole lot of cinematic awesome. See this film.

Through shone the sun: Eclipse

It's a little unnerving to admit that the first movie I have seen in about a year is the third installment of the Twilight Saga. Sigh, this Eclipse did not however block out the sun and leave me in darkness, in fact it did quite the opposite. Argh the shame to admit.

Any post-pubescent "token tween" such as myself will admit that by the third attempt someone in Rob Pattinson/Kristen Stewart world got it right. Sufficiently lacking the cringe worthy love scenes of the hollywood heavyweights frolicking through meadows, Eclipse does Stephenie Meyer's words justice. Perhaps it was David Slade's direction (which at first struck me as a strange fit after Hard Candy), or perhaps everyone on set has just grown up a bit but the acting seemed better. Kristen Stewart managed to smile twice and the new man-candy provided by whoever it was that played Riley made for easy watching. A standout for me, as she was in her 30 minutes of screen time in the last film, was the demonic child Dakota Fanning. If that kid (now a shockingly tall young adult) wasn't destined to play a corrupt vampire, I don't know who was.

Although I know there are many "twilight haters" out there who will disagree with every word I have spewed in praise of this film, think if anything Eclipse sets high expectations for Breaking Dawn.