*****

Black Swan rm-  This movie is about ballet and there a good amount of ballet in it. It is also about competition, jealousy and the desire to be perfect. There is no better place for these feelings to be played out than when the decision is made for the lead role in the beautiful and powerful Swan Lake Ballet. In the background is the sweeping majestic music of Tchaikovsky which is brilliantly used  by the film’s music  composer Clint Mansell to capture the u underlying theme of the movie. The theme is one of losing touch with reality to the point of psychosis. This allows director Darren Aronofsky to skillfully turn this movie into a horror fantasy where you are never quite sure when Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) has fallen into the abyss of insanity. Once you are into the crevices of the unconscious, repressed sexual wishes are fair game to examine. Portman rises to the occasion in showing all aspects of the  inner self of her character as well as projecting magnificent graceful dancing skills. She well deserves the multiple nominations for best actress of the year which she is garnering. She is supported by an excellent cast which includes Barbara Hershey who plays her mother. The story by Andres Heinz and screenplay by Heinz, Mark Heyman and John McLaughlin along with the outstanding direction of Aronofsky with his technical staff provide a film you won’t be able to get out of your mind. Interestingly, the film ends  as did one of our favorite ballet movies, Red Shoes.(2010).

*****

The Fighter rm-  Why is it that a good fight movie in the end will push your emotional buttons and bring a tear to your eye when it comes to the conclusion? Think Rocky. However, this movie isn’t really about boxing although there is lots of boxing in it. It is about family, loyalty. dreams and aspirations, self determination but not forgetting where you came from. It is based on a real people and a true story. It is the story of the boxer Mickey Ward(Mark Wahlberg)  and his relationship with his older ½ brother Dicky (Christian Bale), a former boxer who once fought Sugar Ray Robinson  but became involved with drugs and spent time in prison. Dicky comes back after much family interaction and soul searching and he trains his brother for the ultimate championship fight . Writers Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy along with Director David Russell provide a story with great character development where you understand them as well as seeing  them grow and change. The acting is fantastic. Mark Wahlberg does a very good job getting into shape and carrying off the role of boxer and the sensitive brother here. But the major acting kudos have to go to Christian Bale who brought the older brother and his fantasies for himself and his kid brother to life. No matter how he came to this portrayal it would be a worthy tour de force but at the very end of the film there is a brief film clip of the real brothers interacting and you can see that Bale nailed all mannerisms of his character. If this film should get two acting awards, the second one would be for Melissa Leo who plays the brother’s Mom as an insensitive, selfish mother who had been managing her son’s boxing career as it was going downhill. Maybe deep down she loves her kids perhaps the older one more but you won’t feel neutral about her.  We have seen Leo in other great performances in Frozen River and Conviction. The latter film along with Kings Speech, 127 Hours , The Social Network, including this one are in our opinion among the best of the films of 2010 and are all based on true stories. Truth may be better than fiction but you have to be able to tell a good story and this one certainly did.(2010)

***

The Company Men   rm -  This movie puts a face on the wide spread and often tragic unemployment that has been occurring in the US during the past few years. It mainly follows three men who unexpectedly lose their jobs because of the economy downturn and because their shipbuilding company is no longer producing many ships. However, these guys are not your assembly line grunts. Writer/Director John Wells who is known for his involvement in the politically oriented West Wing TV series has chosen to show us how the upper middle class and above are impacted by unemployment. Bobby Walker ( Ben Affleck) drives a sporty convertible and lives in a lovely house in the suburbs before he loses his job. He is the lowest end of  the food chain of the three newly unemployed guys  which includes characters played by Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones . The latter plays a man with millions of dollars in stock options who was long time buddy of the owner and founder (Craig Nelson) of the entire company. The owner fired him while he himself receives a gigantic salary, options and even sells the company. Those formerly under him are scraping to make ends meet while they hang around for months and months in an office of an outplacement company. This situation alone, might stir you up as it did us since we have been railing for awhile why there isn’t a law preventing CEOs from getting outrageous salaries and payoffs without stockholders approval while their company goes down the tubes (see my article in the Huffington Post). This film captures the personal travail that in this case a few men go through as well as how it affects their wives and children. It can even drive a person to suicide. Kevin Costner has a relatively small role in the movie as the one person who works with his hands as a carpenter, home- fixer up guy who is able to barely keep working in contrast to brother in law realistically played by Affleck. The movie doesn’t have any real big surprises. Everyone knows the stories and even the poignant moments are more or less expected and maybe even a little stereotyped. Everyone is glum and down in the dumps and it is contagious watching it for 104 minutes but the movie did tell it like it is and will stand as a fictional documentary of the hard times for many people.(2011)

***

Blue Valentine rm-  An in depth study of two people in a marriage that breaks apart. Cindy (Michelle Williams)  a confident, somewhat ambitious  young woman who didn’t see much love between her parents but finds herself very attracted to and does seem to fall in love with Dean (Ryan Gosling), a very appealing young man who never made it through high school, who is content to work for a moving company and would be equally content to ultimately accept a job assisting to paint houses and hanging around with his kid. Director Derek Cianfrance through a series of alternating views of his two main characters in the present time and at an earlier time during their courting period shows how their relationship developed and is now falling apart. Their marriage follows on the heels of an accidental pregnancy that almost ends in an abortion but Cindy backs out at the last minute for what reason we are never sure. It appeared that if she had better abortion counseling the marriage might never have happened. Dean drifts into what seems to be alcoholism  but we are never shown whether this because his marriage isn’t working out or if the marriage isn’t working out because of the drinking. In fact, despite good literal and figurative close-ups of these two main characters, there are some loose ends in the plot. We certainly don’t get to know Dean and what makes him tick as well as we understand Cindy,  which is a short coming of the movie. All we see is a guy who has some stunted emotional growth despite his apparent sensitivity to his young 6 year old and an older man that he moves into a nursing home. The film under the direction of  Cianfrance provided a wonderful showplace for the talents of Williams and Gosling who may deserve Oscar considerations for  this movie but the script in our opinion didn’t provide enough internal consistency for this movie to deliver a knockout punch. Special kudos do belong to the make up and styling people for creating a realistic difference in the appearance of the characters during the 10 or 15 year time span in which they are shown. (2010)