Black Swan

I didn't like the movie.

My friend invited me to come watch it with him and his friends before he moves out to China tomorrow. I wasn't really sure what kind of movie it even was, but I said yes since it was my last chance to see him. Luckily for me, my mom had free movie tickets, so I used one of them!

Okay so this isn't really a movie review, but more of my reaction to it. I'm not capable of critiquing anything. At all. Anyways, Black Swan is a psychological horror, kind of like Shutter Island (which I also didn't like). I guess psychological thrillers just aren't my cup of tea. Perhaps I shouldn't drink them.
Black Swan is about a ballerina named Nina (Natalie Portman) who is technically perfect at ballet and continues to strive for perfection. One day, a director named, Thomas (Vincent Cassel), walks in and announces that one of his dancers is retiring and that he needs a new person for his Swan Queen in his ballet, Swan Lake. As all of the dancers fight for the spot, Thomas ends up choosing Nina for her superb technique. The dancer of the Swan Queen apparently has to have the ability to play the dual role of the "White Swan" and the "Black Swan". Though Nina possesses the utmost ability to perform the role of the innocent White Swan, the director, Thomas fears that she lacks the emotion and character to successfully dance the darker part of the Black Swan. So he tries to find ways to get her to relax and pull her out of her shell by playing mind games. He brings in Lily (Mila Kunis) as a sort of opposite copy of her. While Nina has perfect technique, Lily has character, and the director wants Nina to learn that. Cutting it short, as Nina desperately strives for perfection, she faces mental challenges and obstacles and slowly becomes crazier and crazier which  ends up hurting her and ultimately leading to her death. By the end of the movie you'll probably have the look of "WTF???" on your face.

I have to say all of Nina's (Natalie Portman's) hallucinations got creepier and creepier as the movie progressed and at times I was actually pretty scared, despite the fact that the movie is not a horror film. Every character other than Lily (Mila Kunis), was pretty crazy and awfully creepy. Lily was just about the only character I liked. Especially the lesbian scene. That was hot.

But it really wasn't just that. I just really liked how she played her character. The acting was great in my opinion, and the movie was brilliant. I disliked the movie, but that doesn't mean it isn't good. I read a review that said "you will not have fun watching [this movie]" and I'm a man of fun, so like I said earlier: I guess it's just not my cup of tea. And that review I read was actually praising the movie. The reviewer said the director of Black Swan knew what he wanted and that the movie wasn't intended to be enjoyed. It was the director's intentions and how well they were executed that made Black Swan so brilliant. I thought the movie was pretty interesting, and it had me at the edge of my seat at times, but I just... Didn't like it. I didn't hate it either though.

To be honest, when it ended the first thing that came to my head was, "Shutter Island?" but my friend said that they were different. He said that Shutter Island revolved around an external conflict (Leonardo DiCaprio and the things around him), whereas Black Swan revolved around an internal conflict (Natalie Portman and her inner self). But really I was just thinking, 'A crazy movie where crazy fictional shit happens when really the main character is crazy all along and that's the plot twist at the end..' Perhaps I'm too ignorant to look past such things. I heard that westerners really enjoy the subtleties of movies. Back when I was dating my ex-girlfriend, we rented a random horror movie from the local Red Box. It was really uninteresting and boring. Beyond that, crazy stuff happened throughout the movie and the main character ended up being crazy all along, and nothing that had happened in the movie never really happened.. When I saw Shutter Island, I thought the same thing. And then when I saw Black Swan, I thought the SAME exact thing. Same idea, different plots? I guess the same applies to most movies, and this type of movie is just one that I personally don't like.