THE IDES OF MARCH & DRIVE: GOSLING DOUBLE FEATURE!

I get it, everyone! Ryan Gosling is a good-looking man.

I know this because A) I have two eyeballs in my head, which I use to look at things, and to then surmise said things into little piles labeled “Hot” and “Not”, and B) every article, review or interview with Gosling, no matter how brief, MUST CONTRACTUALLY (through a contract with the universe) state how good-looking Ryan Gosling is. Gosling has been called The Gallagher of Acting, as a “splash zone” for ladies must be established around his perimeter. (Sorry, mom)

With all this oohing and ahhing over the guy, it should be easy to hate on him. But his solid acting chops and aw-shucks Canadian demeanor put him in that rarest of Natalie Portman-esque camps: the Unfairly Attractive and Talented People Who Also Try To Be Actively Be Decent Human Beings And Annoyingly Seem To Have Their Life Together.

R-Gos, of course, caught the eye of America playing the lead role in The Notebook, the story of a man who cruelly tormented his Alzheimer-suffering wife night after night by reminding them how happy they were before she became ill. Then it was onto Lars And The Real Girl, playing a man who has a chaste relationship with a sex doll. You can watch a clip of it here:

Now, several years later, he opens two movies within just weeks of each other, The Ides Of March and Drive. Will they keep the Gosling name flying high? Or will these projects sink to Ryan Reynolds depths? Let’s find out!

Did you know that Washington and politics has the power to corrupt people? It’s true! In The Ides Of March (the title taken, of course, from an Iron Maiden song) R-Gossy plays the campaign manager of presidential hopeful George Clooney, because if you are a strong-featured man running for public office, you need someone equally crotch-soaking to run your internal affairs.

Gosling’s mentor is Philip Seymour Hoffman. The rival campaign manager is played by Paul Giamatti. IT IS THE GREAT SAD-SACK ACTOR-OFF OF OUR TIME! I cannot BELIEVE they did not give these two more than a few paltry minutes of screen time together. That was the Alien Vs. Predator for doughy character actors, and they blew by it. Strike two, movie! (Strike one is the terrible title, although the movie is based on the play Farragut North, so it’s at step up from that, I guess.)

In a secret one on one meeting, Giamatti tries to convince Gosling to work for his candidate. And although Gos-Gos is all “Nuh-Uh!” to the idea, going to secret meetings with the heads of your opposition is apparently frowned upon, and our boy Gossy is in deep trouble.

I generally like “inside the War Room” style movies, and although everyone is certainly Acting with a capital “A”, (as opposed to ACTING with all capital letters, like Nicholas Cage), it all feels like the 10,000,000th time we have been told that to Get Ahead in Washington, you gotta play dirty. This story is also supposed to take place over the span of about three days, but Goslings transformation goes from gee-wizz brightest boy in the room to cold, manipulative robot face so quickly, it’s almost comical.

At least in movies like The Candidate or A Face In The Crowd, you have a sense of slow dread that takes over the tone of the film, and creates and excitement of suspense. Watching The Ides Of March, you feel the actors are just waiting to give their big speechy speech that actors love speeching.

Now, onto Drive!

The movie doesn’t give Goslings character a name, so let’s just call him Drive.

“I drive”, says Drive. You sure do, Drive! When we first meet him, he is driving some robbers to their robbery. The police almost catch Drive, but he is too good at driving, and out-drives them.

We also find out he drives stunt cars for the movies. “Great driving!” says Walt Cranston, his driving coach. Then Drive eats three cars for dinner, and listens to “She Drives Me Crazy” on the radio. Then he watches his favorite Pixar movie…no, not Cars! It is Monsters, Inc. Drive is a three-dimensional character, people!

Drive doesn’t say too much while all this is going on, as Drive is a mysterious person who can be trusted to keep his mouth shut with all the criminal goings on. It is also easier for him to maintain his pretty pretty face at all times if stupid things aren’t coming out of it.

Drive’s next store neighbor is a young, a-dorable lady who has a even more a-dorable son. Seriously, the only way to get this kid more adorable is to knock out one of his front teeth, and make him say “p’saghetti”.

The young lady and Drive start getting sweet on each other, awww. But the young lady’s husband (GULP) is coming home from prison soon! (GULP GULP) My guess is that the husband is going to be none too happy about Drive hanging around, as any man would start getting a bit nervous if Ryan Gosling was suddenly smiling at their wife.

Adding to Drive’s stress, Coach Breaking Bad is buying him a racecar to start a legit driving career with mob money funds. UH OH, I HOPE THESE TWO DISPARATE WORLDS DO NOT COLLIDE! (They do)

On paper, this whole movie must’ve sounded so slight.

(I can’t imagine the script seemed any denser.

PAGE 7 - EXT: DAY. DRIVE STARES INTO THE CORNER OF THE ROOM, THINKING.

PAGE 8 - INT: DRIVE STARES AT HIS TABLE, THINKING.)

Full disclosure, I love this kind of highly stylized, borderline dream-state kind of movie.

I have heard plenty of people complaining that the movie is too music-video like, or indulgently paced, and it certainly has moments of both those things. But Drive (the movie, not the fake name of Gosling that I made up) is best if you just let yourself have a sensory experience. You get lulled into tranquil states, and are jolted out of them when violent forces enter the picture. It is also unbelievably beautiful to look at. Can we get the guy who shot this to shoot everything? The garbage looks pretty! Ron Pearlman looks like a delicious marbleized steak! Gosling’s jacket looks like the coolest jacket in the world! But please don’t buy it! If you do, it's going to be like when you wore a Han Solo vest to school, and instead of everyone treating you like you were an interstellar rouge, they stole your Almond Joy bar.

IN SUMMATION:

Is Ryan Gosling the past of Robert Redford, sent to the future? Maybe! We can only wait and see. At…THE MOVIES!

'ARRY 'OTTER AN' 'E 'EATHLY 'ALLOWS! 'ART 'EVEN! 'OINT 'OO!

I saw Harry Potter 7.2 on opening night. And let it be known: out of all the Harry Potter movies that also sound like an updated software applications, this is the best! Action! Adventure! A-Tragedy!
Was there a lot of nerds in attendance that night? Yes, of course. But it was mostly full of totally normal, average people. I know everyone says how "nerdy" they are for likely HP, but honestly, we are at the point where that's like someone in the 70's saying what a sci-fi head they are for seeing Star Wars. It's just a part of being alive right now. "I hope they do justice to the final hours of Voldemort" - Your Grandma.
Guys, I wish I could tell you all about the movie's plot, and make some snarky comments. But I got massively distracted by the MOST EXCITING MOVIE NEWS SINCE TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN PART ONE WAS ANNOUNCED: I SAW THE NEW TAYLOR LAUTNER MOVIE TRAILER!!!!!!!!



That looks like the coolest car commercial ever! Do you think Jacob can trust Doc Oc and Ripley in this game of cat and perfectly-sculpted mouse? It was literally all I could think about for the next 125 minutes. It was so distracting, I will have to show you what I remembered watching HP7 was like, rather than what actually happened:

Lumos Lautner! (The spell-binding thing is behind you Harry!!!!)

I hope Harry's not dead! And that Taylor never puts his shirt back on!

Pass that magic football Neville's way, Jacob!!!!

Harry makes sure that Taylor's abs aren't a Horcrux! LOL!

All the Death Eaters are so totally blown away by Taylor Lautner,
that they all explode into rainbows.

What a ride! Accio you next time, or whatever!

GROAN LANTERN (Outta the way, MAD Magazine!)

Man, oh man. I did not want Green Lantern to be my next review. Tree Of Life is out, right? And yet, there I sat, shelling out $123.64 to see a movie that I could've cared less about. It was a result of peer-pressure. The pressure stemmed from having spare time, and was standing in a movie theater lobby with a friend who had already seen Super 8. Our choice was either a movie about fighting robots starring Indy Jones Jr., Mad Men: X-Men Edition, or a documentary about turtles. SUMMERTIME! We literally looked at each other, shrugged, and said: "Green Lantern"? And judging from what I saw onscreen, that was how the producers decided to make this movie!

I was never into Green Lantern, as I find his power as confusing as I do sort of lame: The hero has a ring that is green, because it's made out of Willpower, which is green, duh. He also has a lantern made out of the same material, and he needs the lantern to charge the ring up, for reasons I don't totally get. Like, the lantern holds a power supply, fine, but it's not like it's a HUGE lantern, or that it plugs into anything, so if it is endlessly self-sufficient, power-wise, why wouldn't the ring power itself as well? I guess you couldn't just call him "Green Ring", that sounds like a problem you would have with your bathtub. So he has this ring, and whatever he can imagine will be created by the ring. But if he doesn't imagine it hard enough, then it won't be very strong? UH-OH BETTER CALL IN THIS GUY!


What is Green Lantern's biggest enemy? FEAR! Fear is the enemy of Willpower, I guess, and fear's color is yellow, so green is enemy of yellow. But did you know green is partially made up of yellow? It's true, I went to art school for five years. (Five!) So, is Willpower partially fear? Also, when you fight yellow stuff with green stuff, it seems to hurt it physically, so is all this "stuff" solid matter, or a spiritual force? I DON'T CARE IF THERE IS A MILLION DIFFERENT COMICS THAT WILL TRY TO EXPLAIN THIS, I'M WATCHING ONE MOVIE. If I want a movie that makes no sense out of context to the book, I'll watch Dune, because at least it has Sting in a hilarious codpiece.

If you are a regular reader of my reviews, you know that I can joke around with a movie that I actually like. "Joke joke joke. Nah, just kidding, you're okay." I'm like a terrible, insulting friend to those movies! Not this one. How can you make a movie about a hero that can create literally anything, who gets his training in OUTER SPACE so boring?

Ryan Reynolds plays a fighter pilot who, we are told 5,000 times, is the best. He is also a reckless risk-taker. I would think that those two things would go hand in hand, but I will fully admit, I am not a pilot! His super-hot girl co-pilot thinks he is taking too many chances. She is so mad at him for being late to plane-flying, that she refuses to be his girlfriend until the last ten minutes of the movie!

So Ryan Reynolds ends up crashing a plane, because he remembers how his hotshot pilot dad crashed a plane? His freak-out is triggered by the photo he has of his dad IN THE COCKPIT WITH HIM. We see a flashback of baby Green Lantern seeing the whole thing go down, (although he could just be remembering a scene from Top Gun) and he looks about nine years old. Now, I realize that you would never totally get over a traumatic event like that, but Reynolds has apparently gotten over it to the point that he grew up to be a pilot, so how hair-trigger can he be?

In any event, he loses his job, and goes to the local pilot bar for a drink, where they keep the EXACT SAME PHOTO of his father behind the bar. Was his dad just handing out headshots to everyone? ("Which look do I choose, smiling with teeth or no teeth?" - G. Lantern's dad, R.I.P.)
As he leaves the bar, he gets beat up in the parking lot, but fights back with his newfound Green Lantern powers.

Oh, did I forget to mention that a dying alien crash-landed on earth, gave the lantern and ring to Reynolds, told him that he was a defender of Earth, and passed away? Well, he did.


Eventually Reynolds gets flown to outer space, where he is given a green suit made of pure energy to protect his body, and a mask "to disguise your identity when there is danger". Hahahaha! I don't know how it works on other planets, but it may take more than eye-diapers to really shroud a hero in mystery. Are we still really holding onto this idea? What year is this? Is there a communist listening in on my rotary phone? Can I see Milton Berle in a dress on my kinetoscope?

Paris Hilton, ready for STEALTH MODE

So the exposition aliens tell him that he has to represent Earth for the power of good, and that he can only be a hero when he learns to believe in himself, and to treasure every sunset, and when there was one set of footprints it was Him carrying you, and you can't save every starfish on the beach but it mattered to that one, etc. etc. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how many motivational posters they show him, Great Fear do they still feel in this one, so they shoot him back to Earth.

Oh brother, am I still re-capping this? Look, if you've ever seen a superhero movie, you know this whole drill, beat by beat. For as short as this movie is, it's almost exhausting seeing something trudge along in the exact way you think it will. Lantern learns to use his powers, gets the girl, find out how to face his fear. Time for a sequel.

And don't get me started on this:


One of the villains works as a science teacher in the Science Building. THE SCIENCE BUILDING? This movie had FOUR WRITERS ON IT!

(If Mad Magazine editors are reading this, I would love an interview. Here are some other title pitches:

GRIM LAN-TURD
CREAMED LAMB-TURN
BRRAAAP LANTERN
YEEECCCHHH LANTERN
BRRAAAPP YEEECCHHH-TERN )

"THOR" PUN ARTICLE TITLE!

An example of the CGI rendering in THOR.

I saw Thor! In 3-D! It made no difference seeing it in 3-D, except for when I started getting a headache from looking through glasses! I also heard it in 3-D, as the the person sitting next to me was eating a bag of what I can only assume was a bag of cellophane wrapped cellophane!
I actually wasn't super hot on seeing Thor, but then I found out Kenneth "Bam-Bam" Branagh was directing it, and I decided to see what the old Shakespeare fetishist would bring to the table.

By the hammer of the guy this movie is about, let's get into the plot!

Thor begins on the home planet of the gods, Asgard. (Branagh's first week of rehearsals with the cast was just an intensive workshop of not to pronounce it "Ass-guard") Asgard looks like you combined every Rush, Kansas, and Yes album cover into one huge gated community, and then you made everyone live in a pipe organ.
Anthony Hopkins plays Odin, the head god, who is super-powerful, but not quite powerful enough to replace his missing eye. He has two sons, named Thor and Loki. They look just like their names sound! Thor is as big as two barns (or eighteen of me), blond, and struts around in full George W mode, grinning and thumbs-up-ing and spoiling for war. Loki looks like he's going to a Alan Cumming lookalike contest and enjoys pouting.

In his big introduction scene, Thor is going to be made "King God" (or something), and Thor is plenty excited! His grin almost comes off his face, he is grinning so hard! However, on his commencement day, the kingdom is attacked by the Asgardians worst enemy: The Frost Giants. If I was writing this screenplay, I might have searched for a more legit-sounding name for a villainous race than the "Frost Giants". Yes, it sounds like a brand of anti-freeze, but it also just sounds like a racist term that the gods came up with. Surely the Frost Giants don't call themselves that! ("Nothing is made in Asgard anymore, you got them Frost Giants down south makin' everything, 'cause they work cheap, stealin' jobs from you and me." - Thor, being a total racist) The Frost Giants look like cold Freddy Kruegers, and were almost wiped out by Odin when he was a young god. Now they are back for revenge, in the form of stealing back their powerful glowing box from the palace. (I realize this is a vague way to describe what the box is. The movie is just about as good as me at explaining what the box is.)

This makes Thor mad! Roarrrrr! Thor smash! Thor takes his BFF soldiers over the "rainbow bridge" (trippppyyyyyyyy!!!) into Frost Giant country to battle the giants. This sparks a war, and Odin Lector is VERY disappointed in Thor, casting his son to Earth, where he meets the prettiest scientist in the universe: Natalie Portman. Portman is in every movie this year, right? Is there a contest between her and James Franco? Portman is a astronomer or physicist or something. If you thought the Frost Giants box was vague, wait until you hear about Natalie's scientific research. It seems to consist mostly of her pointing at brightly colored photos. More funding, please! Whatever she's doing gets put on the backburner when she discovers the heavenly body of Thor (har!) and together they have to figure out how to put the colliding worlds of the gods and humans back to rights.

This movie is made of a lot of loud, ridiculous plot points, but they're no more ridiculous or outlandish than any comic book (or Norse legend). I also hope Chris Hemsworth gets a lot more leading action movie roles (I bet I will get my wish, this movie is making a ton of money!). Is anyone else mystified at the Shia LaBeoufs and Jake Gyllenhaals of the world, getting cast as slammin' action stars? They got soft city hands, says I!

Of course, this is all just a pre-cursor to next years Avengers movie, where all the Marvel movie heroes team up to battle evil. All proceeds from the movies go towards the ultimate goal: Creating an indestructible clone of Stan Lee, where the walrus-mustached old salt can lead us into an new era of endless hero origin stories! Hooray for Hollywood!

INTO THE UNKNOWN: WELCOME TO THE TERRYDOME

Enjoy the funniest, most self-aware part of this movie: the poster.

A friend of mine recently told me about how she had never seen a Harry Potter movie (or read the books), but wound up seeing the latest installment while visiting home this Thanksgiving. We discussed how confusing, boring, and ridiculous a movie series can seem when you see them out of the context from the rest. Hearing the audience react with gasps and laughter at a characters slightest movement sounds over-the-top to the unconverted.

This is how I walked into Tyler Perry Presents: Madea's Big Happy Family, a total noob. Wanting to know what Ty-P's cottage industry was all about. I walked away, still unconverted. But let me back up, and tell you everything I knew about Tyler Perry before I walked into MBHF:

-Tyler Perry is a one-man entertainment branding kingpin for largely ignored black conservative moviegoers. I read a profile piece in the New Yorker on Perry (like a true god-fearing white person), who made Perry out to be a workaholic media-producing machine, like one of those "Write Your Movie In A Week" seminars programmed into a robot. He wakes up, goes to the gym, pounds out fifteen script pages, attends a meeting about his TV shows, shoots his current movie from 1 o'clock to 8 o'clock, gets dinner, and goes to bed, plugged into his dream stenographer, typing out his unconscious to be reviewed for possible script fodder.

-The TV show House of Payne has characters from the Medea universe in the episodes, and they will refer to Medea, although she does not actually appear on the show, like some weird canonical Marvel comic spin-off .

-Medea is played by Perry in drag, and pronounces certain words like Ludacris. ("Thank yer")

It was with this basically clean slate that I walked into the theater. I was hoping to either 1) Be charmed by the cast and story, and go away being happy that people where into something positive, or 2) have it be wildly awful, which is a fun thing to write a review of! What I got instead was joltingly constructed, yet boring tug of war between turgid drama and broad comedy. It was like watching someone changing channels between a filmed Mary Worth comic and a community theater putting on an episode of Good Times.

Here is how I imagine the skeletal run-down of Tyler Perry's script:

CASTING NOTES:

Any male under 45: Noble, well spoken, varying degrees of domination under shrewish women, varying degrees of goatees.

Any female 18-45: Shrill, bossy, shrewish, great hair.

Any female 45-65: Angelic.

Any female under 18: Ho.

Any cast member over 45 dressed up to be 85: Cartoon character.

Madea: T.D. Jakes in drag, re-enacting his favorite scenes from Falling Down.

(PRODUCTION NOTE: DO NOT USE MORE THAN TWO CAMERAS TO COVER EACH SCENE. CAMERAS COST MONEY, AND TRICKY, ARTSY EFFECTS LIKE "PANNING" OR "MOVEMENT" TAKE AWAY VALUABLE "MEET THE BROWNS" STORY SESSION TIME)

EXT: A HUGE, BEAUTIFUL HOUSE.

INT: A HUGE, BEAUTIFUL LIVING ROOM or DINING ROOM

A woman is yelling at a man. The woman is unaware of how terrible and hollow her life has become, a problem that would go away if the man would just tell her to sit down, shut up, and raise their children right. Scene should end when the man says something like: "At least one of us does." Then the man walks out. The woman rolls her eyes OR a tear rolls down her face, and is hastily wiped away.

EXT: A HUGE, BEAUTIFUL HOUSE.

INT: A HUGE, BEAUTIFUL LIVING ROOM or DINING ROOM

40-something actors made up with fright wigs and stage make-up bug their eyes out, fall down and berate each other in a comical manner. Repeat the same jokes two or three times in a row, so if people were laughing too hard they can properly hear the line.

(REPEAT PATTERN FOR ONE HOUR TWENTY MINUTES)

The living saint of a mother dies of cancer. (Note from ZD: This is NOT a spoiler. We are told from literally the first second of film that she is going to die of cancer. It is the gun introduced in the first act that will die of cancer in the third act. The mom spends most of the film trying to tell her family that she has cancer at a family dinner, but they always interrupt her by fighting with each other. You would think that maybe she could just yell over THEM: "Hey, idiots, I have CANCER", and that would certainly shut them up, and end a lot of in-fighting. Or maybe she could just call them, individually, on the phone. She really feels this is the perfect way to tell her family about her terminal illness, I guess! When this woman gets an idea in her head, she's like a dog with an old sock, just won't let go!)

EXT: A HUGE, BEAUTIFUL HOUSE.

INT: A HUGE, BEAUTIFUL DINING ROOM, FOLLOWED BY A LIVING ROOM

Medea calls everyone into the dining room, like the end of a murder mystery. But instead of solving a mystery, she solves everyone's problems! If they are a woman, she tells them to shut up. If they're a man, she tells them to "be the man". If they are a child, she beats them with her fists.

(PRODUCTION NOTE: THE SECOND AFTER MEDEA SOLVES EVERYONE'S LIFE, TURN THE CAMERAS OFF. CAMERAS COST MONEY!)

Roll the blooper reel, where Perry looks super bored with it all.

Thank Yer!

TRUE GRIT!

I’m going to give a spoiler, of sorts: Mattie Ross, the fourteen year old hero of the film, does not get raped.

Am I the only person who entered this movie, with the dread of suffering though a scene where a young innocent gets victimized? I don’t know quite why I was fearing/expecting this to happen, except for:
1) A bunch of men in the wilderness + one girl + no rules = UH OH, and
2) I was on a date.
Nothing could take the wind out of a fun evening out like a re-reenactment of sexual trauma. (It’s worth nothing that the last “movie date” I was on consisted of going to see “Antichrist” (my date’s choice, everybody), and if you aren’t familiar with the film, suffice to say there is a climactic scene where William DeFoe’s wife smashes his “Willy DeFoe” with a two by four, ONSCREEN. So I have been to a mood killer or two in my day. You also may be saying: “that movie came out some time ago, that is for serious the last movie date you were on?” Yes, it is, okay? Can we please move on?)

All right, so what DOES happen?

A young girl named Mattie Ross has recently learned of her father’s murder, shot by a man named Tom Chaney. She travels to the town he was killed in, and vows that she will catch Chaney. She finds a one-eyed U.S. marshal named Rooster Cogburn (which sounds like the set-up to a dirty joke) and asks him to track her fathers killer. But Rooster is a crusty, spittin’, outhouse-monopolizing cuss with no time for half-orphans! Everyone in this movie is a solid actor, but Bridges is KILLING it. I love the guy, but sometimes he can go on Bridges Autopilot, which involves a lot of lip-smacking and aloof charm. (See “K-Pax” for an example, or listen to my impersonation of “Bridges Autopilot”:)

Mattie starts stalking Rooster, trying to get him to take the job. She is totally “Swimfan”ing him. (“I saw on Foursquare that you checked into the old saloon.” –Mattie Ross, 2011. Somebody get on writing that screenplay.) Eventually she gets Rooster (and Frontier Days Edition Matt Damon) to stop sleeping on a potato pile long enough to track the killer.

If you are a fan of actors in hats, sweeping vistas that are cover-ready for Pretty Movies Magazine, and dialogue that sounds like everyone swallowed a Mark Twain novel, then you are going to love True Grit. I really prefer the “old-timey” Coen Brothers movies (No Country For Old Men being the exception), and am also a fan of westerns that drive home how miserable it was to be alive then. You could never get clean, and everyone was getting food poisoning, or dust lung, or the child-having-knock-me-outs.

Dentistry was also an issue, which is maybe why everyone seems to have something wrong with their mouth. Honestly, this movie could’ve been titled “True Speech Impediments”. I heard the Coen Brahs started every acting workshop by jamming various things into the actors mouths, and telling them to “dig deep” for their motivation. Here’s a guide to what they used on their cast to get it “just right”:

Actor: Hailee Steinfeld (Mattie Ross)

Impediment level: Light

Used in mouth: Semi-popped popcorn kernels

Actor: Matt Damon (LaBoeuf)

Impediment level: Moderate to heavy

Used in mouth: A mixture of kale, jerked beef and grape Now And Laters

Actor: Jeff Bridges (Rooster Cogburn)

Impediment level: Heavy

Used in mouth: Old cereal, fair-trade cotton

Actor: Josh Brolin (Tom Chaney)

Impediment level: Very heavy

Used in mouth: Chewable horse tranquilizers

Also, on another level of speech craziness, one of the movies “villains” (as “villain” as the amoral universe of Coen brother movies get) speaks in nothing but animal sounds. Even then, the untamed frontiers needed a Police Academy-style Michael Winslow sidekick.

Although this movie is great, no movie is perfect. Let’s go over the pros and cons.

PROS: Fat Matt Damon, people wearing whole animals as hats, no rape.

CONS: No John Goodman cameo, no big reveal that Bridges has a treasure map hidden in his eye socket.

FINAL GRADE: EIGHT GRITS!

BLACK SWAN!

I saw Black Swan yesterday, the latest Natalie Portman movie. Although I know she has her share of haters, I've liked Portman ever since The Professional, and still had little hearts popping around my head watching her in the Star Wars prequels. (Everything else in the Star Wars prequels had the opposite of hearts popping around my head. Turds, I guess? That's the opposite, right? Also, I would like to point out that I was a child when I was watching this fellow child actor in movies, just so I don't sound like a pedo-nightmare.) Also, Darren Aronofsky! I have enjoyed his other entertainingly-presented nightmare rides of the human condition in the past! And when it's released in December, you know they are baiting the Acadamy award rod and reel with a big old wiggly worm of SERIOUS CINEMA.

So first off, let me ask you a question: would you take your mom to this movie? I ask because this movie theater was 25% sons and mothers. Now I get that you may have a totally "cool mom" who likes Vampire Weekend ever since she heard them in a car commercial. But would you sit in a theater, shoveling popcorn in your face while Natalie Portman gets repeatedly finger banged by everyone under the sun? Uh, did anyone read a summery of this movie before they just jumped on Fandango? I guess they could have only read the first sentence. "Black Swan is the story of a ballerina...OK GREAT, MOM WE'RE GONNA SEE THE BALLERINA MOVIE, OKAY?"

Portman starts off the movie as a ballet company dancer living with her mother in New York. They are ballet fanciers, to put it mildly. Have you ever been in a person's house who say, likes elephants? The rug is embroidered with elephants, and there are a million porcelain elephants on every level surface, and a giant Babar doll on the couch? Imagine that, but with toe shoes. "You sure seem to love the ballet!" You would say, inching towards the door.

Portmans mom is basically the stepmother from any Disney animated movie, who is cold and controlling and crazy. I've heard people say that they didn't like Portman's character, that she was too cold and bitchy. Uh, well, if you lived with a hell-beast stage mom who made you eat tutus for dinner (before you threw them up!), you might be a little icy too. Regardless, we see that Portman is a real work horse, and that her feet are disgusting, and what she wants most: to play the duel White Swan/Black Swan role in Swan Lake.

As luck would have it, Winona Ryder, the star of everything in the ballet, gets fired for being in her late 30's (and therefore gross). Now it's our girl Natalie in the leading role! But while her director thinks she can dance the precise, stick-up-the-butt moves of the white swan, he doubts her ability to pull off the wild, untamed dance of the black swan. (White Swans be dancin' like this: dee-dee-dee-dee! But Black Swans, they be all dancing like this: bah-bah-boom-boom!) Thus begins the pattern of the movie: people are unbelievably mean to Portman, Portman freaks out in a manner that may or may not be in her own imagination. Her mom literally locks her in the house when she isn't at rehearsal, her fellow dancers are the brat brigade, and the director of the ballet is not hesitant to employ the Don Draper method of sticking his fingers in women until his gets professional results. She also has a competitor, in the form of a hot rebel dancer. In the form of a hot rebel dancer who WEARS BLACK AND NATALIE PORTMAN WEARS WHITE NUDGE NUDGE!

Honestly, this movie is over dramatic and the symbolism is overt, but in the best way possible. Like a Japanese horror comic, with the same kind of haunted house jolts, and pretty girls with blood on them. Cool! I am never sending my daughter to ballet lessons, as ballet is apparently a kind of nightmarish body self-hatred camp for future and present psychopaths. If I wanted that, I would just have her watch (INSERT UNDER-FIRE TELEVISION SHOW POPULAR WITH TWEENS FOR SOCIAL COMMENTARY PURPOSES)!