Movie Review: Black Swan (2010)

Poster

My Rating: 4Stars

This evening I saw the movie Black Swan at AMC Cinemas, Admiralty, Hong Kong. One of the movies from my Must See Movies list.

It is a movie about a ballerina, Nina Sayers (played by Natalie Portman). Nina lives with her mother, Erica (played by Barbara Hershey), who gave up her own ballet career at age 28 when she had Nina. As a result Erica places all her efforts in encouraging Nina to achieve the highest accolade in ballet. To support her mother’s wishes Nina lives and breaths ballet day and night without any extra curricular activities. Due to this sheltering and up bringing by her mother, Nina becomes a perfectionist in all things relating to ballet.

Nina’s pressure on herself and from Erica escalates to a new level when she won the lead in her company’s new rendition of “Swan Lake”. In fear of her new roll being taken away from her, she became paranoid of a new hire, Lily (played by Mila Kunis), who joins the company from California. This paranoia eventually develops into nervous break down and hallucinations.

Portman’s performance is very believable and demonstrates her abilities to play a total different character from the one in No Strings Attached. It is not surprising that she is able to beat Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right, Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole, Jennifer Lawrence for Winter’s Bone and Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine to win “Best Actress Oscar” in the 83rd Academy Awards.

Even if you are not a Portman fan this psychotic thriller is one that’s worth watching.

Rating Legend:
5Stars Not to be missed
4Stars Wait for the DVD
3Stars Buy from iTunes Store
2Stars Rent it on iTunes
1Stars Waste your time elsewhere

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