Black Swan

Quickie review: It was okay.

Longer review: Natalie Portman is a ballet dancer who is preparing for Swan Lake, and this one time she sees her face on someone else’s body and then when she looks again she doesn’t see it anymore, and then pretty much that same thing happens like five hundred more times and each time she’s like “Did I just see something weird?” and then she looks again and decides she probably didn’t. And I guess the audience is supposed to be spooked out about it and we are until maybe the 40th time it happens and then it just gets boring. And maybe we’re supposed to wonder if it’s something supernatural or if she’s just nuts, but it’s pretty clear she’s just nuts, as far as I could tell.

Also, a bunch of ballet happens. There’s a scene where her lecherous jerk ballet boss (or whatever the guy in charge of a ballet is called) tells her she’s a perfect performer but needs to loosen up and and she gets stressed out and cries and this scene happens roughly four hundred times as well.

There’s also some pretty shocking gore, which is cool, and Natalie Portman has a sex scene with Mila Kunis, which was pretty much all I was hanging around for because I’m a base, disgusting pervert. Still, Natalie Portman is very good at acting and dancing,  Mila Kunis is very good at being pretty, and Barbara Hershey is great at being one of those brittle overbearing moms who smile in such a strained, stressful way that it makes you want to dive out a window.