NYC Film Critic

Black Swan
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Screenplay by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, John McLaughlin
Starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel and Barbara Hershey
***1/2

The key to appreciating (if not necessarily enjoying) the unnerving ballet psychodrama Black Swan is coming to terms with the fact that director Darren Aronofsky isn’t making Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake—he’s making Roman Polanski’s Swan Lake.  The influence of the controversial Polish filmmaker’s work looms large over this film, particularly his vintage ’60-era thrillers like Rosemary’s Baby, Knife in the Water and Repulsion.  Indeed, the latter film is the most obvious influence on Black Swan.  Released in 1965, Repulsion (which was Polanski’s first English-language feature) starred Catherine Deneuve as a troubled young woman so frightened of the world in general and men in particular that when her sister leaves her alone in their apartment for a week, her internal demons manifest themselves as terrifying hallucinations that eventually push her over the edge into madness.   Even today, Repulsion remains one of the great “Don’t watch it when you’re home alone” movies, as Polanski turns a nondescript apartment into a cabaret of horrors.

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Made in Dagenham
Directed by Nigel Cole
Screenplay by William Ivory
Starring Sally Hawkins, Bob Hoskins, Rosamund Pike
**1/2

The King’s Speech
Directed by Tom Hooper
Screenplay by David Seidler
Starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter
***

Another Year
Written and Directed by Mike Leigh
Starring Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen, Lesley Manville
****

Every fall, our friends across the pond send over several of their cinematic wares in the hopes that one or more of them find a berth in Hollywood’s annual Oscar race.  This year’s crop of British prestige pictures includes a pair of period pieces—Nigel Cole’s Made in Dagenham and Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech—as well as the latest film from a revered veteran, Mike Leigh’s Another Year.  (Two other hopefuls—Steven Frears’ Tamara Drewe and Mark Romonek’s Never Let Me Go—were released earlier in the awards season but failed to gain any traction.)

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Family Affair
Directed by Chico David Colvard
***

Like Jonathan Caouette, Sarah and Emily Kunstler, and, most recently, Donal Mosher before him, Chico David Colvard makes his family’s personal history the subject of his feature debut as a documentary filmmaker.

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Burlesque
Written and Directed by Steven Antin
Starring Cher, Christina Aguilera, Stanley Tucci, Kristen Bell
**1/2

With Burlesque, writer/director Steven Antin—who has had a long and checkered career in the industry, having every job from stunt man to bit player to music video helmer—attempts to achieve the quixotic goal of interesting a new generation in a form of entertainment that was dying out when their grandparents were teenagers.  It’s very clear that Antin has a passion for the grungy glamour associated with burlesque and Depression-era nightclubs and music halls, to say nothing of the silly showbiz musicals that Hollywood churned out by the dozen during its Golden Age.  He happily cribs from other sources both classic and more contemporary—a little bit of  42^nd Street here, a little bit of Moulin Rouge there and a whole lot of Bob Fosse’s Cabaret throughout.

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Disco and Atomic War
Directed by Jaak Kilmi
***1/2

Jaak Kilmi’s engaging memoir is a nice companion piece to one of my favorite documentaries of the year, Robin Hessman’s My Perestroika, which re-told the story of the fall of the Soviet Union through the eyes of five individuals that lived through it.  (Non-festival audiences will finally have the chance to catch Hessman’s film in early 2011 when it arrives in select theaters and on PBS.)  Like the men and women in Perestroika, Kilmi came of age in the final years of the U.S.S.R. and has vivid memories of the tumultuous changes happening all around him.

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Helena From the Wedding
Written and Directed by Joseph Infantolino
Starring Lee Tergesen, Melanie Lynskey, Jessica Hecht, Gillian Jacobs
**

In 1979, John Sayles made his feature filmmaking debut with Return of the Secaucus 7, an independently financed talk-a-thon about a group of college friends that throws a reunion party at a lakeside summer house, where they indulge in long conversations about life and love.

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127 Hours
Directed by Danny Boyle
Screenplay by Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy
Starring James Franco, Amber Tamblyn and Kate Mara
****

Regardless of how the rest of the film turns out, Danny Boyle can always be counted on to deliver a killer opening sequence.

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Four Lions
Directed by Chris Morris
Screenplay by Chris Morris, Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain
Starring Riz Ahmed, Arsher Ali, Nigel Lindsay, Kayvan Novak, Adeel Akhtar
***1/2

Now this is what I call a challenging comedy.  For his feature film debut, British comedian Chris Morris (who has had an extensive career writing and performing for television and the radio) tackles the subject of Islamic extremism, following a cell of aspiring suicide bombers with plans to stage a deadly attack during the London Marathon.

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Due Date
Directed by Todd Phillips
Screenplay by Alan R. Cohen, Alan Freedland, Adam Sztykiel, Todd Phillips
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Michelle Monaghan and Jamie Foxx
**1/2

I’ve never been a huge fan of Todd Phillips’ particular brand of comedy, so when I say that Due Date is probably his funniest film to date that may come across as inordinately high praise.

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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
Directed by Daniel Alfredson
Screenplay by Ulf Rydberg
Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Erika Berger
**

This is the end, my friends.  Barring the recovery and publication of that much-rumored fourth manuscript by deceased author Stieg Larsson, Lisbeth Salander a.k.a. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and her partner-in-crime-solving Mikael Blomkvist a.k.a. The Journalist with the Prominent Beer Gut have righted their last wrong, exposed their last conspiracy and caught their last bad guy.

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