Tag Archives: Black Swan

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The 1st Annual Tuesdees Awards!

Welcome to The 1st Annual Tuesdees Awards, celebrating distinction in cinema as seen through the lens of Tuesday Night Movies. Your hosts tonight are Hathaboobs and The One Armed Franco!

Hathaboobs? The One Armed Franco? You here? No? I guess I’ll just have to start the show without them.

Movie of the Year Based on How Many Times I Watched It

Winner: The Fighter
I was all too ready to see The Fighter for a second time, so I did. And it was still great.

Honorable Mention: Every other movie (103-way tie)
The Fighter was the only movie I doubled up on. I thought Inception would have taken home this prize, but I haven’t had a chance to watch that for a second (and third and fourth) time yet.

Most Overrated Movie of the Year

Winner: Black Swan
Was there a movie that was more hyped than Black Swan? Coworkers, friends and family constantly asked “Did you see Black Swan yet?” with the expectant gaze that I would gush how it changed my view of cinema. It didn’t even crack my top 20 of 2010. Was it good? Yes. Was it that good? Eh…

Honorable Mention: Greenberg
If you told me you liked Greenberg, I would consider you as having overrated it.

The We Need Something to Get the Guys in Here Award

Winner: Love and Other Drugs
Two more seconds of Anne Hathaway’s boobs being shown in Love and Other Drugs would have meant it would only be available at the DVD stores along 8th Avenue.

Honorable Mention: Black Swan
Your favorite part of Black Swan was the Natalie Portman/Mila Kunis make-out scene and your biggest complaint about the movie is that they couldn’t squeeze Winona Ryder into that scene.

Best Movie Theater

Winner:  Brooklyn Heights Cinema
Good movies, reasonable prices and the best movie theater popcorn in NYC. You should see more movies here in 2011.

Worst Movie Theater:

Winner: The Park Slope Pavilion
Broken seats, ripped seats, missing seats, overpriced tickets and concessions, and screens that are about the size of my home TV caused The Park Slope Pavilion to run away with this award in 2010. It’s sad; this used to be a good theater.

Most Improved Theater:

Winner: The Regal Court St
I used to avoid this theater like the plague, but if you follow my rules for seeing films here, you should be alright.

Best Commenter Name

Winner: Jesse Eisenberg rules, especially in Roger Dodger, Unstoppable
The poor man’s Michael Cera is now the rich man’s Michael Cera.

Honorable Mention: Joe Citation, First Blood
What happens when you forget to credit a friend from a Facebook post.

Most Vitriolic Fans

Winner: Carl, The Room
To this day, I feel like I let Carl down for not liking The Room.

Honorable Mention: N. Smith, The Secret of Kells
Wow, I really pissed this guy off. And his review of my review was as confusing as The Secret of Kells was.

The Would You Like a Job Here? Award

Winner: Bryan
Some of Bryan’s comments were as long as my posts, and I love him for it.

Honorable Mention: Bryan
Seriously, Bryan left a lot of comments in 2010.

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At The Theater #49: True Grit

True Grit might be the best movie you see this year. I thought it was better than every other movie likely to receive a nomination come awards season. Black Swan and Winter’s Bone, please say hello to the movie that will cost you some golden statues, True Grit.

I never saw the original True Grit starring John Wayne, so I can’t comment on how well Jeff Bridges’s performance holds up against his. But Jeff Bridges is wonderful as the mush-mouthed US Marshall who is the hero of True Grit.

Matt Damon is as charming as you’d expect Matt Damon to be, which is plenty, playing a Texas Ranger on the hunt for the same man as Jeff Bridges. Damon’s best line, “…or should I say, your eye?” is in the preview, but he delivers it so well that I still laughed when I heard it during the movie.

With a sub-two hour running time, going to see True Grit won’t seem like a chore. It seems like it’s an unspoken rule these days that westerns, period pieces and fantasy movies all need to clock in at the three hour mark. I’m glad that the Coen brothers made a very tight two hour movie here.

After reading an excellent biography on the Coens last year, I planned on watching all their movies in order this year. That didn’t happen, and with only two movies to left to watch on the couch, won’t happen this year. Maybe next year?

If you’re planning on seeing True Grit, I recommend catching it at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema at Henry and Orange. They have the best popcorn in the city and it’s playing all day there. Treat yourself nice and follow it up with dinner at nearby Noodle Pudding or Ozu.

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At The Theater #37: 127 Hours

Did you like the self-mutilation in Black Swan, but weren’t really into the lesbian make-out scene? Then Fox Searchlight has the movie for you: 127 Hours!
I’m only kind of joking here. 127 Hours is a very graphic movie. But you have to expect that going into a movie about Aron Ralston, the hiker who had to cut off his own arm to save his own life.

The first 20 minutes of 127 hours show the beauty of nature. It will make you want to visit your nearest national park and take in the natural splendor that our country is full of. How awesome is that underground pool that James Franco brings Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn to?

The next hour and 15 minutes are all about how nature is something to be feared. Because nature will fuck you from behind the first chance it gets. And it will donkey punch you while it’s doing it. And it won’t call you the next day.

It will be hard to go hiking and not think of this.

I wondered how Danny Boyle was going to keep the audience’s interest up throughout the movie. Aron gets trapped fairly early on and his only companions are a couple of ants and his own hallucinations. But Danny Boyle and James Franco did a great job. I was never bored during 127 Hours. Boyle used the perfect mix of problem solving on Ralston’s part for getting out of his situation and flashbacks to Ralston’s life leading up to this moment. And Franco was wonderful as Ralston, immediately portraying him as both likable and fallible, basically making him human. I think it’s an easy pick for both Boyle and Franco to receive Oscar nominations for 127 Hours.

I was really happy to hear Plastic Bertrand’s Ca Plane Pour Moi during the movie. Everyone needs this French punk song on their iPods.

Download it.

Little things stand out. I thought it was really cool that Danny Boyle used the distinctive whirring sound made by the tape loader in Canon DV video cameras whenever James Franco turned on his video camera. I know that sound all too well from owning one of them. Boyle also used the same on-screen icons from Canon’s camera when we were seeing things from Ralston’s video camera’s point of view.

Aron Ralston is amazing. 127 Hours is a testament to the huge amounts of hope and willpower Aron had to have in order to survive being trapped in the wilderness on his own. Even when his situation was at its bleakest, he never gave up. The guy is the epitome of willpower. Forget Hal Jordan. Aron Ralston should be the Green Lantern of Earth.

Geek to English translation: Green Lantern’s power ring is powered by his own willpower.

The most shocking part of the movie isn’t when James Franco does what you knew all along was coming, namely getting to the business of removing his own arm, it’s at the very end, when it’s shown that the real Aron Ralston is still at it doing hard hikes in the wilderness after all that he went through. He’s even fitted his stump arm with an awesome looking claw tool for digging in ice. I broke my wrist a couple of years ago snowboarding and never put on snowboarding boots again. Maybe I should rethink that.

Bad-Ass.

I believe there are five lessons to take away from 127 Hours: 1. Hike with a buddy. 2. Return phone calls, especially from your mom. 3. Spend an extra five minutes looking for your Swiss Army Knife. 4. Never give up. 5. When you fall down, not matter how hard, get back up and live life on your own terms.

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At The Theater # 35: Black Swan

Watching the trailer for Black Swan, I couldn’t help but think that this movie was just going to be a by-the-numbers new version of Fight Club, where the twist is that Mila Kunis is the imaginary Tyler Durden to Natalie Portman’s Ed Norton. I was very happy that this turned out to not be the case, which helped make The Black Swan a very good psychological thriller.
Black Swan deals with the theme of “messing up when you’re 95% to a goal” very well. Shortly after the start of the film, Natalie Portman’s character Nina is given the opportunity to get exactly what she’s worked for her whole life, to play the Swan Queen in Swan Lake. The closer she gets to that goal though, the harder her life becomes, often by her own hand (both figuratively and literally).

There are scenes in Black Swan that make this movie very hard to watch. I didn’t realize how much a mother clipping her daughter’s fingernails could make me recoil until I watched this movie. And any time Natalie Portman would start peeling away her own skin, I could feel my face involuntarily cringe.

Natalie Portman’s eyes are so red, I almost expect her to shoot beams out of them like Cyclops from X-Men.

If you ever had a crush on both Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman, you are really going to want to see this movie. You’ll probably even score some points with your girlfriend for taking her to a movie about the ballet. Don’t worry, I won’t tell her your real reason for wanting to see this.

You’ll probably enjoy this scene as well.

I had an easier time separating fantasy from reality in Inception than I did in Black Swan. Director Darren Aronofsky did a great job with the Black Swan in showing things from Nina’s point of view, and making it hard to figure out what was real, what was fantasy and what was a mix of the two.
When your mirror does this, it’s time for a new mirror.

Vincent Cassel plays Thomas Leroy, the ballet director. It was hard to accept him as this object of desire for the characters in Black Swan. The reason? Whenever they showed him in close-up, his eyes were bugged out, making him kind of resemble Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. I kept wanting Cassel to say “Gollum…gollum” (with a smoldering French accent of course).

Actual still of Vincent Cassell in Black Swan.

Should you see Black Swan? Use this formula to figure it out: (Interest in young starlets making out with each other + Interest in psychological thrillers) – Desire to avoid seeing self-mutilation = how much you’d enjoy Black Swan.