Valhalla Rising (2009)

Many years ago, I stood on a cold windswept beach with three school friends. We stood in stillness and silence, slightly apart from one another, contemplating the grey desolate horizon, till one of them broke the spell with the pointedly deadpan observation. "I feel like we are a U2 album cover".

Watching Valhalla Rising is experiencing several grimy actors doing this for ninety minutes... with no punchline.

Rating: 2/5

Get Well Soon (2011)

A fifteen minute short from UK production company "Brag Productions", this creepy little vignette made on, presumably, almost no budget and perhaps intended as something of a calling card for the talents involved, is nonetheless a highly effective psychological horror with impressively polished production values.

Wisely restricting proceedings to one act and one location, we are introduced to a married couple; the husband apparently recovering from a recent brush with cancer. But between his fragile post-treatment mental state and his wife's seemingly conflicted feelings, things start unravelling fast.

Get Well Soon makes very effective use of its claustrophobic domestic setting, with liberal use of abstract close-up framing and extreme shallow focus, giving a discombobulating sense of events slipping in and out of reality. Moreover it effortlessly conjures a creeping sense of unease with minimal dialogue and a brooding melancholic score. Particularly impressive is the restrained, but genuinely grotesque FX work, which has all the gloopy, sticky physicality of the best pre CGI horror movies, but with none of the fake rubberiness that usually accompanied them.

Straddling a line somewhere between psychological trauma and visceral horror, this is genuinely impressive work that recalls most strongly the look and feel (and preoccupations) of early David Cronenberg. Which is very good, bad company to be in.

Rating: 4/5

View the complete movie here: http://vimeo.com/43898835

The Raid (Serbuan maut) (2011)

Indonesian martial-arts action thriller th... HWAA! YAAHA! BOOF, HWANG! YEEAAAAAAA! AAIIEEE! THWAK, THWAK, CRACKKK! GGGURR!  AARGGH, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, HHEEYAIII! HYUH! OOOF! CRUNCH! UUURRG! CHOKE, GURGLE! SNAP! AAAIIGGHH, THUD!! ...ly directed by a Welshman.

Rating: 4/5

The Andromeda Strain or: How I Learned To Start Worrying and Love Dystopian Science-Fiction of the 1970s

What is science-fiction? What constitutes a good definition of the genre? Ask any random selection of people off the street, and you'll get wildly differing responses and examples. This is rarely the case with the thriller, romance or western, for example. The setting may change (although naturally rarely in the case of the western) and the style may evolve over the years, but we all have a pretty solid idea of the core themes of each of these genres, and apart from the odd left-field experiment, we'd rarely be wrong in our assumptions.

For many people science-fiction is practically synonymous with fantasy, tales of romantic adventures in far off made-up places with silly sounding names. For some the genre is, uniquely, tied up with the hardware on-screen, requiring the presence of spaceships, robots or lasers to qualify for the breed at all. Go back to the 1950s and many people would be unable to distinguish it from horror. As the b-movie monster genre, which mashed up the pulpiest elements of both, was the dominant form.

All this changed in 1968, when the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey utterly rewrote the rules and presented, almost for the first time to a mainstream cinema audience, what was already well established in literature, that science-fiction is a genre of ideas. One of the cornerstones of proper science-fiction is simply to look at the world we inhabit from a new angle, and ask ourselves "what if?"

For a few brief years in the wake of that 1968 watershed, science-fiction (at its best) strove to match its literary counterparts, and asked big questions about the nature of existence, the future of humanity, and ruminated, usually pretty negatively, upon the big concerns of the day, of nuclear annihilation, of world overpopulation or the end of scant resources. Granted, not all of these were entirely successful, and many of the movies from that era are as bound to the post-Watergate and Vietnam sense of disillusionment and late-hippy, early-ecological social background of the day as those '50s monster pics were to the all-American apple pie family and red menace politics of their time.

But while the quality may have varied, what they usually shared in common was a gritty, downbeat style, mature writing with a believable and un-romanticised treatment of their subject, and a harsh, sometimes nihilistic world view. For the uninitiated, some better examples of the era, beyond that Kubrick masterpiece, include eco-parable Silent Running, THX-1138 (a kind of rewrite of 1984, and an astonishingly bleak work from one young George Lucas), Soylent Green, Solaris (the hard-work but rewarding Russian answer to 2001), a couple of classics in the form of A Clockwork Orange and Planet Of The Apes and, less well remembered now, but still very strong after all these years, The Andromeda Strain.

In a nutshell: A returning space probe crashes to Earth in modern-day America, leaving the population of a small town mysteriously wiped out. As the military prevaricate around how to act, it's up to a group of scientists, sequestered covertly to an underground bunker, to figure out the cause and avert a potential disaster.

The Andromeda Strain was the first filmed adaptation of a work by author Michael Crichton, later the creator of ER and author and/or screenwriter behind mainstream mega-hits of variable quality from Jurassic Park and Westworld to Congo and, ahem, Twister, and while he may have sullied his name somewhat with his more ludicrous later stories, this early work from his hit 1969 novel benefits enormously from his years as a medical student, and the believable, procedural detail that he brings to bear.

This is not to say that we don't get a fair helping of the "stuff" of science-fiction. There's plenty of futuristic (for 1971) hardware, a form of alien life (although unlike any seen in cinema before) and even a few lasers near the climax. But the meat of movie lies elsewhere, principally with the drama going on between our band of lab-coat technicians who are, uniquely for that most short-changed breed, real people. Complex, difficult, tired, argumentative, largely unattractive, and totally believable as they struggle to deal with the situation they have found themselves dumped in. Particularly wonderful is the sharp-tongued, dour-faced, chain-smoking researcher essayed by Kate Reid, who brings a much needed but entirely natural sardonic wit to the otherwise dry proceedings.

Also effective, and again reflecting the changing attitudes of its time, is the largely negative impression the movie gives of the politicians and military commanders on its periphery, who are either incompetent or untrustworthy to some degree. It's a common stance to a modern audience, but must have been pretty coruscating at the time and reflects a sense of malaise that feels very much appropriate to its era and yet still rings true today.

Marshalling the project is director Robert Wise, who has often been looked down upon somewhat as something of a journeyman, a studio man... or to put it harshly, as some would, a hack. Generally a director for hire, who rarely, if ever, autered personal projects, I suspect he'd have no problem with that description of him, but that should not lead us to underestimate his rare skill as a filmmaker. In a remarkably varied career that began in the 1930s as film editor on, amongst others, Citizen Cane no less, he has directed several stone cold classics, from The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951, and the only science-fiction to rise above the pulp b-movie nonsense of its day), West Side Story, The Haunting (1963, and still one of the most effectively chilling ghost stories ever filmed), and The Sound Of Music. Yes! Hate it all you like, the third most successful movie of all time. He was quite some hack then.

Nearly forty years into his career by this point, Wise brings a freshness and daring to the project. The visual look is bleak, almost documentary like. The research centre that the film spends most of its running time inside looks and feels wholly believable in spite of a fairly modest budget. He recruited FX guru Douglas Trumball, who had worked not long before on 2001, and together they ensured a rigorous authenticity in the design of the technology involved, such as the communication screens, which actually worked for real, rather than being post-production optical effects as would have been the norm for the day.

There are some remarkable visual flourishes. In particular the use of split screens (back in vogue recently with its (over)use in the series "24"), which, as well as adding to the documentary look, are deployed, quite unexpectedly, in dream sequences which are at once both stark and abstract and infinitely more authentic feeling than a thousand misty dissolves that had previously been the visual shorthand for almost as long as cinema itself. In a few seemingly effortless, but intellectually rigorous moves, Robert Wise showed just how effectively he could make a film absolutely modern in look and feel (at a time when a young, hungry breed of independent spirited filmmakers were turning the old Hollywood studio system on its head) , yet completely without drawing attention to itself.

It's not a perfect movie to be sure. The obsessive procedures used during the "descent" into the complex drag on rather too long, and the finale indulges itself the venerable cliché of a countdown race that was rather clearly signposted from the off. But despite these minor flaws, The Andromeda Strain delivers in bleak, taught tension with a satisfyingly paranoid atmosphere and effectively essays a disturbing vision of an all too plausible disaster scenario.

And so it was, that for a few brief years science-fiction cinema seemed to have grown up and come of age, matching the new grimy realism that pervaded so much American cinema of the time. That is until May 25th 1977 in a galaxy far, far away....

Rating: 4/5

The Hunger Games (2012)

Occupying the familiar milieu of one of science-fictions' most well worn conceits, the dystopian future society, in this case an impoverished set of states ruled over by a decadent totalitarian elite, teenager Katniss Everdeen hunts and scrapes to keep her family alive until fate forces her to volunteer as "tribute" for the annual Hunger Games, a form of brutal gladiatorial combat designed to keep the masses in their place. Twenty-four youngsters will enter but only one can come out alive.

With Harry Potter now done and dusted, and the finish line of Twilight just around the corner it's no surprise that studios have been hunting for the next big teen-lit franchise to bring to the screen, or that Suzanne Collins' mega-selling sci-fi adventure would be one of those in the frame. But in spite of the driving linear narrative, featuring plenty of set-piece thrills and a love-triangle backdrop, adapting The Hunger Games, with its sullen heroin, extensive internal monologue, bleak atmosphere and brutal violence, may not have been the safe bet one might assume, and director Gary Ross and colleagues have trodden a tricky balancing act to a surprisingly effective outcome.

Crucial to their success is Jennifer Lawrence; already a rising star after her Oscar-nominated performance in "Winter's Bone" and who, as Katniss, delivers just the right combination of introspection, steely determination and just a touch of vulnerability. But much credit too must be given to the support of Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks as her drunken mentor and absurdly coiffured escort respectively, both of whom carry roles that could easily have tipped into parody with much restraint. Indeed restraint could be the watchword for the whole production. On the page, the description of Capitol City's preening, rococo fashionistas seemed worryingly likely to translate to the screen with Fifth Element style campery. But this is kept firmly in check by an atmosphere of quietly unsettling disconnect from reality, always underplayed, and always taken seriously, underscoring the juxtaposition of the hollow, vacuous lives led by these privileged bourgeoisie against the spartan hand-to-mouth existence that is the only way of life our protagonist has ever known. Indeed these act-one sequences contain some of the film's best moments, effectively pulling the audience into Katniss' isolation and dreadful predicament with minimal fuss.

Once the games themselves kick into action, the need to achieve a target-audience friendly 12A rating does start to assert itself somewhat. The Hunger Games does not need graphic violence to deliver the thrills, but it does need things to become truly desperate, and in this regard the film seems to pull a few too many punches, with some deaths passing perhaps a touch inconsequentially, and little visible signs of the physical stresses of exposure, hunger and injury showing on the always clean and presentable contestants (or even evidence of stubble on the male team members after several days in the game). It's here also that the film makes its greatest departure from the book. Rightly judging the difficulty of relating some events via the first-person internal narrative of our heroine, fresh scenes are introduced depicting the power-brokers and puppeteers behind the games. It's a logical departure from the source structure that just occasionally falters by delivering a few ham-fisted Basil Exposition moments, but, by way of compensation, adds to the implicit parallels with modern-day TV and the trend towards ever more ghastly and extreme "reality" entertainment.

Much has been made of the similarity of Hunger Games' concept to that of "Battle Royale", and clearly a debt is owed. But while that Japanese subversive cult favourite is very explicitly an adult piece of satire that happens to feature school-kids bludgeoning each other to death, this is by intent a much more straight-ahead adventure, and the setting owes at least as much to the classic dystopian visions of "1984", particularly the impressively monumental authoritarian architecture. But as the downtrodden citizens watch on helplessly and those in charge manipulate the results for their own ends, I began to recall another movie that is perhaps the most interesting and unexpected antecedent: "The Truman Show", and like that brilliant work, The Hunger Games ends a touch ambiguously, leaving you with a lingering and disturbing question "would you watch too?".

Rating: 4/5

Sleeping Beauty (2011)

Ponderous art-house exploitation bobbins. Somewhat reminiscent of Eyes Wide Shut. Marginally preferable by virtue of being shorter.

Rating: 2/5

Into Eternity (2010)

Michael (no not that one) Madsen's fascinating and thought provoking study of the problems of long-term storage of nuclear waste material could be presumed to fall into one of two documentary formats. A: The dry scientific lecture, a-la Horizon, or B: The Michael Moore-style charged polemic. Surprisingly it resembles neither of these so much as it does the stately and poetical science-fiction of Andrei Tarkovsky.

Taking as his subject, the huge and potentially world-leading Finnish project to bury their waste in permanent underground storage caverns, the focus of the story swiftly moves on from preliminaries such as the logistics of construction, to the unexpectedly rich philosophical question of how we communicate the meaning and danger of such a place over its unimaginably vast intended lifespan of a hundred-thousand years. Michael frames his entire presentation as a message to some far-flung civilisation, twenty times more removed from our own than we are from those who built the pyramids. Telling the story of how we buried "the fire we could not extinguish" as an eloquent and profoundly moving legend, to be passed down from generation to generation... of the place, as he so beautifully expresses it, that we must always remember to forget.

Rating: 4/5

Cane Toads: The Conquest (2010)

A charming, oddball documentary that charts the progress of an invasive species of Central American toad across Northern Australia and the experiences of the townspeople it encounters along the way.

Introduced to Queensland in the 1930s in an attempt to alleviate the blight of the cane beetle which was ravaging the crops of the regions' sugar cane farmers; the cane toad, in a manner all too painfully predictable, manifestly failed to live up to its billing as miracle cure for the farmers' ills, but rapidly became a fast spreading pest in its own right.

Mark Lewis's film traces the history behind the original introduction, and then follows the invading force, mile by mile, and year by year, in its unstoppable march across the continent, whilst intercutting the stories of a cross-section of experts, officials, and shall we say... "locals" caught up in its path.

If all this sounds like a job for the David Attenborough, that's understandable, but you'd be missing the point. There is real environmental science to be learned here, to be sure, but Cane Toads: The Conquest treads this ground lightly, offering an easily digestible sprinkling of facts that could comfortably be crammed into a fifteen minute PowerPoint session. What it delivers in spades is an understated, blackly comic mix of horror parody and absurdist social docu-drama as we meet the wonderful parade of folks who paint them, stuff them, pet them, curse them with Old Testament wrath and launch them from home made rockets!

Sometimes fascinating, and frequently funny, this is less a film of amphibious analysis and more an affectionate portrait of Australians in all their eccentric glory.

Rating: 3/5

The Woman In Black (2012)

A laudably understated adaptation of Susan Hill's celebrated gothic chiller, The Woman in Black tells a simple but effectively spine-tingling tale of disturbing events at an isolated village in early 20th C rural England.

There has been criticism in some quarters of Daniel Radcliffe's presence in the central role as casting too young. I'm not buying this. In fairness he does have relatively little to do for much of the short running time beyond looking somewhat perturbed. But his portrayal of a young, but tragically bereaved husband, somewhere perhaps in his mid-20s, is convincingly depicted with a gaunt, withdrawn look and meekly shuffling persona. The problem, I believe, is simply the difficulty that audiences are having in seeing past the familiarity of Harry Potter as an adult in any movie. This perfectly solid performance will hopefully be a significant step in gradually recalibrating audience expectations for his future career.

Complimented by some pleasingly underplayed supporting roles, and top-notch production design, especially the deserted and overgrown manor house at the centre of the story; this self-consciously old-fashioned ghost story comes across rather like a particularly fine and visually lush BBC period literary adaptation. It won't break any new ground in the annals of horror movie making, but it is a solid reminder of just how satisfying understated chills and unsettling atmosphere can be.

Rating: 4/5

The Artist (2011)

Comedy, love, and a bit with a dog.

It is the late 1920s, and a silent screen idol is at the height of his fame when a chance encounter with a girl in the crowd starts her out on the road to stardom, while his own hubris will cause him to risk everything when the coming of sound changes their fortunes.

If a few months ago, I had suggested that the best film of the year would be a completely silent movie shot in black and white, with intertitle cards, a 1.33 aspect ratio and all the rest of the 1920s movie trimmings , what might have you expected? Most likely a cunning spoof or skit on early movies, made with a knowing wink to a modern audience? Or perhaps a resolutely technical exercise? a slavish copy of the authentic article, perfectly reproducing every nuance of the form for a minority group of buffs to stroke beards sagely in appreciation of?

The wonder of Michel Hazanavicius' slice of silent heaven is that all the skills needed for the above, and more, are deployed invisibly, seemingly effortlessly, in creating pure, unabashed entertainment. This is a simple, but expertly honed tale of fame and fortune, of loss and despair, of romance, friendship and second chances. It is exactly the sort of charming, snappy caper that they (we are oft told) don't make 'em like any more, and the seemingly bold move to make a movie, about silent movies, as a silent movie, is no arch piece of artistic grandstanding, but a spot-on decision from a master craftsman to put film-making form totally at the service of the story being told.

Great performances abound across the board. The central couple of Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo are wonderful as the debonair, self-obsessed matinee idol, and the perky starlet-in-the-making. John Goodman has never been better cast than as a cigar chomping Hollywood producer, and the ever dependable James Cromwell oozes quiet dignity as a faithful assistant. But it is no poor reflection upon any of these uniformly superb players to note that they are nonetheless repeatedly acted off the screen by a Jack Russell named Uggie!

Whatever you may be expecting, whatever misgivings you might have about the idea of sitting for two hours in a darkened room watching what one could reasonably imagine to be some kind of quirky satire or art-house indulgence will swiftly be forgotten. The Artist is a perfect little gem of a movie, a joy for anyone who loves cinema.

Rating: 5/5

War Horse (2011)

Spielberg. Animals. War. Lost Innocence. West Country Accents. Rescue. Reunion. Gob-Smacking Tracking Shot. God Light. God Light. God Light. God Light. HEARTWARMING. Hanky.

Rating: 4/5

Cyborg Girl (Boku no kanojo wa saibôgu) (2008)

Ho-hum. Another month, another Korean directed human / cyborg rom-com.

Jiro is just your standard issue shy and nerdy student until, one lonely birthday, a kick-ass robot chick from the future drops in and turns his life upside down. Director Jae-young Kwak, who had already scored a massive hit with the more conventional romance "My Sassy Girl", here directs in Japanese in a wholly more ambitious project, but still feels at his most comfortable when on familiar ground. Keisuke Koide as the gobsmacked Jiro is initially a tad irritating with his dumbstruck jaw-on-the-floor performance, but gradually settles into a likeable and more rounded character. While Haruka Ayase as the beautiful machine from the future is not half as bad-ass as her Terminator-homaging introduction would like us to believe, and is all the more charming for it.

For most of its running time, Cyborg Girl (aka: Cyborg She) is sweet and gently amusing as this odd couple figure out their relationship and get involved in a bunch of life-saving scrapes, before proceedings climax quite unexpectedly in a massive set-piece with surprising emotional punch. Had things been tidied up around this point I would have nothing by praise for this unconventional but sweetly satisfying genre hybrid. However at around the ninety minute mark, Jae-young suddenly remembers he's also making a science-fiction, and we get a largely superfluous extended denouement involving A.I. style departures to new time zones, additional secondary characters and time-looping repeated scenes. It all goes on a bit and makes little sense, but fortunately doesn't completely undo the goodwill generated earlier. Nonetheless a tighter edit would have probably earned it an extra star.

Rating: 3/5

A Town Called Panic (Panique au village) (2009)

A manic, ADHD suffering, surreal, stop-motion masterpiece, delivered by the team behind the Cravendale Milk ads... from Belgium.

A horse, a cowboy and a red-Indian live together, argue over the shower, order a bazillion bricks, get stuck in traffic, stake out their own walls, do battle with underwater aliens, get abducted by a snowball throwing mega-penguin, and play cards while falling to the centre of the earth. Then things get really strange.

Apparently animated using a tub of plastic toys by a bunch of Ritalin dodging five-year-olds on a Sunny-D bender, A Town Called Panic is not the most coherent of films, but it is brilliantly inventive and frequently ball-achingly funny.

Rating: 4/5

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011)

As his first full animation, Tintin may appear to be something of a new departure for Spielberg, but in every other respect, what we have here is a familiar and vintage caper that demonstrates just how easily the Bergster can knock this stuff off in his sleep these days.

The unavoidable comparison that springs immediately to mind is with his Indiana Jones movies: The period setting (not exactly specified, but easily 30s / 40s in feel) bathed in a nostalgic glow,  a globetrotting adventure in search of some lost treasure, voyages by tramp steamer or bi-plane, even a chase through some north-African market streets. Just a quiff instead of a fedora, and the formula is all in place. Now it's fair enough to point out that Raiders and its sequels were hugely inspired by an older generation of serial comic book adventures from the 40s and 50s in which Tintin rightly holds an esteemed place, but seen from a modern filmic perspective, there is a strong sense that we've seen this done before, and in at least some respects, better.

First, the good stuff. Tintin is beautifully animated, in a manner which is rich and detailed, but also retains a touch of period comic-book style which never draws attention but feels just right for this world. There are many stunningly visualised edits between locations, or shifts in time from story to storyteller, that match the very best that Spielberg has ever delivered in his live action movies. There are also several bravura action sequences, all of which are executed with wit and perfect pacing and never feel forced or out of place, and usually come with some charming touches of humour. While some of the broader slapstick moments fall somewhat flat (no pun etc.), just keep watching that dog, often in the corner of the frame away from the main action for some of the most gentle moments of incidental pleasure that the movie has to offer.

However, for me, there's no getting away from the most glaring problem with Tintin, and that's Tintin, the personality vacuum at the centre of the whole enterprise. Utterly devoid of any notable or involving character traits, he functions purely as a nominal protagonist around whom a plot can revolve, but never to whom our empathy may adhere. And speaking of plot, therein lies the secondary failing of Tintin (which sounds like a title for a sequel if ever I heard one). Many adventure stories may rely heavily on a MacGuffin to drive them along, but in the best examples (and again, there's no getting away from the Dr. Jones comparisons here, and all of them unfavourable to the cherub-faced reporter), this is merely a plot device to lead our hero to some greater and more profound end (reconciliation, enlightenment, the saving of a life, or the world, or a little piece of home), but in Tintin the MacGuffin is the whole plot, and so, having been kept pleasantly charmed, if not totally thrilled along the way, I arrived rather unexpectedly at the end, with things much as they were at the beginning.

Beautiful to look at, charming to watch, easy to forget.

Rating: 3/5

Contagion (2011)

A highly efficient medical thriller that lends a solid impression of verisimilitude to the kind of hard science, dangerous politics and social chaos that might accompany a really disastrous pandemic, Contagion goes about its business of scaring the audience into sealed plastic bubbles with a commendable lack of melodramatics. There are perhaps a few too many fractured storylines to really maximise the dramatic impact of the overall narrative, and the somewhat overly starry cast are occasionally in danger of impacting negatively on the documentary feel. As a result Contagion does somewhat give the impression of a TV movie that got lucky with the level of talent involved, but it does what it needs to do with understated yet brutal effectiveness and sets a new high-water mark for the epidemic disaster sub-genre.

Rating: 4/5

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (2011)

Much better than I had hoped. Surprisingly dark and gritty, it feels tonally well placed in relation to the classic 1968 original and is anchored by magnificent performance capture work from, of course, Andy Serkis in the lead ape role. The film has less time for some of its human characters, of whom a couple of cliched supporting turns represent the films' only significant missteps. But these aside this is a solid piece of proper sci-fi with thrills, genuine emotional weight, and a stunning climax that is intense without ever feeling overblown.

Rating: 4/5

Cowboys And Aliens (2011)

Simple comic book adventure mash-up that is precisely as good, and bad, as the title concept suggests. There's little in this to really surprise or thrill. The story is perfunctory and motivations are minimal. But it does have James Bond and Indiana Jones striding around being cool and tough and gruff. Does exactly what is says on the tin.

Rating: 3/5

Super 8 (2011)

Great fun, warm and nostalgic tribute to childhood adventures from a simpler time. Endearing performances, effective slow build of thrills. Not so engaging once the big mystery has been fully revealed, resulting in the final denouement being rather less emotionally impactful than the 80's kids adventure masterpiece it so clearly wants to be. But it delivers plenty of old school charm and thrills along the way.

Rating: 4/5

A Tale Of Two Sisters (Janghwa, Hongryeon) (2003)

Was right with it until the last half an hour. So, she's dead, or was dead, or she's her, and is she also her, or imagining her, and how come she's just turned up for the first and second time and wasn't she her before all along, and wait is this the beginning or the end and... WHAT?


Rating: 4/5

Black Swan (2010)

Black Swan is not really a ballet movie.

Nina (Natalie Portman) is a young dancer in a prestigious ballet company, obsessed, as artists often are, with the perfection of her craft, and seemingly also driven by that age-old dramatic staple, the overbearing and overprotective mother. When she is promoted to Prima and has to take on the dual role of darkness and innocence at the heart of Swan Lake, she is pushed by the egotistical and possibly predatory director (played by Vincent Cassel) into exploring a darker, more sexual, more aggressive side of her nature.

Darren Aronofsky has made films about brilliant obsessive types, reaching for perfection and being driven to the point of madness in the past. His latest shares a lot in common with his stunning low-budget debut "Pi". Black Swan may have the big money and a star at its centre, but Aronofsky has lost not a jot of his obsessive intensity.

No movie about ballet, with a melodramatic plot centred around a fragile girl pushed to her limits can avoid comparisons with the legendary ne plus ultra of this micro sub-species, "The Red Shoes". However, while they share a common subject, stylistically this is a very different and altogether scarier proposition. Channelling the arch gothic thrill of Brian DePalma's Carrie, and a whole bunch of Dario Argento 1970s giallo chillers, along with the reality blurring bodily distortions of Cronenberg movies such as The Fly and Dead Ringers, Black Swan gradually builds to a fevered dream of madness and terror and doesn't let up till the credits roll.

So far, so unexpectedly, but entertainingly genre. But unlike many of its forbears, Aronofsky's picture is executed with exceptional art and precision. Close-up hand-held shooting keeping the frame tight in on every player, stripping away the artifice and closing in on the bone-crunching physical intensity of the ballet performances, or prowling the grimy backstage corridors, seeking out every darkened corner or artfully fractured mirror. There are fine performances from Cassel and particularly Barbara Hershey, as Nina's failed dancer mother, in a role that could easily have been grating and false. But at the heart of it all, and the making of the whole enterprise, is a heroically controlled performance from Natalie Portman, easily a career best. She runs the gamut of emotional states in a role which requires pushing them all to the extremes and yet she never hits a false note. Raw, honest, and totally empathetic, it's a miraculous achievement.

An intense, exhausting, brilliant, full-on, operatic, psychological horror. Black Swan is all these things; it's just not really a ballet movie.

Rating: 5/5