Finally caught up with Jean on seeing this one. He saw it on a plane. I decided to wait for a full-size screen and stereophonic sound: I watched in on DVD on my BluRay player.

***½ Black Swan (December 2010) – Rental
Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis. Ballet dancer struggles to portray The Black Swan in Swan Lake as her mental health deteriorates.

She says: Incredibly riveting even though it doesn’t have that much plot—Nina gets the lead role in Swan Lake early on, then spends the rest of the movie struggling to portray the seductive Black Swan as effectively as the virginal White Swan. The drama is all internal, as Nina is in an increasingly fragile mental state, but since we see the movie through her eyes only, we, like her, can never be sure what’s real.

Portman is great, as is Kunis, as her stand-in for the role, a person she comes to fear is plotting to replace her. The movie looks amazing and had one of the most effective surround sound audio I’ve ever experienced; for example, a knock on Nina’s door startle me almost as the character, as it really sounded like a knock on my door way off to the right (though my door’s actually on left)…

He says: It was a good movie, eh? Pretty disturbing, though.