The daringly original new film Black Swan, from director Darren Aronofsky, is the cinematic embodiment of answering that figurative expression and that twist of choosing what you see in the mirror. It's a twisted psychological thriller where nothing is what it seems, all the way until the credits roll. The film's slow-boiling pull on you, the audience, builds more and more with a pace and tension that matches the maddening breakdowns of its lead character.
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Those two time periods and settings of Blue Valentine create Oscar-worthy opportunities for Gosling and Williams to give absolutely amazing dual performances. Their chemistry as actors to create both loving attraction in the past and boiled-over stress in the present is remarkable. Both of them completely pull off every possible level of married realism in the present-day scenes that, when we see them in their past years, we hardly believe they could be the same people, let alone the same actors.
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The King's Speech tells this very personal story of therapy and friendship in such an exquisitely grand and fulfilling way.
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The Fighter is as much a dramatic and fascinating character piece about family as it is about boxing. The complicated and very different layers of relationship between parents and children, siblings, and family outsiders drives the film
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True Grit joins the short list of remakes that could be superior to their original. Though it may not be completely fair or right to compare the two and their 41-year-old differences, it's impossible not to watch the new one without recalling its predecessor. There are many elements of the new adaptation that are superior to the 1969 original.
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It's refreshing to see Tangled. It marks the occasion as Disney's historic 50th animated feature. The fun film, much like Disney's recent Enchanted, turns out to be a Hallmark card to their time-honored classic fairy tale storytelling, while still having modern dashes of flavor and wonder to appeal to the new 21st century generation. The old fashioned ingredients are in place.
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The new film Country Strong hopes to continue that tradition by stealing a few pages from real-life comeback stories and making its own. Add one part Britney Spears (of which the movie was actually inspired by, in fact), one part Mindy McCready, and a few dashes of Johnny Cash and Tina Turner and you've got country star Kelly Canter, played by Academy Award winner Gwyneth Paltrow.
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