Thor is...

... 35% Chris Hemsworth. I doubted. I narrowed my eyes and I didn't believe that this hunk- no, this slab of a human being could possibly have the charismatic smarts to pull off this role. If I'd been paying attention, I'd have remembered that he impressed with hardly any time at all at the beginning of Star Trek, but I don't get paid to write these things, and until I do my attention will be vague and inconsistent. (I'll just wait here for the offers to come flooding in.) But not only does Hemsworth prove to have a superb sense of comic timing, a surprisingly sparky chemistry with Natalie Portman and a fist that could knock a hole through walls if it wasn't so busy swinging that bloody hammer, but he manages to be that self-important Norse god without condescending to the fanciful folktales (... oh; forgive me, great King Odin! I did not mean to anger you. But these mere mortals... they do not understand...) that the script revels so gamely in, and playing obnoxious without obscuring why he's the hero here. Basically, he's pretty much perfect here. Go figure.

... 20% complex villainy. What seems to give Thor a slightly distinctive edge in the somewhat overstuffed superhero sub-genre is its central villain, Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Loki is Thor's brother, and from the very beginning, Loki's unbrotherly attitude to Thor is pretty much signalled with flashing neon warning signs. But that's just it: we're meant to be suspicious of Loki, but the nature of that suspicion shifts constantly throughout the film, and the film's often awkward movement between the Earth that Thor is banished to, and the Asgard that Loki remains on, means that Loki is as focused on as Thor is. Being family, of course, the deepest depths of Loki's villainy are suspect to the idea that maybe, possibly, they're not as dastardly as they might seem. Even the reasons for his darkness are toyed with to confuse us - oh so that's wh- oh no, he's just evi- oh, wait, maybe not... Hiddleston sometimes hits discordant notes in his performance (and his haircut wasn't going to fool anyone), but as a character concept, at least, it is finely realised.

... 16% phallic symbols. Men playing with their swords. (Thor has a hammer, of course, but we'll get to that.) It's a long-accepted metaphor for men comparing penis size (or something like that), and even when they don't have swords, they can freeze thin air and stab you with their ice penis. Idris Elba's gatekeeper might have the mightiest penis - I mean, er, sword, of all, since he can plunge it into the middle of a big hole and open a gateway to other worlds. And if that's not a metaphor for an orgasm I don't know what it is.

Asgard is also pretty much built out of giant phallic buildings, although, to be fair, buildings mimicking vaginas are probably better for some kind of underground society.

... 15% The Avengers. "Thor will return in The Avengers." So we were told at the end of the credits, and though I'm surprised they had the restraint to leave it until most people had long left the cinema, I am quite excited about it. The whole series of Marvel films have shown a superb knack for casting - Robert Downey Jr. stands imposingly in a dapper suit above everyone, but Chris Evans is always charming, Mark Ruffalo is a daring choice for the third Hulk in ten years, and I personally liked Scarlett Johansson in Iron Man 2, so shut up. Thor doesn't hammer (sorry, that was inevitable) the franchise idea too hard into your face, but there are moments like a wink to Tony Stark and the slightly shoehorned inclusion of Jeremy Renner's (future?) Hawkeye to back up the deadening line when Thor promises Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) that even though he might be off to a battle he can't return from, he'll definitely be part of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team from now on! Gee whiz. (Oh, and then that's whole bit at the end of the credits. So maybe ignore the lights flaring up and the cleaners staring impatiently at you, and stay seated.)

... 6% hammer. If I had a hammer, I'd a-hammer in the morning... Only Thor's hammer isn't for hammering out love. It is, as you might expect, a mighty hammer, Thor's calling card, and it is he - and only he - and only he when he deserves it - who swings it and throws it and bashes it through mens' abdomens like they're not even there. (Except it makes quite a noise, so they probably are there.) The sword-in-the-stone moment is quite a hilarious one, although my personal favourite hammer-related moment in the film was the beautifully blunt thwack it made against the high-pitched clank of Loki's shining spear. Yeah, 'cause there might be all of those phallic symbols, but all that masculine insecurity exists for a reason - Thor's the man. He's got the hammer.

... 5% eyes. Anthony Hopkins, bearable for the first time in years thanks to the similarly scenery-chewing Kenneth Branagh being the director in charge here, has a strapless eye-patch, which is really quite cool, and I'm even considering gouging one of my eyes out so I can have one too. But eyes aren't just a cool accessory to lose in battle - they function as somewhat of a metaphor. Odin (Hopkins) loses one in a fierce battle where he gains a son - and it is his sons, intentionally or not, who weaken him. And then there's Elba's eyes - that glowing orange sign of life, sign of hope.

And then there's Hemsworth's eyes, which are terribly blue. Terribly.

... 2% crop circles. Or at least that's what the markings that the arrival of Asgard residents upon Earth landings looked like to me. Natalie Portman agrees; forget the man she just hit with her car, she needs to draw that bloody marking!

I'm not sure Thor really makes the most of the human reaction to conspicuous alien landings, but this type of film is often overstuffed. If this was a stand-alone film, without the necessary basics for connecting itself to The Avengers, it might be able to feel a bit more fleshed-out - the Asgard sequences feel more fully realised, although slightly less sharply directed - but something had to give, and Thor plays a good enough hand in this area with Stellan Skarsgard and...

... 1% Kat Dennings. I can't deny my Kat at least one hundredth of this post. She's in the film less than I'd like, and gets saddled with a few lines that make her character sound like an idiotic twat, but she's still funny and I love her. The end.

(B-)

LFF Review: Black Swan

USA

directed by Darren Aronofsky; written by Andres Heinz, Mark Heyman & John McLaughlin; starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey

screened as the Jameson Gala on September 22nd; also screened 24th and 25th

B-

The enduring effectiveness of Swan Lake suggests some intrinsic value in a story consisting of simplistic oppositions, even if it’s richer than it outwardly appears. The black and white colour scheme of the tale does not merely restrict itself to the decoration, of course, but inhabits the story itself: white is good and black is evil, and so on. By adding a splash of devilish red, Darren Aronofsky risks collapsing the delicately conflicting balance, but there has always been a more complex element to the fairy tale that is potentially much more damaging to fiddle with. The prince may fall prey to the vampish sexuality of the black swan, but the pure white swan he falls in love with in the first place is a damaged, sad, doomed woman rather than a purely innocent figure. By piling the complications of this story into one character, Nina (Natalie Portman), Black Swan risks cracking under the intensity of such psychological proximity. Though it theoretically, and increasingly formally, mimics the style of a ballet, Black Swan has to at least loosely tie itself to a sense of reality so we can make sense of it, and so the interiorized psychological approach it takes is somewhat inevitable.

Writers Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John McLaughlin are understandably wary of the complexity of mapping out the tale of Nina’s incoherent collapse as being inside her own damaged mind, but their lamentable approach is basically to divert in the opposite direction. Nina is less a protagonist than a victim, not someone who motivates the downward thrust of the script but is instead trapped in its clichéd ideas of familial oppression, realisation of sexuality and the mixture of physicality and psychology demands from her work. She is never defined apart from the darkness, from the moment she first glances at her reflection in the eerily depicted subway window, and is less of a character for it; only a headcase, not really a woman. This is not Portman’s fault, and you do see her working valiantly to deepen Nina’s narrative, to inflect a sense of independence into the part, but Aronofsky mostly directs her merely to react, not act, to gasp and widen her eyes and flinch and shout. There is fragility to Nina’s physicality that is all Portman’s, and without this the film might collapse completely, but there is so much possibility in the strained expression and nervous walk and their accoutrements that no one but Portman is interested in.

The necessarily telegraphed emotional style of ballet seems to recall Aronofsky’s own The Fountain, which channelled such primordial, florid emotions through its wild, impossible imagery. This makes it more difficult to comprehend why Black Swan fails at such a similar task. It isn’t the emulation of ballet’s narrative or formalistic aspects, because the delicious absurdities that Nina’s nightmarish imaginings (or are they?) reach follow through Aronofsky’s fantastically dark impulses to such effect that the film almost takes flight through style alone, rooted in a vague kind of connective tissue through the few successes Portman makes of understanding Nina. It seems, rather, that where The Fountain’s indulgent psychologies reached for a kind of transcendence, Black Swan seems content to nestle its mad flourishes in unilluminating, clichéd arcs. Vincent Cassel’s ballet master would make the same accusations of Black Swan as he does of Nina: it can’t let go, it can’t stop focusing on the technique of its performance. It can’t lose itself in an overwhelming, emotional story because someone hasn’t built one.

The script is too concerned with modulating between Nina’s mind and the reality of the world around her – something it makes a hash of anyway – and this becomes obvious in the ending, where Nina’s acceptance of her fate loosens the film’s grip and lets the blurred line between interiority and reality become unimportant, or even celebrated. There are scattered moments where it does this – Nina’s childish attitude towards sexuality bursting through as she bites Cassel’s character through a kiss, the manic horror of a visit to Winona Ryder’s hospitalized ballerina, and a key moment where Nina questions her psychology most vividly – but mostly it focuses on this divide to the detriment of any intriguing sense of character. Mila Kunis’ spry, sexy doppelganger walks this divide – necessarily defined through Nina’s psychology, she nonetheless comes to define a large part of Nina (through what Nina isn’t, and what she becomes) because Nina’s own characteristics are so thin and undefined. Ultimately, Black Swan is less the story of a ballerina’s descent into madness than the portrait of a woman who happens to be mad – the barest shadow of Nina exists before her freefall, and Portman can’t even pretend to invent one because the production affords nothing beyond giant stuffed animals and music boxes in her bedroom.

When a film like Black Swan comes along, a whole congregation of people breathless in anticipation over it, any disappointments you find with it are hard to ignore. In fact, despite the catalogue of narrative problems, the aesthetic and thematic elements of Black Swan pack quite a ferocious punch, even if they’re often too slavishly exacerbating the film’s problems. There was never any doubt that Aronofsky had set himself a difficult task trying to get his style and this story to actually spark into the remarkable kind of experience they seem designed to make, but for every decadent flourish that burns onto the eyeballs there’s a tired cliché rolling out of someone’s mouth, and Aronofsky clings just a little too tightly to a normalizing narrative that immersion in the style proves an elusive quality. Lose yourself, Darren. You’ve done it before.

Good Grief, Natalie, Take A Bath!

[Spoilers Ahead] Most of those pictures you've been seeing of Natalie Portman in Goya's Ghosts- you know, the ones where she's done up in fragile, dainty dresses with beautiful black hair, like the one on the right- well, they're incredibly misleading. For most of the film she looks like she's been dragged through a hedge backwards, punched in the jaw, covered in shit (a la Carice van Houten in Black Book) and left to rot in a baking hot sun. I'd have no problem with this had it been realistic (hell, her character *had* been chained in a lightless cell for fifteen years), but good god someone on that make-up crew needs firing. She looks like a 150-year-old zombie. Also, surely it's perfectly possible that she could have taken a bath once she'd been released. No? Anyone?

Not that the rest of the film is much better. It's like it's been edited by a three-year-old with crazy scissors- it makes not a lick of narrative sense. It may be named after Goya but the fact that the actor playing him, Stellan Skarsgard (very odd choice), is credited a lowly third should clue you in to the fact that he's not exactly the focus. It may be the most absurdly titled movie we see this year. The film seems to want to be about so many things that as soon as it comes within a mile of them it thinks its job is done and it moves onto the next one. What is this movie about, you may ask? I would struggle to answer that question, although the poster (almost as bad as the other one) might help us out: Javier Bardem, sounding like he's got something stuck deeply in his throat (it's like he's trying to do a Spanish accent, even though he's already got one), is Brother Lorenzo, a Monk who is roped in by Goya to help out when one of his subjects, Ines (Portman), is falsely labelled a heretic (she wouldn't eat some pork) and subjected to "the question" (ie. torture) and so falsely confesses. The early stages of Goya's Ghosts encounter such absurdities that it feels like some kind of farcical medieval play. Lorenzo is invited to dinner with Ines' family and then subjected to the question himself, which is simultaneously unnerving and hilarious; and then there are the grotesque scenes in the underground prison, where Lorenzo suddenly decides to force himself on the naked Ines, for reasons unknown (although granted, rather obvious- he IS a monk, after all). There's also some brief hilarity involving the King (Randy Quaid, for some reason) and his "ugly" Queen (Blanca Portillo) who gets painted by Goya and then proceeds to wordlessly leave both the room and the film when she sees the final product.

Any motivation for the characters to do anything they do seems to have been chiselled violently out. Napoleon turns up, then Wellington, meaning that the monks are imprisoned and then released again, while Lorenzo disappears for a while and turns up again suddenly. And Portman (in easily the best performance) is suddenly employed to play her character's own daughter, who seems to have been invented solely so that Forman (that'd be Milos Forman, once a great director) can show off how pretty she is, actually! Goya's Ghosts skirts all sorts of political and religious and historical and social and emotional issues but doesn't see fit to investigate any of them, instead telling a story that fails to make much sense and leaving most of its performers flailing about wildly. The production is solid enough but it's all in service of nothing so ultimately feels defunct. In a strange way, it reminded me of Peter Weiss' play Marat/Sade- only the chorus here were playing it straight. Grade: D+

Lindsay Got An 18 + Went To The Movies Every Day

One of my favourite sites to visit is the BBFC's (British Board of Film Classification, in case you don't recognise the acronym), because it fascinates me to see what ratings upcoming films recieve (and also, it sometimes clues me in to the fact that some films are actually getting released). Now, looking there today, I note two new ratings of interest: 28 Weeks Later, predictably yet excitingly, has got an 18 rating for "strong bloody violence and gore" (yummy); but intriguingly (for "very strong language and strong sex"), so has Hallam Foe, Stale Popcorn favourite Jamie Bell's new film (with the gorgeous Sophia Myles). I didn't know much about Foe, to be honest, but looking it up shows me that perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised: its director, David Mackensie, was the helmer behind the explicit (and rather dull) Young Adam, and, well, Foe IS about voyeurism. And not Rear Window-style. (Oh, and what an awesome poster! Jamie Bell looks really creepy.) Now that I am actually 18 (well, almost 19), these ratings are all irrelevant to yours truly, and yet it's always interesting when one appears, because they're notably rare. I mean, 300, one of the most violent movies of recent years (for all its stylization) was a 15, for cripes sake! So I do often wonder what consitutes an 18. Luckily, the 18 doesn't carry the stigma that the NC-17 does in the US- it just means that if you're not 18, you can't see it (well, theoretically).

Now, Miss Lindsay Lohan is subject of a piece on IMDb's news page today: "I Am a Serious Actress & New Film Will Prove It". This is both good and bad. On the positive side, it shows us that Lindsay is serious about her career and means to commit herself to it. On the negative side, the article features a bit too much of Lindsay's hunger to win an Oscar- because, as we all know, winning an Oscar requires taking "serious" roles. Said "New Film", I Know Who Killed Me, apparently features Lindsay as a torture victim who loses both her legs- which clearly means that she'll be in a great deal of suffering and pain. No smiles. But, as we've learnt, smiles are what Lindsay does best- has she forgotten Freaky Friday and The Parent Trap? No, Lindsay's career hasn't exactly been stellar (the horror of Just My Luck is still present in my head), and while she is perfectly capable of dramatic scenes (she was solid in Bobby), I don't understand why she feels that she must go down this route. Enjoy your career, Lindsay, don't chase something so boringly.

This week will be a mega one for movies: Saturday sees me finally seeing two films I've been chasing for a long time (almost two years in one case) in the form of Joan Allen's long delayed vehicle The Upside of Anger (see here, and here) as well as Amadeus director Milos Forman's Goya's Ghosts starring Natalie Portman (what a horrid poster. It looks like something I could have made on Photoshop in about three minutes). And then on Sunday, it's the big one: the family will be heading out for an afternoon showing of Spider-Man 3, which, despite the rather iffy reviews, I have high hopes for, given how much I enjoyed the last one. And from Monday to Thursday next week, the university arthouse cinema is trying to derail my revision by throwing me the enormous total of four different films to see: Curse of the Golden Flower, the re-release of Luis Bunuel's Belle de jour (Catherine Deneuve!), lenghty monastery documentary Into Great Silence, and Oscar-nominee After the Wedding. But where did all the money go?