After its premiere at Venice in September, no other film arrived at this year’s BFI London Film Festival with quite as much hype as Black Swan. Advanced word had already propelled Natalie Portman as the early front runner on everyone’s Best Actress list for the upcoming awards season, whilst the director, Darren Aronofsky, was looking to augment his reputation as one of the best American filmmakers working in the industry today.

Set in the highly competitive world of professional ballet, Black Swan is a vividly intimate portrait of a veteran dancer unravelling. Played with fragile grace by Natalie Portman, Nina, a seasoned ballerina, wins the title role in her prestigious company’s newest production, “Swan Lake”.

Nina’s preparations for the opening performance soon become hampered by a web of competitive intrigue that forms with a younger rival, Lily (Mila Kunis), as they both jostle for the attentions of the artistic director (Vincent Cassel). The performance requires a ballerina that can play the White Swan with innocence and grace, as well as the Black Swan, who represents guile and sensuality; Nina naturally reflects her role’s ethereal qualities, whilst Lily is the personification of an enigmatic doppelganger.

As their rivalry continues to grow, the dark impulses of the production slowly engulf Nina, and the pressure ultimately transforms her from a naive performer into a dangerous, metamorphosed creature.

Aronofsky has constructed a perfectly paced thriller that is undeniably and gloriously over-the-top. In continually building the momentum to an unparalleled finale, the film zips along with confidence and creates an unrelenting crescendo using the key elements of “Swan Lake” – the swans, demons and doubles – which become entwined with Nina’s psyche. Moreover it serves as a worthy companion piece to The Wrestler, (also shown at the LFF) and another opportunity for Aronofsky to explore the physically demanding realm of a largely unseen world and the obsessive pressure to be perfect.

Similarly, Black Swan is told in a cinéma-vérité style and uses the immediacy of this visceral camera technique to masterfully convey the poetry of the body and the demands of ballet to the audience. The raw, hand-held work helps create a growing sense of unease and it also captures the energy and sweat of the athletes on show. Anyone that had previously doubted the skill and arduousness of ballet will come away converted.

No one would be surprised to learn that Portman spent 10 months vigorously training for the role of Nina, and she puts in a revelatory performance thoroughly deserving of the hype. At once delicate then provocative, Portman captures both sides of the Swan perfectly and the film really belongs to her, yet she is also joined by a capable supporting cast.

Mila Kunis, as the complete antithesis, finally gets a meaty role outside of being the token girlfriend to burly men in action pictures, and Vincent Cassel is ever reliable as the Machiavellian coach. Winona Ryder and Barbara Hershey also appear in a film that is universally well-acted.

Complimenting the talent is the score by long-term Aronofsky collaborator, Clint Mansell. A highly respected craftsman, whose work includes Moon and the ubiquitous Requiem for a Dream title song, Mansell skillfully weaves strands of Tchaikovsky’s iconic music throughout the score. His soundtrack helps to create extremely vivid sequences away from the claustrophobic confines of the rehearsal room, especially during a striking clubbing scene that sees Lily trying to sabotage Nina.

Ultimately Black Swan is a daring odyssey about an artists obsessive quest for perfection, however brief or fleeting that moment will be. It frequently toys with the body horror of early Cronenberg, without ever fully adopting this approach, and also thankfully avoids a fairly obvious Fight Club twist at the climax. However, this shouldn’t be surprising, as none of these comparisons should be taken as a final word, as Aronofsky has created a marvellously original piece of work and a stand out film of this, or any, year.

Black Swan will be released in UK cinemas on February 11, 2011.

If there’s ever a common fear that the modern citizen tends to fear, it’s getting stuck in a lift. Devil introduces us to a similar scenario, with one chilling difference: what if one of them was Satan? It’ll have you taking the stairs for years to come…

M. Night Shyamalan‘s Devil is a film that will chill you to the core and ensure that next time, you stay on the ground floor. Following five seemingly random people after they get in a lift, it explores the idea of the other kind of spiritual judgement – the one that ends up with you taking a ride down to the sub-basement level, otherwise known as Hell. It’s a scary prospect, and one that certainly gets your heart-rate up as one by one, the five strangers are judged by the devil amongst them.

The characters aren’t that fleshed out – at eighty minutes it’s a short film, so you run the disadvantage of not really feeling connected to them or their plight. But M. Night’s habit of slowly revealing the subtle machinations behind their presence in the lift, and the characters who try to get in really works in the film’s favour. We may not love them like family, but it’s dead scary watching them lose their wits every time the lights go off.

As befits a film about the supernatural, the film contains a religious security guard following the proceedings on the CCTV in his office who quotes Biblical verse and tells the police forces he sees faces in the video that he’s watching them with. Of course, the man is correct and it’s not until it’s too late that the rest of them agree with him. This is normal horror material: If the local cop doesn’t believe you in a horror film, he’s either in on the whole thing, or going to save the day at the last minute. What the police achieve, however, might spoil the end, so we’ll leave that one out.

The acting is impressive, which is more than can be said for a lot of films in the horror genre. Chris Messina makes for a solid detective, and Bokeem Woodbine is very believable as the rookie guard suffering from claustrophobia who usually takes the stairs. Their frustration with their confinement plays out well across the duration of the film, and the final reveal of who the devil is may actually surprise you, as M. Night’s skill with red herrings really comes into its own.

The movie is the first of the Night Chronicles, a series of supernatural thrillers based on original ideas from, although not written or directed by, M. Night Shyamalan. It’s fantastic to see M. Night writing new material, and with another two films to go until his three-films-one-per-year contract is up, we’re likely to see more like Devil. It’s fast-paced, full of frights and never a dull moment, with twists and turns that have delighted us since the mind-boggling revelation in The Sixth Sense. A great film for anyone who’s into horror and tense thrillers, though if you work on the forty-fourth floor, you might want to get used to the exercise!

Most films that deal with Nazis do so in a fairly regular fashion, and few (if any) glamorise the regime. This film is no different, as a team of marines are called upon to board and investigate an unresponsive cruiser out at sea, it gradually becomes clear that it has a dark past. Standard horror fare, it seems.

It’s a rather odd film to watch, as the plot seems to have gone for a stroll in the park. We’re launched into intense discussions between characters from the offset, with little to no introduction to their names, personality, or motivation. This, and the fact they’re a big team of stereotypes of the genre (from the emotionally weak, soon nude woman to the scarred survivor with a dark secret), makes it hard to sympathise once the blood-letting starts.

They arrive on the boat and plod around, swinging guns into doors, and meeting the reason for the boat’s investigation – the man who killed everyone else on board.The film makes you wonder about the director’s motivation when choosing not to veto certain scenes, especially when a bunch of US marines brutally torture and interrogate the man which seems to make them even less appealing. Soon enough they all start wandering off by themselves (go figure), so it all works out.

It’s an odd film and one I found pretty hard to stay focused on, at times. The plot seems to speed up and slow down, and tense moments of pursuit or gunplay tend to span out into ten minutes of action that feels too stretched to remain entertaining. However, one of the film’s redeeming characters come in the form of Lance Henriksen’s grizzled veteran, famous for his role as Bishop in Alien.

The rest of the actors seem to be very engaged in their roles, and this commitment serves them well, for the most part. The director seems to have been pretty free with how they move about the shot, which makes for more interesting, realistic conversations than the standard two-shot.

The plot itself, and the revelation of Nazi influences on board (bar a few corpses at the beginning laid in a certain, hauntingly familiar symbolic pattern) don’t appear until almost an hour in, and this is disappointing, as it’s this Nazi side to the horror that makes it infinitely more chilling. The best scene in the film lies in the hands of the villain, and the film ends with a wonderful twist but feels forced due to the rather confusing way in which it’s explained.

It’s a good watch for anyone who enjoys horror in a strict format, but for those seeking a dark Nazi plot rather than lots of shouting, a bit of nudity, and some questionable firefights, it may feel lacklustre as a ninety-minute commitment. But as a film that taps into Ghostbusters and the US Special Forces go, it’s tolerable.

Sarah (Shauna MacDonald) emerges from the Appalachian Mountain’s cave system alone following the epically disastrous expedition with her five female pals. Distraught, confused and covered in the blood of others, it’s not really surprising that the poor Scot is crazed with fear (this isn’t even taking into account that she’s already lost her kids and husband). There’s a slightly convenient plot whereby the local sheriff is so suspicious of Sarah’s account of events that she’s is forced back into the caves to explain what really happened. If you’d been through what she’d experienced, you’d probably prefer to rot in a US jail than face that fate, but off they go to the mountains for the biggest ‘I told you so’ of their lives.
Although there’s plenty of B-movie style gore, the real terror comes from the sense of claustrophobia (created at Ealing Studios, so a long way from the location portrayed) and new director Jon Harris (editor of the original) is just as bold as the original’s Neil Marshall when it comes to veering off the ‘safe’ path, literally and metaphorically. Not one for the faint hearted.

And so we have Drag Me To Hell, a flick that follows the story of Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), and ambitious LA loan officer who has it all on a plate until she gets on the wrong side of an old lady facing financial ruin (did she not learn anything about not messing with gammy-eyed crazies from Hansel and Gretel?).

Now, I’m sure plenty of us have wanted to curse the odd loans officer in our time (verbally, at least), but I’d still say Alison doesn’t really deserve eternal damnation (or the plague of flies buzzing after her) for denying a mortgage extension. Still, with a spell cast over her she must race against the clock to break the curse until evil closes in and she’s dragged right in through the gates of hell.

As for the viewers, they’re dragged through a rollercoaster rather than cinema hell – just as long as they don’t expect too much.