Black Swan and The King's Speech.

I think it's only appropriate to review these movies together, as they seem to be the frontrunner's for all the awards coming up in the next month or two. Black Swan stars Natalie Portman as nina Singer, a ballerina vying for the lead in the production of Swan Lake-but let me be clear-Black Swan is NOT a ballet movie. Purists will deride the ballet scenes (and to me it was clear that they could only show Portman from the waist up in the ballet scenes because she could handle the footwork-no matter how much she practices, she's not a prima ballerina who could dance one of the most difficult roles in ballet) but it IS a psychological horror movie set in the world of ballet and Nina is slowly losing her mind. It's unnerving watching someone lose their sanity and Portman is by turns scary, vulnerable and deeply disturbing. And while being in almost scene had to be exhausting, she never loses ground, is never once anything other than believable. I will say this though, once you know the plot of Swan Lake (and I did not, until Portman relates it halfway through the movie), you know how this movie will end. Did I like it? I don't know if I did, but I did find it challenging-you have to decide what is actually real and what Nina is hallucinating-and it's not an easy movie to watch, what with all the toenails cracking and Nina scratching herself and pulling a black feather out of her skin (it's clear to me that Darren Aronofsky has issues with skin) and yet it's stayed with me-you can't just dismiss it as a campy ballet movie because then you're missing the whole point of the movie.

And The King's Speech is at the complete other end of the movie spectrum. It's upright, proper and conservative. It knows the story it wants to tell and does so in as straightforward a way as possible-but like Black Swan, if you don't know how this movie ends, you haven't been paying attention. It's the story of George VI, who became King of England on the eve of WWII when his brother abdicated to marry the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson. George did not want to be king as he had a terrible stammer and found public speaking not a chore-he found it the most humiliating and awful experience possible. And so his wife found for him an Australian speech therapist who could help him. Happy ending! What makes this movie great are the performances-Colin Firth solidifies his reputation as a great actor-he's wonderful in this and his chemistry with Geoffrey Rush as speech therapist Donal Logue is entertaining and interesting. The climactic scene of George's speech to all British citizens (and in 1939 that was a lot of people) after England has declared war on Germany was very well done and I I liked it but the problem is that I didn't find it challenging and it did not make me think like Black Swan did-it's the equivalent of the nice, tasting nutritional mea where you push back and say "wow, that was good" whereas with Black Swan, every bite would bring a "wow, what's IN this?".

I would like to give a shout-out to Timothy Spall, though. I've seen him play Churchill, a retired rocker in Still Crazy and Rosencrantz in Kenneth Branagh's version of Hamlet-is there anything this guy can't do? He's great in everything-it's impressive.