Darren Aronofsky has made some of the most intriguing, compelling and out-there films of recent years, but none comes close this completely bonkers, ripe, intense story. Even The Fountain, which featured Hugh Jackman floating through space in a giant lightbulb claiming to have cured cancer, seems like a modicum of taste and restraint compared to Black Swan. It has references to Red Shoes, Mommie Dearest, Mulholland Drive and The Fly, but in the end it’s a spiraling dizzying mess all of its own – and despite its many flaws it’s different to anything else, and for that it should be applauded.

Nina (Portman) is the hopeful ballet dancer trying to make it in Vincent Cassel’s highly-acclaimed New York company. She works her butt off, is technically excellent but lacks the slightest hint of passion – as Cassel keeps pointing out. She cannot seem to let go or get hot and heavy, despite him urging her to many, many times (if he says ‘find yourself’ once, he says it about 20 times). He is casting Swan Lake and has no problems choosing Nina for the white swan, but can she portray the much darker role of the black swan?

So Nina has a problem, but as we soon learn she has all sorts of other worries too – she is haunted by a doppelganger on the tube, she is up against Lily (Kunis) for the lead role, and Lily, although technically inferior, is way sexier and looser. Also Nina meets the previous lead, Beth (Ryder), a woman so ravaged by the demands of the role she has unraveled, and to cap it all off her mother Erica (Hershey) is the original mad, pushy mum, who refuses to let Nina leave home or throw away her fluffy toys.

Against all the odds Nina is cast in the lead, and begins the punishing rehearsals. However it’s a race as to which is going to fall apart first – her mind or her body. Her nails keep cracking, her ankle is fragile and she has a nasty rash on her shoulder blades, just where a wing would poke through. It’s about at this point you might feel like standing up and screaming “I get it” as Aronofsky pushes the metaphor to within an inch of its life. Cassel keeps blathering on about ‘letting go’, Erica pays close attention to Nina’s nails and skin and Beth goes a bit mad with a nail file.

And yet, as overboiled, insane and just plain daft as it is, it’s difficult not to go along with it. Aronofsky throws just about every trick in the book at the screen, including spurts of blood, the crack of bones, a bit of lesbian fantasy, loads of sweat and close-ups of sinewy bodies, and even a gentle strangling. It’s insane, but so obviously not to be taken seriously it’s best just to sit back, have a gentle laugh at the ludicrous dialogue and just give into its charms.

Portman seems nailed on to take the Oscar, but it’s a strangely one-note performance – physically mightily impressive, but facially all she really does is frown a lot and look vaguely troubled. Cassel breezes in like he’s in Carry On up the Ballet, Ryder is under-used and Herschey chews scenery as the mother from hell. Like the film itself it’s a mad mix of styles.

Overall verdict: Ultimately Black Swan is just a thick slice of Grand Guignol, but it could have been so much more. The Red Shoes is still the ultimate film about dance and the debate between art and life, this updating is huge fun but just too daft to have any lasting effect.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

Film controversies are rife with misinformation and confusion, none more so than the 1978 film Day Of The Woman (aka I Spit On Your Grave). When it was re-released in 1981 it became one of the most-quoted films in the debate about censorship, video nasties and violence against women. It was banned completely in some countries, and was on the list of ‘prosecutable films’ in the UK until 2001, when a heavily cut version appeared. The big problem was, and remains, many, many people who aggressively argued about the film had never, ever seen it.

Despite more recent proper DVD releases (which still have nearly three minutes chopped out), it remains more dangerous in people’s heads than anything that’s actually on screen – indeed many argue that the reason it’s still cut is more because the original is a cleverer and more powerful film than its hack and slash reputation suggest, or for what you actually see. It’s unpleasant to watch, but it’s meant to be, and despite superficial similarities, it’s certainly not torture porn.

Presumably that’s why this remake has been put together, so that a new generation of film fans can join the debate about violence and revenge. Reverting to the more infamous title – original director Meir Zarchi prefers Day of the Woman – it’s a harrowing tale set in the backwaters with an age-old theme of violence and revenge. Whether it adds anything to the original, or helps in the debate about on-screen violence, well, that’s up for debate.

Young writer Jenny (Sarah Butler) leaves the city to hole up in a cabin in the woods to write her second novel. In the village she has a brush with the locals while getting some petrol, and the four men later venture out to her house and assault her. She manages to escape and finds a local sheriff, who initially helps her but turns out to be the worst of her attackers. After a horrible, extended anal rape scene she falls into the river, but the men cannot find a body.

The second half of the film is Jenny enacting her revenge, one by one, on the men, each act specifically designed for the particular member of the gang. In this version of the story they are gruesome, explicit and bloody, but what is the final effect?

I Spit On Your Grave Trailer

Firstly, before any arguments about the theme, it’s only fair to say something about the film’s nuts and bolts. It’s beautifully shot, with the autumnal woods drenched in golden sunlight, and each frame is perfectly composed. It’s also extremely well acted, with Butler’s Jennifer a believable heroine – brave, physically capable but exposed in the attack sequences.

Now the real problem. Originally the film was dismissed – by lots of people who hadn’t seen it – as ‘offensive to women’, as if men were fine with watching brutal rape scenes. Then it was slowly re-evaluated as a feminist tract, as Jenny gets her revenge. Now though it’s a different world, and the theme of hicks versus modern woman seems a little dated. Jenny’s initial attackers are country bumpkins and a simpleton, then her worst attack comes from a policeman, also the only man with a partner.

Their attitudes seem hopelessly dated – calling her a ‘bitch’ and claiming she has no boyfriend because they are all ‘city faggots’ – come on, this is 2011, not Deliverance.

When Jenny begins her long cycle of revenge there is a sense of threat, but as she one by one picks off her assailants the film sadly descends into that dreariest of film genres, torture porn. Each revenge is slowly played out and by the end it’s not that different to watching one of the Saw movies, which is damming with faint praise.

Does the world need to be reminded of man’s violence against women? Always, but this is not the film it thinks it is, and in the end the effect is numbing rather than challenging.

Overall Verdict: After all the debates and controversies, this will ultimately be remembered as an addition to the torture porn genre rather than a breakthrough horror film.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

Though it’s out on DVD at the end of the month, you might want to seek out this gem during its limited theatrical run over the next few weeks and soak in the experience on the big screen. A 2010 festival favourite, Amer is a throwback/homage to the Italian Giallo genre, a curious and distinct type of 60s/70s murder/mystery inspired by the crime fiction literature that emerged in the late 20s (the word Giallo (‘yellow’) refers to the colour of the crime paperbacks).

Told in three parts, Amer focuses on Ana, first a young girl with a morbid fascination with her grandfather’s corpse, second, a burgeoning beauty at the dawn of her sexual awakening, and finally, an adult who returns to her childhood home where her fascination with sex and death first began.

Fans of Dario Argento and Mario Bava will know what to expect; a strange, dream-like and sometimes surreal horror of sorts, brimming with eroticism and violence. But Amer isn’t merely an Argento/Bava imitator, and certainly, Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s film doesn’t strictly play by the Giallo rules, going beyond the usual black-gloved killer premise and delivering a more experimental and arthouse horror, placing the aesthetics above plot and story.

An overwhelming banquet for the senses, Amer is a film awash in highly stylised and abstract visuals and a heightened soundtrack consisting of ticking clocks, teeth grinding and a magnificent score utilising recycled movie soundtracks by the likes of Ennio Morricone.  An uncompromising  mood piece, Amer is a sensory overload of psychoanalytical symbols and images (and mostly dialogue-free), which gives the film a rather academic and emotionless feel, and certainly, the film’s general lack of human emotion will ultimately leave you feeling unmoved. But, for pure style and audio/visual panache, Amer is an unequivocal triumph; a mesmerising, hypnotic and stunningly beautiful 90 minutes of film.

Overall Verdict: A beautifully stylised concoction of sex and violence straight out of the mind of Freud. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but undeniably gorgeous from start to finish.

Reviewer: Lee Griffiths

Superhero films can be forgiven many things – daft plots, bad acting, silly scripts, even pre-teenage girls swearing, but the one thing they really shouldn’t be is dull. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why this latest addition to the canon is so plain boring – after all, it has a charming lead actor, an interesting director and is based on several quirky, fresh ideas. But dull it remains.

There are a couple of neat twists on the usual set-up – Seth Rogen’s Britt Reid is a millionaire like Bruce Wayne, but he is a bit of a waster and likes a party. For a superhero he has a bit of a gut. Also his take on crime-fighting is to set his Green Hornet up as the villain, so the police will believe LA’s drug gangs have simply imploded and are picking each other off. Not having much experience in the field, he persuades Cameron Diaz’s trainee journo (trainee? At her age? Time to try something else…) to tell him how a bad guy behaves, then copies her predictions.

All fair cop, and Rogen’s Reid is a charming, funny presence on screen. We first meet him as a boy ignored by terrifying media owner dad, Tom Wilkinson (not terrifying enough, terrible accent). When dad dies and leaves Reid a newspaper, the Daily Sentinel, to run, Reid merely carries on his party lifestyle in a huge house. When he befriends his dad’s chauffeur, Kato (Chou), they invent all sorts of super-cars and weapons, and with Kato’s handy martial arts, take to the streets to wipe out crime. When they both fall for Diaz though, things get complicated, and there is also the small problem of criminal mastermind Chudnofsky (Waltz) who seems determined to control the drugs traffic in LA.

Let’s start with Waltz. This wonderful actor, who won an Oscar for Inglourious Basterds playing a genuinely evil, creepy Nazi, has to be perfect casting as the baddie, surely? Actually, no – he carries little threat, and even jokes about his lack of charisma, is one of many running gags that wares very thin. An early set-up scene, in which he visits a rival gang leader in an LA nightclub, takes an age to make a very simple point – he’s a baddie, with a double-barrelled gun.

The Hornet’s sidekick Kato is another problem – Chou’s English is hard to understand sometimes, and he carries little screen weight. He is handy with the karate and driving fast, but that’s about it. As for Diaz, by the time she answers the door dressed in her pants it pretty much sums up the film’s lack of ideas, and she’s as witless as she was in Knight and Day.

Yet Rogan is such a watchable screen presence it’s difficult to dismiss the film completely. He is sharp, engaging and has a great voice, although actually he is more at ease playing the slob at the start of the film than the superhero he becomes. He shouts and runs through all of the action sequences with gusto, even though they seem to go on forever. If car chases are your thing you’ll be happy enough here, if not it will feel like being dragged along tarmac by your hair.

Michel Gondry is best known for directing quirky indie dramas like Eternal Sunshine and Be Kind Rewind, which had a warmth and humanity at their heart. He’s an interesting choice but here seems swamped by the material, revealing little visual flair and action sequences by numbers, almost as if he was replaced by another director half-way through.

Overall verdict: With such talent involved this is a strangely unengaging misfire, which seems to go on forever. A few good jokes, but that’s about it.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

What the hell is the deal with Nicholas Cage? The undisputed king of the 90s, the new millennium saw Cage slump from one slice of mediocrity to the next, with a couple of exceptions (Lord of War being the most noteworthy) along the way. Whenever a big name goes through a spell like this, each new project is always billed as a ‘return to form’ for the star. “Cage is back!” screams the publicity, “The best Nic Cage has been since Con-Air!” says tabloid reviewer.

Most of the time this is all so much hot air, but less than a year ago, with the opinion polarising Bad Lieutenant and the cult super-hero hit Kick-Ass, it seemed like Francis Ford Coppola’s favourite nephew had finally turned a corner. Which makes it all the more mystifying that he seems to have regressed back to below average, effects-driven guff like this.

It’s the 14th Century and Europe is stuck firmly in the dark ages. Fear and superstition grip the land, a mysterious plague is wiping out entire villages and everyone is perplexed by their sudden adoption of American accents. Cage plays Behman, an ass-kicking Crusader knight whose hobbies include quaffing ale and killing Godless foreigners.  When he accidentally skewers an innocent (but still foreign) civilian, he and his good friend Felsen (Ron Perlman) give up the crusading business and trek home. On the way they stop in a plague-stricken town and are coerced into escorting a young girl accused of witchcraft to somewhere… and you know the rest right? It’s your typical find item x, take to place y, face peril, use x in y to catalyse event z. In other words, if you’ve seen any other fantasy movie ever made, you’ve seen this one.

Cage and his loyal band of misfits (including actual E4 Misfit Robert Sheehan) are likeable enough, but as in any unexceptional movie of this ilk, you can gauge their survival chances by how much character development they get. Older unattractive man with a one line backstory? Chances are you won’t outlast the ambitious young knight with everything to prove, who gets a whole scene to his very self. The one highlight is Little Dorrit’s Claire Foy as the accused girl herself. Foy splendidly takes a mix of The Ring’s Sadako Yamamura and Carrie’s eponymous nutcase and produces a decently creepy performance.

The script is, in a word, ropey. The writer presumably misunderstood the meaning of “fantasy-action” and decided that the dialogue should glue bits of those genres together. In an early exchange, Bayman is involved in a fierce argument with the higher-ups about the morality of crusading. After a couple of minutes of ye olde speak, Ron Perlman leans over and says “C’mon, let’s get the hell out of here,” as if the altercation was happening in a sports bar in Iowa. It seems like a little thing, but its jarring and it kills the immersion that a film like this needs to survive.

To its credit, the film does retain viewer interest by keeping the is she/isn’t she a witch plot intriguingly ambiguous for the majority of the film, and there are some half decent hack and slash sequences. However, even these are badly let down by some very shoddy FX work that would have struggled to cut the mustard 10 years ago. Crummy green screen and unconvincing supernatural tomfoolery conspire to rip the audience ever more from the fantasy world and back to cold hard reality.

Season of the Witch is a below average movie. The fantasy genre is a notoriously hard sell, unless you’re pumping Lord of the Rings amounts of cash and imagination into the project and it’s not difficult to see why this release was delayed from a previously planned autumn debut. It’s a half-hearted attempt at a genre that desperately needs a fresh new angle, which isn’t forthcoming here.

Overall Verdict: A paint-by-numbers fantasy movie that contains a few decent moments, but is unfortunately let down by sub-standard effects and a lacklustre script.

Reviewer: Alex Hall

Well, well, well, who’d have thought it? After all the debate and chagrin about the very public execution of the UK Film Council, what may very well turn out to be its swan-song in terms of major releases, turns out to be one of the most complete and pleasurable cinematic experiences to come out of this country in many a long year.

The film follows the story of Colin Firth’s King George VI (our current Queen Elizabeth’s father) through the time leading up to the beginning of the Second World War. The victim of a major speech impediment since youth, George is suddenly and unwillingly thrust into the centre of the public eye by his brother’s abdication, and turns to an acclaimed but eccentric speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), to help him guide his country through a period of scandal and conflict.

Whilst The King’s Speech has wisely sold itself as a luscious period drama, it contains so many moments of genuine charm and laugh-out-loud comedy that forcing it to share a genre with more sombre fare like Atonement and Bright Star seems like something of a misnomer.

Lets get this out the way first – as by this point word of mouth has already done more than any review can achieve – and state that this movie is all about Colin Firth. It seems strange looking back at his days as an offbeat rom-com staple, since the man has, very quietly and without anyone really noticing, become the finest British actor of his generation. His George, despite his astronomically high-status, is rich with humanity and vulnerability, a contrast with his very middle-class but infinitely more detached turn in last year’s A Single Man. Every facial tick and the delivery of every syllable is considered and precise, like a intricate mosaic that leaves the viewer completely at his mercy. A better individual performance you will not see this year, perhaps even this decade.

That is not to say we aren’t spoiled by a deluge of supporting talent. Geoffrey Rush provides a manic and confident counterpoint to Firth’s s-s-stuttering and awkward prince, and the chemistry between the two is genuinely compelling. Helena Bonham Carter is stupendous as George’s wife, Elizabeth, demonstrating that she can stretch herself further than the kooky Tim Burton projects that have dominated her recent past. Backed up by veterans Timothy Spall, Michael Gambon and Derrick Jacobi, there’s no danger of being let down on the performance side of things.

In terms of cinematic execution, director Tom Hooper (who found similar biopic success with 2009’s The Damned United) has played a difficult balancing act and come up trumps. The scenery and costumes are lavish and beautiful, but at no point does it threaten to become overindulgent. The audience is never made to feel like they are intruding on the lives of the aristocracy, meaning that despite their surroundings, the characters could be part of any family in crisis.

Where Hooper really succeeds is in pushing the relationship between Firth and Rush front and centre. The Abdication crisis, the onset of war with Germany, these major incidents in British history pale in comparison to the perfectly balanced human dynamic of student and teacher. Salt of the earth Australian wisdom meets that very special type of isolated upbringing that can only be found in Royal circles, turning the status of each man on its head and creating a twisted Pygmalion-esque scenario with delightful results.

Critics hate using words like “flawless” and “perfect”, but after taking in and considering this marvellous film, it’s very difficult to come up with any other definition. The King’s Speech is a phenomenal achievement that will leave you in no doubt that as far as British filmmaking goes, there’s life in the old dog yet.

Overall Verdict: Beautifully presented, wonderfully written and astonishingly performed. It’s a cliché but there really aren’t enough superlatives to describe how good this is. A triumph.

Reviewer: Alex Hall