Oddly the movie I had originally did this post for got moved to the best list for a few reasons but these movies are ones that I just liked or I was surprised by but didn’t quite reach the best list.  These are in no order.

 

Trudy Young as Princess Melora & Gordon Thomson as Sir Robin the Brave with Kermit and the other frogs Jim Henson's The Frog Prince picture image

Trudy Young as Princess Melora & Gordon Thomson as Sir Robin the Brave with Kermit and the other frogs

Jim Henson’s Frog Prince – I’m a fan of the Muppets, there is no way I couldn’t love this one. It was just what it needed to to be. It was the perfect blend of the fairy-tale and Muppet Charm. Bake that Candle in the hall of her brain.

 

Sarah Patterson as Rosaleen with the wolf In the Company of Wolves

Sarah Patterson as Rosaleen with the wolf

 

In the Company of Wolves – I really respect this movie. It nicely subverted Fairy Tales and had a nice dream-like and symbolic tone. However I don’t really want to re-watch it and a lot the imagery was freaky, to say the least.

 

Black Swan picture image

Natalie Portman as Nina

 

Black Swan – To be honest this one was originally going on to be on the best list and it was really because I was having a hard time hitting that that ten target. Again, it doesn’t have a ton of re-watchability however I really enjoyed the play of the duo roles and it does the same thing as In the Company of Wolves with regard to leaving childhood and entering adulthood.

Tim Curry as Darkness Legend picture image

Tim Curry as Darkness

Legend – Watch this one for Tim Curry, it’s just delightful. It’s still a fun and imaginative movie. Plus it’s rumored to have inspired the Zelda series.

Lily Collins as Snow White and Armie Hammer as the Prince Andrew Alcott Mirror Mirror picture image

Lily Collins as Snow White and Armie Hammer as the Prince Andrew Alcott

 

Mirror Mirror – Okay, by all accounts this movie is dumb but for what ever reason I can’t hate it, it might be a guilty pleasure.

Black Swan picture image

Black Swan

If Red Shoes and Perfect Blue had a baby it would the 2010 movie, Black Swan. It’s a movie that looks at the break down of a young ballerina in her quest to be perfect which is set against a metaphoric and literal retelling of Swan Lake. Let’s just say I hate respect this movie.

Natalie Portman as Nina Black Swan picture image

Natalie Portman as Nina

The plot follows Nina Sayers, who is a young woman trapped in childhood by a fairly controlling mother. Nina wants to play the lead in the her ballet company’s new production of Swan Lake where the innocent white swan and the seductive black swan are played by the same dancer. Nina doesn’t have the inner sexiness to play the black swan but lands the role after kissing/biting the head of the ballet. She then thrown into a paranoia spiral of trying to become a more sexual person at the cost of killing her innocence self all while thinking that another lady in the company, Lily, is replacing her. But in the end she does away with the perfect little girl for the imperfect sexual woman and find she was perfect.

Black Swan picture image

Natalie Portman as Nina

So what don’t I like about this movie? Well in my humble opinion, the movie tries WAY too hard to be edgy and artistic that is just comes off as pretentious. It just has some downright unpleasant imaginary which really just a style thing so if you like this style, that is cool, I just think it tries way too hard that it became almost cute in a way.

Along the same lines there is the editing. The editing plays with reality and Nina’s crazy fantasies to the point were you really can’t trust anything that the movie presents or the characters. There is the 1994 French movie called L’Enfer which has this sort of editing but I prefer this style of editing in that movie  because the rest of the technicals are kept simple. Another movie that  plays with weird editing as part of the narrative is the 1999 Japanese movie Audition, which I don’t recommend. In that movie a scene is shown twice with different dialogue to show one character is not listening to what the other character was telling him. Again that is just me and my preferences. Though when I first saw Black Swan I had recently seen L’Enfer so I liked it in Black Swan more but on a second viewing is came off as really gimmicky.

Black Swan picture image

Natalie Portman as Nina

Also I don’t care for the characters. Black Swan is a character study of a dancer going crazy with a fairy tale woven throughout. Besides Nina’s perfection tendencies and being girly we don’t know that much about her. We know that she got into ballet because of her mother but that isn’t that much. We pretty much meet her and she starts going cuckoo. She couldn’t go a twenty minutes without the crazies starting. Now she did have the scratching habit and an eating disorder (I think) before but is that enough for very quick mental decline based on playing a dual role and taking a method style acting before she even starting rehearsing? I don’t think so, she just starts off crazy.

The other character are also one note, either sexy or prudes. The only character that has a little more than nothing going on is Beth a.k.a the dying Swan. A ballerina who is getting too old to dance and tries to commit suicide because Nina in a sense replaced her.

Natalie Portman as Nina (white swan) Black Swan picture image

Natalie Portman as Nina (white swan)

Now I get that the reason for the simple characters is that they are all dual role with character from the ballet and ballets aren’t know for their true to life characters and this duality is some thing I like. I like how the movie merged Swan Lake with a story about crazy dancer trying to be perfect while not being perfect. The duality of the white swan being childhood and innocence and killing that aspect and embracing a budding powerful sexuality to be a whole person is interesting. And the prince/Ballet head guy choosing the woman (black swan) over the child (white swan) is clever.

Black Swan picture image

Natalie Portman as Nina (black swan)

Despite the pretentious of this movie, it is really well down, though all the following Nina shots got old fast but it’s still a well crafted movie that does keep one guessing.

Though I gotta say I really loved the costumes, especially the ballet costumes. But the costumes fit into the simple nature of the characters. Mostly they all wear black and Nina where mostly whites and pinks and then shift to dark grays. I really liked Nina’s white gown but I love the Black Swan crown. I love how dark yet organic is it which is a combo you don’t see very often.

Natalie Portman as Nina becoming the black swan Black Swan picture image

Natalie Portman as Nina becoming the black swan

Black Swan is a polorzing movie, some people love it and others loath it. I can seem both sides which is why I hate respect Black Swan.