Brilliant piece of writing this...
Just to back up Anton, we try as a magazine to select films that tap into certain issues or themes or concerns that we feel are interesting and prescient. We weren't given the opportunity to see Tron before the mag went to print, but we decided to continue with the issue anyway because it tapped into our continued involvement with artificial intelligence. Our next issue is going to be the British Sci-Fi issue, because it's more interesting than simply the Attack the Block issue.
For what it's worth, I felt Matt didn't give enough to credit to Aronosky's formidable ability to mix what we term as high-culture (the dramatic concepts surrounding a ballet for example) and low culture (the "cliched slapstick shockers"). For me, Black Swan was that rare thing - a 5,5,5 movie.
Jennifer Lawrence is a good shout - she was terrific in The Burning Plain. Didn't think much of Saoirse Ronan in The Way Back, but she was great in Atonement. Rooney Mara was good in Social Network. Although her role was still quite small, she's going to be big. Jessica Chastain has got some big movies coming up this year - if the BAFTA really wanted to catch the cusp of the wave, she would have got a nomination. Mila Kunis for Black Swan. Olivia Wilde has suddenly got a fuckload of credits out of nowhere. Violante Placido should be in every movie ever made after bringing such beauty to her thankless role in The American...
I enjoyed it, but felt it was just a nice variation of a set of pretty identifiable romance-drama cliches. Two great actors, and the film did a good job of acting as vehicles for their contrasting styles of performance, but, partic from Gosling, felt there were some moments that screamed of actors' ad lib indulgence. Grizzly Bear score added a lot though...
Without meaning to push this joke too far, I 'kind of' agree with you as well. I'm always a little skeptical about film-makers that claim to completely align the audience's perspective with that of the protagonist. Here, Craig seems to like all the same things as Boden and Fleck, they're aesthetic traits are still all over this film, not least the Broken Social Scene soundtrack. With the animation sequences and musically excerpts and reasonably unknown leads, they seem to be consciously tapping in to the new indie films that have populated Hollywood for the last year - (500) Days of Summer springs to mind. On a baisc level, if this film was funnier or the characterisations resonant and memorable, I may not have found it so grating, but it's (kind of) not.
"Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television..."
I agree that she's making similar observations to what we saw in Lost in Translation, and the film did feel like a more feminine rendering of Less Than Zero. I find it interesting that so many film journalists are so willing to dismiss the film as an indulgent, smug pean to poor celebrities but would probably do cartwheels for the chance to interview Sofia for ten minutes with six PRs in the room in a posh hotel in Rome. I felt the film was sleek and airy, but it had bite as well. I felt challenged by it...
Granted. Disdain the wrong word. What is wrong with interrogating Christian allegory?
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tomseymour 
Contraption