With The Whale, Aronofsky brings a hollow sense of dignity to his schematic brand of cinematic misery porn.
Aronofsky’s influential hellride of a film gets a sturdy 4K upgrade and a few new extras that extol its technical merits.
The film is a riot of religious symbolism, of-the-moment socio-political valences, and references to Darren Aronofsky’s work.
The Boston-born Sean Gullette is currently based in Tangiers, his wife’s hometown, and he clearly has empathy for his adopted city.
Once the money shots of Aronofsky’s version recede, it becomes ever more clear that his intention is to tackle the capriciousness of Old Testament logic.
Black Swan is maddening, uneven, often bonkers, but it’s also often strangely beautiful.
Six. That’s the number of times the DGA winner has failed to win the Oscar. Advantage: Tom Hooper. Two thousand and three.
For Annette Bening, it seemed as if the stars in the Oscar sky had finally aligned into a shape that wasn’t that of Hilary Swank’s face.
The first wave of guilds—directors, producers, and actors—all supplicated down on their knees for The King’s Speech.
Now, to be clear, Inception, which makes the juggled alternate realities of Back to the Future Part II seem complicated in comparison.
Cute may be what Darby was about, but cute is not what Mattie Ross is about, and she puts a big gash in the center of True Grit.
I was moved by Requiem for a Dream, but boy, has he ever made me regret that initial feeling of enthusiasm.
Part of the reason I’m drunk on Black Sawn while still struggling to identify its taste has something to do with the film’s hallucination-filled narrative.
Is Darren Aronofsky’s relative nebulousness a reflection of the quality of his films?
Black Swan is Showgirls stripped bare of its camp affections, Suspiria with a pretense to realism, Repulsion for our J-horror-addled times.
Some of the entries are set in stone from edition to edition, and that’s fine in most cases.
Only tutus and pointe shoes separate the dainty stage in Black Swan from the gladiatorial ring of The Wrestler.
Cornillac’s a veritable cretaceous martyr, man. Why can’t I look away?
The film starts bleakly and just gets bleaker, and as it progresses these stylistic decisions start to feel more and more oppressive.
No additions have been made to the standard-definition release’s stable of extras, but that was already a pretty strong set.