Black Swan

WOW, this was a good movie. I mean, it's always fun to watch a ballerina go insane, right? And Natalie Portman does it to perfection.

I've always thought Portman was beautiful (though maybe not so much in this movie poster), but I've never been as impressed with her acting as in this film. Those Star Wars prequels didn't quite do her justice. In fact, it wasn't just her acting--I don't think any of the other films she's been in have been as good as this one. Closer was pretty good, but this one's better.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

True story: Author and Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, age 43, suffered a stroke in 1995 that rendered him almost completely paralyzed, though his abilities to think and communicate were unimpaired. In this debilitated state he actually DICTATED HIS ENTIRE AUTOBIOGRAPHY by blinking his left eye. If you're like me, though that is decidedly amazing, it also sounds like it makes for a really really boring movie.

Fortunately whoever made this movie has a better imagination than I do, so it was more than just two hours of a man blinking one eye. It was actually a pretty good (if understandably somber) movie.

Here's Bauby's one statement that impressed me the most: "I have decided to never feel sorry for myself again."

I kind of feel like now I'm required to watch My Left Foot.

Angel Heart

Here's a movie that had somehow slipped my notice for about 24 years. (Aww, I see that it came out in theaters on my brother's 7th birthday.) This is my kind of movie: full of suspense, dark atmosphere, and mystery.

But I'm going to have to stop reading those darn netflix synopses. After a nice spoiler-free beginning about private detective Harry Angel being hired to track down a missing singer, this one mentions that "each time Harry makes contact with someone who might know the singer's whereabouts, he or she is killed in a horrible, ritualistic fashion." So I was already suspecting what might not have otherwise crossed my mind. I mean, after reading that, who do YOU figure the killer is? The brazen striking of a match on the first corpse's shoe confirmed it for me.

Even without any help from netflix, I managed to guess the real identity of the character Robert DeNiro was playing fairly early on. It wasn't even his character's name that gave it away (although, in retrospect, the name was a huge clue).  It was those too-obvious fingernails. I could swear they were longer and more pointy each time he was on screen. But I will admit (with relief) that I didn't guess everything. I don't think I realized who Johnny Favorite was a minute sooner than Harry Angel realized it.

It's kind of hard to believe Mickey Rourke used to be relatively nice-looking.