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Thor: Chris Hemsworth charms as middling God of Thunder

January 4, 2012 By

God of Thunder Chris Hemsworth stars in Thor, a visually stunning film where Norse mythology goes galactic.

Hemsworth swoon-worthy

Thor sets father against son and brother against brother. Kenneth Branagh directs this tale based on the Marvel comic book character.

Thor is prince of the nine realms and the arrogant son of King Odin of Asgard (Anthony Hopkins). His terse younger brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston of Wallander) chafes as Thor is about to be crowned the new king.

Suddenly the Frost Giants invade. Colm Feore plays the menacing Frost Giant King.

Odin banishes Thor (and his mighty hammer) to Earth after the cocky young warrior disobeys him and leads an avenging team to the Ice Planet. Thor must learn respect and humility.

Thor banished

“A wise king never seeks out war, but he must always be ready for it,” says Odin.

Hemsworth, who will star in the sequel The Avengers, lends his awesome screen presence, swoon-worthy physique and booming, mellow voice.

Unconvincing couple

Thor’s love couple seems more like best friends. Best Actress Natalie Portman plays Jane Foster, earth woman and astrophysicist who “grazes” Thor with her SUV twice.

Portman (who studied psychology and neuroscience at Harvard University) is interesting as a Contact-like physicist who’s bubbly with just a hint of gravity. Her research team includes senior scientist Erik (Stellan Starsgard) and Darcy (lively Kat Dennings).

Sky gods evoked

Sky gods continue to live in our religions and mythologies. A Father in heaven is a prevailing idea. The word “Thursday” derives from “Thor’s Day.” Branagh successfully weaves Shakespearean overtones, an intriguing surprise and a double cross as Odin, Thor and Loki do battle.

Hiddleston evokes the dark, tortured Loki with considerable screen time. Exciting Japanese movie star Tadanobu Asano delivers just a few lines as a member of Thor’s team. Asano travels to Earth with Joshua Dallas, Ray Stevenson and Jaimie Alexander to rescue their friend.

Fantastic visual effects

Fantastic set design and visual effects treat us to floating kingdoms, stunning space travel, and dramatic use of ice and fire. The 3-D is subtle yet beautiful. A sky bridge connects Asgard to Earth, guarded by the imposing gatekeeper Heimdall (Idris Elba of The Wire).

The intersection between human and divine isn’t fully imagined here. Where’s the vivid possibility and heroism conjured by Superman and Spiderman?

Puzzling hero

Thor seems like Starman or Brother from Another Planet without the wisdom. He falls short on heroism.

Thor’s fondness for Jane and her Earth team is unconvincing. Jane is supposed to be the transformative force in Thor’s life, but we don’t see his character develop. He’s a jerk who’s suddenly a hero.

Pride and vanity suddenly morph into leadership. Thor often seems like two movies, one intergalactic, one pedestrian.

Hints of The Avengers

When the Feds swoop in, it seems little more than an excuse to bring back Iron Man’s S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), and include a cameo of future Avengers hero Jeremy Renner.

Chris Evans will star in Captain America: The First Avenger, this summer. Samuel L. Jackson (so excellent as a comic book devotee in Unbreakable), appears after the end credits. Jackson will star as the first black Nick Fury next summer.

Thor tells Jane that “magic and science are one and the same” in his realm. Let’s hope The Avengers will conjure much more magic. (3 out of 5 stars)

If you like Thor, you might enjoy:  X-Men: First Class; Captain America: The First Avenger.

 

Thor     2011  /  PG-13  /  2 hours 10 min

Cast Overview:  Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Starsgard, Colm Feore, Ray Stevenson, Idris Elba, Kat Dennings, Rene Russo, Anthony Hopkins, Clark Gregg, Jaimie Alexander, Tadanobu Asano, Joshua Dallas

Director:  Kenneth Branagh

Genre:  Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy

 

Filed Under: Awaken, Character, Heal, Inspiration, Learn & Grow, Millenials Tagged With: , , , , ,

Top 10 Steps to Self-Discovery for Best Actress Natalie Portman

January 1, 2012 By

Best Actress Natalie Portman transforms herself in the psychosexual thriller Black Swan. Here’s how she grows as a woman, a dancer, a daughter and a human being:

  1. Daughter to Adult. Portman’s character Nina Sayers breaks away from her overprotective mother (Barbara Hershey). She does whatever it takes to secure the Swan Queen role. “Where is my sweet girl?” Hershey asks. “She’s gone!” Portman screams.  Nina becomes her own woman as she dances in her bedroom filled with stuffed animals and dance figurines.
  2. Physical Stamina.  Portman reveals a determined dance martyr who cracks her joints, splits toenails and purges to stay thin. Self-mutilation is a disturbing part of her journey. The star performed much of her own dancing in Black Swan. At the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, Portman described dance as “expression through physicality alone.” She had to master every muscle, including “the detail on how the fingertips move, the eyes, the placement of the head.”
  3. Mental Endurance.  Nina has practiced for hours a day since childhood, so it is not a stretch to work even harder to win a leading role. Great performers often lose themselves while immersed in their craft. What is troubling is Nina’s complete loss of self.
  4. Sexuality.  Dance master Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) raises the bar. In his new production of Swan Lake, the star must play both the White and Black swans.  Nina can play the virginal White Swan in a heartbeat, Leroy says.  But can she manage the seductive, lascivious Black Swan? Leroy hits on Nina, using sex to bring her out.
  5. Professional Recognition.  Nina finally secures the Swan Queen role, but intense preparation holds psychological perils. Former company star Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder) confronts Nina and makes her reel with guilt. Beth is belligerent over her forced retirement, and seems utterly used up and violently crushed.
  6.  Sister/Competitor.  Nina allows Lily (Mila Kunis) to befriend her. Lily initiates Nina into the dark side of art and creation as they go out for a night on the town. The two vie for the same role, yet they complement each other. Nina embraces her own dark, hidden desires. Lily is moved ever so slightly by Nina’s genuine innocence.
  7.  Genuine Romance.  In real life, Portman fell in love with her co-star and choreographer Benjamin Millepied.  The two are engaged and expecting their first child, a boy, this year.  It’s a fairy tale ending that contrasts with Black Swan’s nightmarish course.
  8. Self-Love: Befriending the Self.  After Black Swan ends, filmgoers are left to consider self-love.  Will Nina ever be able to return to life after her peak experience onstage?
  9. Fame and Success.  Creation. Destruction. Sacrifice.  Black Swan dramatizes the life of a female artist. Society expects much from women. Women may raise that bar even higher. Is success worthwhile when the path demands so much?
  10. Darkness and Light.  Blending nightmare and fairy tale, Director Darren Aronofsky shows a woman who has lost perspective.  The Dance is one part of Nina’s life. She must learn that it is not her whole life.
  11. Professional Recognition.  Nina finally secures the Swan Queen role, but intense preparation holds psychological perils. Former company star Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder) confronts Nina and makes her reel with guilt. Beth is belligerent over her forced retirement, and seems utterly used up and violently crushed.
Filed Under: Awaken, Millenials Tagged With: , ,

The Other Woman: Portman loves, grieves as new wife

January 1, 2012 By

The Other Woman is an indie exploration of birth, death and rebirth.  Best Actress Natalie Portman stars as Emilia.

Stealing a man

Gorgeous Emilia is a newly hired, up-and-coming attorney who brags about her judge father, from whom she is estranged.  She sets her gaga gazes on married Jack (Scott Cohen), a partner at the firm.

Emilia’s interest seems one sided. Suddenly Jack asks her to join him on an out-of-town case.  The two make their way to her room.

Jack’s decision to leave his physician wife (alluring, vicious Lisa Kudrow) seems too abrupt. The lovers’ chemistry is never fully realized in rushed flashbacks and awkward dialogue from director and screenwriter Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex).

SIDS death and a mother’s grief

Tragedy gives the film traction. The Other Woman is anchored in Portman’s powerful turn as new wife and mother to a neurotic, eight-year-old stepson William (remarkably good Charlie Tahan). In order for the marriage to work, she realizes, she’s got to win over the kid.

The SIDS death of baby Isabelle leaves the new family reeling.  Teary tirades follow.  Emilia tries too hard, urging precocious William to enjoy an ice cream sundae even though his mother has pronounced him lactose intolerant.

Genuine stepmom skills

Jack warms up to Emilia only as William gradually lets her into his world. Emilia shows genuine motherly skill when she ignores the boy’s tone-deaf comments, sensing his real feelings.

Emilia sees the world through William’s eyes.  One gets the sense that Portman is a great mom in real life.

Kudrow’s Carolyn seizes every opportunity to undercut her husband’s new wife. Via William, she lets Emilia know that Isabelle “wasn’t a real person under Jewish law.”

Carolyn’s icy insistence on having William apply to prestigious Ivy League-track schools are for his own good, she’s convinced.

William’s world

Emilia helps William more than she helps herself.  Secretly he reads a book from her about Central Park, here a metaphor for life.  Like Lyle the Crocodile, he learns to maneuver, adapt and trust.

Denying her own pain, Emilia scoffs at the urgings of her friend Mindy (excellent Lauren Ambrose) to “take an active role in your own grief.”  Mindy too is a survivor of infant loss. Emilia is good at lashing out, but not so good at going within.

Memorial Walk for infant loss

Suddenly Jack insists that they participate in a Memory Walk in Central Park with other grieving families. Cohen lives inside his character Jack only fleetingly, and is so withdrawn that he never seems fully committed to the role.  Reluctantly Emilia lets herself be dragged along on the silent walk. Pink, blue and white balloons waft overhead.

When her father Sheldon (Michael Cristofer) shows up at the ceremony, Emilia explodes.  She’s never forgiven him for his dalliance with a Russian stripper. It galls Emilia that her mother (Debra Monk) has invited Sheldon back.

Life arrives, departs

Finally it’s Carolyn and Sheldon who help Emilia come to terms with Isabelle’s death. “She just stopped being,” Sheldon proclaims. Life comes, life goes.

This intense, honest film seems like a training run for Portman’s Oscar-winning role in Black Swan. The Other Woman is based on the book Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman.

As William sails his model boat at the Conservatory Pond, he seeks to make sense of his sister’s brief life. “I’m gonna be a Buddhist,” he proclaims.  (3.5 out of 5 stars)

If you like The Other Woman, you might enjoy:  Rabbit Hole; Black Swan.

The Other Woman  2009 /  R   /  1 hour, 43 minutes

Cast Overview:  Natalie Portman, Scott Cohen, Charlie Tahan, Lauren Ambrose, Lisa Kudrow, Michael Cristofer, Debra Monk, Mona Lerche, Anthony Rapp, Kendra Kassebaum

Director:  Don Roos

Genres:  Indie, Drama

Filed Under: Awaken, Character, Compassion, Forgiveness, Heal, Healing - Traditional, Learn & Grow, Transformation Tagged With: , , , , ,

Black Swan: Natalie Portman’s driven performance wins an Oscar

December 30, 2011 By

Natalie Portman surrenders herself in Darren Aronofsky’s psycho-sexual thriller Black Swan. In a film of many superlatives, it is Portman who catapults it to greatness with her best performance ever.

Ballerina Nina Sayers has sacrificed her childhood, her mind, body and soul to the dance. Now she is keenly focused on the coveted Swan Queen role in Swan Lake. Slavishly supporting Nina is her former ballerina mother, Barbara Hershey (stupendous here).

Awards well deserved

Portman won the Oscar for Best Actress, as well as Golden Globe, Spirit and Screen Actors Guild awards for this role.

Black Swan swept the Spirit Awards, winning for Best Feature, Best Cinematography and Best Director.

In his new production, ballet director Thomas Leroy (ever driving Vincent Cassel) has raised the bar. The lead must play both the White and Black swans. Nina can play the virginal White Swan in a heartbeat, Leroy says. Can she manage her seductive, lascivious counterpart? He doubts it.

As The Wrestler (2008) reveres the male sportsman, Black Swan pays bold homage to the female dance artist. Both Aronofsky films show art consummated at the expense of the individual. In order to achieve wholeness, the Dark must roar alongside pure intention and high ideals without destroying them.

Psychology of Nina

It’s striking how little self worth Nina really has. Brainwashed, she believes that being a perfect dancer is all. As little girl/woman, Nina lives sheltered in her mother’s Upper West Side apartment. Her bedroom is filled with stuffed animals and ballerina music boxes. Portman reveals a determined dance martyr who cracks her joints, hobbles on bloody, split toenails and purges regularly to stay thin.

Life, indeed reality, is what we make of it. Nina careens insanely in waves, relentlessly pushed by her own ego, her mother, the demanding Leroy, and wiley understudy Lily (ravishing Mila Kunis). As if this weren’t enough, she reels with guilt over the “retirement” of former company star Beth Macintyre. Winona Ryder wrings the last drop out of Beth, utterly used and violently crushed.

Audiences will lose track of what is real and unreal in Nina’s paranoid hallucinations. Portman has honed the self-destructiveness of Lauren in Heat (1995), and sustains it throughout. Action never lulls as Aronofsky depicts Nina’s inner and outer demons. The rousing cadences of Tchaikovsky billow like a sea beneath this adult fairy tale.

Sisterly competition

Kunis melds Lily’s smoky cattiness with just enough sisterly charm. Nina surrenders to her new friend. Knowing Lily is like walking through a dank museum basement filled with the Female’s dark artifacts: competition, raw hunger, erotic satiation.

Nina’s Black Swan emerges at last. She parties all night prior to morning rehearsal. Sex is her birthright, seduction her innate power. It’s a classic theme elevated by Portman, a revelation of both Hindu goddesses Kali and Lakshmi. Destruction becomes liberation as light and beauty shine. Portman performs most of her own dancing.

Cassel advances upon his prima ballerina to push her onto dangerous new ground. He transcends sexual harassment as he is able to control desire. “That was me seducing you. It needs to be the other way around,” he says.

Hershey’s needy innocence gives way to a mother’s overbearing rage, then morphs into teary adulation.

Technical mastery

Several masterstrokes ensure the film’s success. Mark Heyman and John McLaughlin rewrote Andres Heinz’s original script to focus on Nina’s psychology. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique follows Nina and the action closely, making subject larger than life.

Digital effects complement cinema verite. Blood flows. Feathers sprout.

Benjamin Millepied of the New York City Ballet choreographs. Clint Mansell created Black Swan’s rousing musical score. Much of the film is set in Lincoln Center.

In real life, Portman fell in love with co-star and choreographer Millepied. The two married and had a son.

Creation. Destruction. Sacrifice. Black Swan’s ending will leave you yearning for Nina to embrace herself wholly. (5 out of 5 stars)

If you like Black Swan, you might enjoy: Melancholia; The Other Woman.

Black Swan 2010 / R / 1 hour, 48 min

Cast Overview: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Genres: Drama, Thriller

Filed Under: Character, Heal Tagged With: , , , , ,