The most toxic, rapturous, melodramatic, operatic movie about a mentally disintegrating ballerina you’ll see all year… And featuring some of the best dance sequences ever.
Black Swan has a crazy momentum that keeps us hooked, even if it eventually topples off the stage.
An extraordinary, intoxicating movie. Its hard, twisted edges may turn off some, but there’s no faulting either Aronofsky’s technical mastery or Portman’s flawless performance.
Few directors explore the darkness of a professional life better than Aronofsky, and with Black Swan he lets rip in audacious style, slow-burning through layers of accumulating tension to finally reach the kind of visceral, bloody shock conclusions best exemplified in the best work of David Cronenberg and Brian de Palma.
If Black Swan is watchable, it is the watchability of a car crash.
Wow! A 21st century masterpiece.
While the film is near perfect, it's a tribute to Portman that she outshines everyone else as the frail, brittle ballerina who is slowly but surely losing it.
Though tipped for Oscar success, Black Swan really isn’t much more than a shrieking psycho thriller polished to a high gloss by a fine cast and a marquee director, but on those terms it’s rattling good fun.
It is exciting, quite mad and often really scary.
Portman is perfect, looking every muscled inch a ballerina.
Black Swan dances itself dizzy in its urge to overwhelm us, but Aronofsky's boldness and Natalie Portman's exquisite, raw-nerved performance make the surrender very enjoyable.
As for the film, like the pirouetting point-of-view shots Aronofsky sometimes deploys, it's a head-spinning and visceral experience - an art film that wears its trash credentials with pride, and vice-versa.
Only during its last 15 minutes does Black Swan stop being a high-class pastiche of a melodrama and start being a whirling, nightmarish, gloriously unhinged farce in its own right.
Black Swan holds the attention in a manipulative manner, but one can see in it the possibility of a better, more satisfying film with the same setting and the same dramatis personae.
Black Swan raises the bar with striking and beautiful set of posters
Portman tells of the agony she endured to be a dancer
Black Swan: Dancing on the edge of sanity
Natalie Portman: The prodigy comes of age
Black Swan--Darren Aronofsky interview
Six exciting things which make Black Swan very exciting
What Britain's ballet stars made of Black Swan
Blood, sweat and murder at the ballet: The endless torture of Darren Aronofsky
Interview: Mila Kunis
Why home is where the art is
Darren Aronofsky: Hollywood's most ambitious director
Interview: Natalie Portman, actress
Black Swan: Natalie Portman interview
Black Swan moves in from the wings to lead the race for the Oscars
Mila Kunis: The other Black Swan finds her feet
The truth about ballet
Natalie Portman worried she will bore cinema fans
interview: Darren Aronofsky, film director
Natalie Portman in 'Black Swan': Little Miss Perfect lets her dark side show
Feathers ruffled over Black Swan
Duo Darren Aronofsky and Clint Mansell score on pointes
Black Swan caught in row over costume award nominations
Natalie Portman--Black Swan Q & A
General release. Check local listings for show times.