Black Swan (2010)
Chosen by me because I like to go to the cinema a lot and it looked amazing.
The first must see movie of the year. Brilliantly shot, Aronosky has a great knack for making it seem as though the camera settles almost accidentally on the action giving a dream like more improvisational feel to the film. By grounding the world in the small details (fixing her shoes, the bits of back stage information) the pulpy tale of a sexually and socially repressed, internal perfectionist breaking out of her inhibitions to reach a greater level of performance is kept relatable amongst the weirdness.
Everyone gives brilliant performances (though Barbara Hershey as Portman's mother comes a little close to caricature at times) and the ballet sequences are splendid.
If the movie suffers a little it's that for as original as it feels (there can't be that many were-swan films out there right?) it's actually a tad second hand. Like a mix of Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, it also follows through The Wrestlers point of 'performance being all important' a little too closely (their conclusions are very similar) but it's a minor issue in an astonshing film.
