Icky psychodrama about a neurotic ballerina (Natalie Portman) who's been cast as the lead in a New York production of Swan Lake in which she is tasked to play both the innocent white swan and her evil twin, the alluring black swan. The story of Black Swan is basically Portman's character's descent into madness, as the pressure of trying to… read more!

Aronofsky's latest heavy-handed fever dream begins with a brief closeup of a burning woman's face. We then see the charred remains of an old house magically un-char before our very eyes as the camera floats through the hallway, ending on a bed, in which a figure magically appears under the sheets and rises. It is Jennifer Lawrence. She looks around… read more!

Director Darren Aronofsky and his cowriter Hubert Selby, Jr. (on whose book this film is based) appear to be after one goal with Requiem for a Dream: to provide audiences with a thoroughly unpleasant filmgoing experience. On this front, they have succeeded. A nearly psychedelic, delirium-paced non-story about drug addiction, Requiem follows young heroin addict Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) around… read more!

Brendan Fraser's "comeback movie" is a finely-acted character drama given unusually restrained direction from Darren Aronofsky. Wearing pounds of convincing fat makeup, Fraser plays Charlie, a morbidly obese junior college professor who has spent years overeating as a means of coping with the death of his boyfriend. When his friend/nurse Liz (Hong Chau, excellent) informs him that he is suffering… read more!

Much has been said about Mickey Rourke's "comeback" performance as a battered, aging professional wrestler in this film. Those critics who rave about this have forgotten Rourke's wonderful work in Sin City, the only bit of substance in a movie that was nothing but style. Maybe they think that one doesn't count because Rourke was buried under tons of makeup.… read more!