No Strings Attached

This is an interesting romantic movie choice. Sassy-check. Sexy-check. Acting: good acting from Kutcher and Portman which surprised me a bit. I wasn't too worried about him, but wasn't too sure about her, but she was good and sold the story and the character well. The story is fun and modern:

Emma (Portman) and Adam (Kutcher) are friends who have sex one morning and worry about their friendship being ruined. They make a pact to have "no strings attached", to have casual sex without falling in love with each other. The best part was that it wasn't cheesy which was very refreshing, because romantic movies can easily swim in the sea of cheese and that is unbearable. But this film didn't make you squirm in your seat and the dialogues were funny, clever and witty.

There was also some nice acting from Kevin Kline, Greta Gerwig, Ludacris, Mindy Kaling and particularly Lake Bell who was funny in the awkward part of Lucy, Adam's colleague who is interested in him, but isn't quite sure how to deal with him. So all in all very enjoyable. And sure Adam has a huge house and everybody's loaded in California, but at least Emma's flat isn't too big and she shares it with a few other doctors. So there's something normal about that. Besides it's just nice and cosy to watch a film shot in a sunnier climate when it's freezing outside. This totally makes you leave the cinema with a dreamy smile on your lips.

Black Swan

So this is another movie you could technically be excited about, Portman has already won the Golden Globe for it, but I couldn't help leaving the cinema with a "Meh" on my lips. It leaves you sort of lukewarm. Portman is a very good dancer, all the ballet training has finally paid of, but she failed to move me and really make me feel sorry or anything else for this woman. Vincent Cassel as the dodgy manipulative French choreographer doesn't have enough of a part to come across as a villain and there are a lot of events which happen throughout the movie that are not explained. At some point I thought that the filmmaker had intended to go the Fight Club way and give the film an interesting twist, but it just didn't deliver. I felt like I was in a restaurant and people kept serving different dishes, but none of them had any kind of flavour.

But the camera is remarkable. Matthew Libatique the cinematographer who already worked with Arnofsky on the much more profound "Requiem for a Dream" is using a very reflective and invasive camera technique. You have the feeling you can see what Nina, the main character, sees and really experience her increasingly freakier psychosis which sometimes is also very gory and horrible. I had the feeling they couldn't make their mind up about the genre. Was it a horror film? It felt like it sometimes. But the characters had no chemistry and weren't given enough dialogue to be able to build up any. Sure Portman just lives for the art of dance so she kinda shuts herself off from everyone else, Kunis is ok, but a rather sketchy and unconvincing character and the mother? She totally has different issues of her own which are never disclosed to the audience. There are films where people obsess about one thing, usually art, and it's still very good. Shine, Pollock, All about Eve, Frida, Basquiat, Amadeus are all films about obsession and they are soo amazing. So no it's not the subject that's the problem. When Cassel tells Nina not to be so tense and loosen up you can't help wonder if that wouldn't be good advice for the whole movie. Just live a little, and get plenty of popcorn to hide behind to avoid all the bloody and creepy scenes. Or maybe that's just me.