Deborah Ross

I have always suspected that, if you look for the black swan within yourself, it will end in tears, and now Darren Aronofsky has proved me right. It will end in tears, as well as bloody gashes, horrors glimpsed in mirrors, warped hallucinations of a sexual nature and breaking your mother’s hand in a door jamb. If you think you may have the black swan within you, just leave well alone. Go shopping. Play Scrabble. Clear out the hall cupboard, as you have been meaning to do for ages (I don’t think you can squeeze another thing in there, although, God bless you, you will keep trying). And if you don’t want to listen to me, then at least take this film as a warning. This is an intensely compelling film which you might well want to see, but you would not want to live it.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock — in which case, keep it to yourself; I’m done with rocks — you’ll have already heard about 127 Hours. Unless you’ve been living under a rock — in which case, keep it to yourself; I’m done with rocks — you’ll have already heard about 127 Hours. It’s the latest film from Danny Boyle and is based on the true story of Aron Ralston, the poster boy of survival who, as a 27-year-old in 2003, went climbing in the Bluejohn Canyon in Utah and got his forearm trapped between a boulder and the canyon wall. After five days of shoving, tugging, chiselling, screaming, reminiscing and hallucinating, he eventually looks at his blunt penknife, looks at his arm, and cuts it off between elbow and wrist.

Peter Weir’s The Way Back tells the story of a group of escapees from a 1940 Siberian gulag who walked across Siberia, Mongolia, Tibet and the Himalayas to freedom in British India, a journey of 12 months and 4,000 miles, and a journey that will bring into sharp focus the domitability of your own crappy spirit, particularly if you always take the bus two stops up the hill, as I do. Peter Weir’s The Way Back tells the story of a group of escapees from a 1940 Siberian gulag who walked across Siberia, Mongolia, Tibet and the Himalayas to freedom in British India, a journey of 12 months and 4,000 miles, and a journey that will bring into sharp focus the domitability of your own crappy spirit, particularly if you always take the bus two stops up the hill, as I do.

Whereas Sofia Coppola’s directorial breakthrough, Lost in Translation, featured two lonely souls rattling about in a Tokyo hotel, her latest film, Somewhere, features one lonely soul holed up in a Californian hotel, and isn’t half so good. Whereas Sofia Coppola’s directorial breakthrough, Lost in Translation, featured two lonely souls rattling about in a Tokyo hotel, her latest film, Somewhere, features one lonely soul holed up in a Californian hotel, and isn’t half so good. It’s not bad. It’s not hateful. It’s not evil. You won’t want to hunt it down and bring it to trial. But a second film about ennui suffers from ennui itself. And I’m not sure I can buy into the ‘emptiness of celebrity’ shtick any more.

Monsters is a sci-fi alien film and is being promoted as a sci-fi alien film but it’s not really a sci-fi alien film as it’s a love story with a beautiful and unexpected ending. Monsters is a sci-fi alien film and is being promoted as a sci-fi alien film but it’s not really a sci-fi alien film as it’s a love story with a beautiful and unexpected ending. It just happens to be set in the future and happens to feature aliens, and is one of those films that was made for next to nothing — $15,000! — and yet has proved both a critical and box-office success. Fifteen thousand dollars! How is it possible? I spend that in Waitrose and still have nothing to put together as a meal for supper. How is that possible? I don’t know. It’s frightening.

There are quite a few reasons to like The American. It is an action film with almost no action, making it a non-action action film which, I now know, is my favourite kind of action film. It stars George Clooney, and while I have tried to imagine Mr Clooney doing something uncharismatically — rinsing out his pants in the sink, say, or hosing down the car on a Sunday morning — I cannot. I’d buy a ticket for both. And it’s directed by Anton Corbijn, the Dutch photographer turned film-maker who made Control, the excellent film about Joy Division, and who knows how to compose a shot gorgeously. There are quite a few reasons to like The American.

By the time a film franchise arrives at its seventh and penultimate instalment, you probably know if it is something you enjoy or not, or at least I would hope so. Generally, Harry Potter is not something I’ve enjoyed over the years so, by the same logic, I shouldn’t have bothered with this but, having skipped the last one, I was curious. Have the characters grown up, and has the franchise grown up with it? To save you having to skim to the end for an answer, I will give it to you now: no. This film is the same as all the other films, which is fine if you like this sort of film, and not if you don’t and now here we are, back at the beginning. But by this stage in the game, there may not be anything else to say. This review is probably pointless, but that’s OK.

This is, I should confess, not a film I meant to see. I meant to see Harry Potter, but turned up for the screening in the right place at the wrong time — a week early, I’m such a schmuck — and had to take what was showing, which was You Again, with the tag line: ‘What doesn’t kill you...will marry your brother.’ Instantly, I doubted the veracity of this — I can’t put my finger on what made me doubtful, I just felt it in my bones, and called my brother. ‘Jon,’ I said, ‘if I had athlete’s foot and it didn’t kill me, would you marry it?’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘And I’m already married to Mary, as you know.

Mike Leigh’s latest film feels cruel and is uncomfortable to watch which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — you can’t expect cinema to offer only comfort and warmth, my dears; cinema is not like the lobby of a country-house hotel — but it does make it a rather horrible experience. Mike Leigh’s latest film feels cruel and is uncomfortable to watch which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — you can’t expect cinema to offer only comfort and warmth, my dears; cinema is not like the lobby of a country-house hotel — but it does make it a rather horrible experience. I did not enjoy Another Year although, as that may be its point, this does not mean it failed to achieve what it set out to achieve, if it set out to achieve anything.

Red is not a very good film and neither does it try to be. It puts in very little effort and, instead, relies almost entirely on the pulling power of its all-star line up: Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Richard Dreyfuss, Brian Cox and a cameo from Ernest Borgnine, who is now 93. (I put that in because I know you’ll ask yourself, ‘Bloody hell, how old is he now?’ Well, he’s 93. ) It’s billed as an ‘explosive action comedy’ but the ‘explosive action’ and ‘comedy’ are so workaday even Helen Mirren brandishing a machine gun while wearing a sexy white evening dress can’t save it from its own sheer dullness. You’d think it could, but it can’t.

The Social Network 12A, Nationwide The Social Network is a brilliantly entertaining and fascinating film about a subject in which I have absolutely no interest: Facebook. I could be no more surprised if, say, someone were to make a brilliantly entertaining and fascinating film about fish-gutting or car-tuning or being put on hold by the bank before finally being put through to someone you can’t understand. (I am thinking of outsourcing myself to Bombay, just to be similarly annoying.) But this hurtles along so smartly and masterfully the subject sweeps you up as does its main, knotty character: a man who cares nothing for money yet makes zillions while losing his only friend in the process.

The Kid is based on a true story and the book by Kevin Lewis, who had an horrific childhood taking in abuse, violence, poverty, starvation and abandonment by the social services. These books are called ‘misery memoirs’ and sell by the bucketload so I’ve even had a go myself. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: hang on, you had a thoroughly uneventful — nay, happy — middle-class upbringing in the Hampstead Garden Suburb, which doesn’t sound like an especially promising basis for a true story of cruelty, neglect, survival against the odds and the indomitable nature of the human spirit, but you would be wrong. Here is a taster: ‘I grew up in a house where no one was safe, particularly from music lessons (piano, mostly).