(My) Best of 2010: Supporting Actor.

5. Andrew Garfield in Never Let Me Go

We're never really sure why Kathy (Carey Mulligan) falls in love with Tommy (Garfield).

We're never really sure why Ruth (Keira Knightley) steals him from her either.

The thing about Tommy is that he's barely there and as such serves as a perfect canvas for others to imprint their feelings and idealism on him.

Garfield plays the part with a heartbreaking lack of self awareness. Tommy is one of the first characters we meet in the film and as often as we forget he's there, his bittersweet smile stabs our heart when we least expect it to.

4. Armie Hammer in The Social Network

"I'm 6'5, 220 and there's two of me" says an angry Tyler Winklevoss (Hammer) to his friend Divya (Max Minghella) and his brother Cameron (Hammer again).

They're talking about ways they can find to gut the friggin' nerd (Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg) who stole their website from them and Hammer does it with such grace that we think we're watching a hybrid of Clint Eastwood and Sir Laurence Olivier.

The Winklevi's commitment to Harvard law and their need to fulfill a social role is only overpowered by a rash masculinity they let us see flashes of now and then.

Hammer is remarkable in both roles and thanks to the editing and visual effects he creates two characters that are completely different and unique.

His inclusion here might be owed to the fact that nobody in the movie delivers Aaron Sorkin's lines with the elegance he does. When you multiply that plus two, you're prepared to have your mind blown away.

3. Sullivan Stapleton in Animal Kingdom

The Cody family knows good violence and isn't afraid to ask. Yet when recently orphaned teenager Joshua (James Frecheville) arrives to live with his uncles and grandmother things take an unexpected turn.

As the consequences of their acts begin to catch up with them, no other family member is as hypnotic to watch as Craig (Stapleton). Watching his descent into a self made hell is a thing that's both morally expected and completely devastating.

Stapleton plays Craig like someone who's half regretful, half surprised about the events that begin to unravel and this is what makes his performance so effective (His final scene is astonishing!)

He has an almost childlike innocence about him that make us believe that as much as he was a criminal, he was a victim.

2. Vincent Cassel in Black Swan

If someone was ever casting the role of the snake that tempted Eve to taste the apple in the Garden of Eden, Vincent Cassel should instantly win the part.

He embodies sliminess and seductive cruelty as Thomas Leroy in Black Swan. He's the creative director for the ballet company that psycho ballerina Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) attends and as such he gets the opportunity to tease, seduce and even destroy the fragile women at his command.

Cassel gets stuck with some of the most preposterous lines in the screenplay ("The real work would be your metamorphosis into her evil twin", "you could be brilliant, but you're a coward", "to beauty!","my little princess") but the actor is so aware of the theatricality and darkness in his character that he's always ready to give us more of that bite.

1. John Hawkes in Winter's Bone

Teadrop is an enigma. Everything he does seems to be coming from an impulse deep within that not even he knew existed. His quiet presence when we first meet him is perhaps more unnerving than the eventual outburst of violence he shows.

Yet there is something almost primal hiding under the surface; the way he acts with Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) lets us know that he may not be a man of sweetness but he's certainly a man of conviction.

We often are terrified whenever he comes onscreen, then we are soothed by the fatherly way in which he defends his niece but when the movie ends we are left waiting for a revelation that never comes. Ree might be Winter's Bone heart but Teardrop gives it its haunting soul.

Crush of the Week.

Sometimes we all like it rough.

Black Swan ****

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis
Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder, Benjamin Millepied

Once upon a time black swans were thought to be a myth. White swans had been considered the epitome of royalty and beauty since times immemorial but its dark counterpart was thought of as a representation of utter evil; the antithesis of the pure, uncorrupted beauty in the white swan. What must've been the surprise of explorers when they stumbled upon the actual species in the Southernmost part of the world during the seventeenth century?
What could it mean that this creature did exist?
This uncertainty and eventual shock are the central dilemma of Nina Sayers (Portman) a New York City ballerina desperate to be cast as the Swan Queen in her company's production of Swan Lake.
Nina has perfected the graceful technique to play the White Swan but she is told by ballet director Thomas Leroy (a slimy Cassel) that she completely lacks the sexual energy and imperfection needed to portray its evil counterpart.
She struggles to win the part and gets it just as a new dancer joins the company; Lily (Kunis) from San Francisco arrives exuding the raw sexuality Nina can't muster, soon she becomes convinced that Lily is after her part and the only way to keep this from happening is for her to find the black swan within.
She descends slowly down the kind of, not-so-subtle, spirals Darren Aronofsky usually throws his characters into but unlike some of his other creations, Nina's breakdown has a flawless structure.
On the surface Black Swan feels like The Wrestler meets Suspiria by way of Cronenberg but once you look at it carefully, it really has more in common with Carrie than with Argento's horror film.
Like Stephen King's character, Nina's breakdown is parallel to her discovery of things until then unknown to her. While Carrie unleashed her telekinesis in a terrified attempt to exert some control over the unexpected changes brought over by womanhood, Nina begins to be terrorized by her doppelgängers who walk by her on the streets, haunt her house and spy from beyond mirrors as she finds that deep within she can also be dark.
Nina has decided she wants to achieve perfection and in her limited world view this can only be obtained with control; therefore when Thomas asks her to "let go" she doesn't know how to handle this.
It's as if she's been living in a fabricated world all along and has no awareness of the evil that exists in the world. This is represented by Nina's home which she shares with her possessive mother (Hershey) a former ballerina living vicariously through her daughter.
Watching their softly lit blood tinted apartment, where even the hallways seem to constrict Nina, we understand that in a way she has never left the womb, not because she doesn't want to but because it's what she knows best.
Black Swan is anchored by Natalie Portman's fierce performance. Like the movie, she first deceives us with her fragile beauty and we are led to assume this will be yet another of the actress' performances in which her delicate features harbor contrived fear and contempt.
Soon we learn that this isn't the case and we see her shatter before our very eyes. Beyond her method immersion into the character (her ballet technique seems outstanding!) there is something transcendental in the way in which she lets go of all vanity.
We see Nina's transformation from outside (Aronofsky's technical team does wonders showing bizarre wounds as Nina literally begins to think she's becoming a swan) but we also detect that something has changed inside her. It's something in her eyes that demands our attention in the way her body can't.
In the final scenes of the film, the Portman we are watching isn't the one we started with. During one particular scene as Nina finally becomes aware of what the truth is, she makes a choice. This moment isn't highlighted as much by the external elements (although the movie owes itself to Tchaikovsky) but by a heartbreaking look Portman throws at us, seemingly out of nowhere. How she's able to encompass fear, resignation and something that scarily resembles pride is what makes her decay so beautiful to watch.
In her search for perfection we could draw parallels about seeking artistic accomplishment but on simpler terms the film discusses this search in life as a whole. Therefore we are left wondering if Black Swan is a cautionary tale about the peril that comes with perfection (and if so, is it an ode to mediocrity?) or is it a reminder that everything that's worth something comes through a certain amount of pain?
Structurally Black Swan resembles a Russian doll, each containing a miniature double of the one before it. In a way, Swan Lake is Black Swan is Nina Sayers (again with the doppelgängers).
One of the biggest mysteries about Swan Lake is the fact that we never know why the evil sorcerer casts the spell on the princess. Why is he turning her into a swan? When the ballet begins this just is and we rarely get time to even question it.
Why are we to assume that this spell isn't some sort of deserved punishment?
Similarly in Black Swan we are never really sure of who is casting this spell on Nina, is the movie perhaps a prequel of sorts to the ballet in which we are to assume that maybe the princess had an insane mother or couldn't cope with homosexual thoughts?
Or is it finally a questioning? Is the Swan Queen actually fulfilling her fate? However twisted and tragic we might perceive it as.
It should be noted that Black Swan is a completely self aware movie. There is not a single camera move Aronofsky hasn't meticulously planned. From the way in which sometimes we follow Nina as if the camera is afraid to look into her face and see who she's becoming to the film's mirror motif, one that's not in the slightest original but the film doesn't really brag about inventing anything new.
It's also a selfish movie for it never pretends to worry about creating some sort of universal code we can use as metaphor. We are not supposed to identify with Nina. We either like her, hate her, pity her but we are not supposed to love her. After all the Swan Queen is never truly able to break the spell.
Structurally the film itself mimics Nina or at least the version of Nina it's letting us see and then it reaches a point where just like the ballerina in distress, the film too realizes that it doesn't know how to become the black swan. But how do you make a movie that loses itself?
In practice this would perhaps mean the director recurred to some robotic device or simply let the cameras roll without choosing what happens in front of the lens. Symbolically though Aronofsky settles on making it dangle dangerously between melodrama, camp and horror. Up to the very last shot the film seems to be trying to decide which one it will become and by then audience members will have made their minds about what kind of movie they just saw.
And whether it is high art or trashy exploitation, by letting each one decide, Aronofsky has created the perfect finale: the one that goes beyond "the world as a stage" conventions and bluntly reminds us that in the end we might be the only ones applauding our own curtain call.

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming films.


If someone had told me I'd be looking forward to a Paul Haggis movie I would've punched them right in the nose. However this is precisely what the marvelous posters for The Next Three Days have been doing for me.
This one sheet in particular looks like a lost piece of advertising from a Steve McQueen movie and as such it's perfection.


And the award for best campaign of 2010 has got to go to Black Swan.
I'm not crazy to see the movie as most are but I'd surely hang any of the posters all over my house. Such beautiful works!

Excited to see either of these?