Black Swan AKA "Let's rip off from a better film..."

Rating: 5/10 (21 May 2011)

Here's the problem; it's the most predictable, routine film imaginable. Every smash cut, every horrifying vision in a mirror...it's so damn cliché, so easy to spot. "Black Swan" raises an awful lot of tension, but nowadays, that's so easy. All it uses are the same quick cuts, focus changes, and scary images of any two-bit, throwaway horror film.
The whole time I was watching the cliché fest, I was remembering a movie called "Perfect Blue". It has virtually the exact same premise, and it's a cheap animated movie from the late 90s, not a star-studded Hollywood $13 million picture with a score by Clint Mansell.
But everything that "Black Swan" failed at, "Perfect Blue" succeeded in. Just do yourself a favor and watch the latter from start to finish.
And you know what? It turns out that Darren Aronofsky had bought the US rights to "Perfect Blue" to avoid getting sued for "Black Swan". My intuition was right. But of course, not even a word of thanks was given to Satoshi Kon, who died tragically in 2010 of cancer at the age of just 46.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0156887/ (perfect blue)