Black Swan is an embarrassment to Darren Aronofsky's career.

Rating: 1/10 (5 September 2012)

I am so disappointed in Darren Aronofsky for making this trash. I am a HUGE fan of the rest of his work. I have not had a chance to see The Wrestler yet, but I absolutely loved Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and The Fountain. I consider him the best director out there in modern filmmaking, but I have no idea how he could come up with such a worthless piece of garbage as Black Swan.
This movie tries to portray itself as profound, shocking, and original. Well it's definitely shocking. Shockingly bad! I'm not sure where to begin with this one. I guess my main gripe would have to be the way that Portman's character begins her downward spiral from situations that really are just not that huge of a deal. There is simply nothing that happens to her that even remotely could justify such a steep fall from grace.
This movie is also mind-numbingly boring. Not much ever really happens here at all, but Aronofsky still managed to drag it out to nearly 2 hours. The whole plot line could have been fully explored in literally 30 or 40 minutes. I hate to say it, but it seems to me that he is simply starting to run out of ideas. That said, every great director has both good and bad movies and I guess it was his time to make his first flop. Hopefully he's back to his usual talented self with his next project.
My next complaint would be that Portman's acting is painfully flat. If her performance was more convincing, the movie MIGHT have been a decent watch regardless of the other huge flaws. She has one expression on her face through the entire movie! The delivery of her lines is so quiet, and devoid of any conviction whatsoever. She isn't remotely believable as Nina Sayers.
The supporting cast (specifically Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, and Barbara Hershey) utterly and completely blew Natalie Portman away. Portman in the lead might be the worst casting choice that I have EVER seen.
Next, we've got the utterly pointless and unnecessary "sex" scenes. I love a good, well-done sex scene when called for in a film but the ones in Black Swan were the exact opposite of that description. They were bad, poorly done, and totally uncalled for. The out-of-place gory scenes were also ridiculously over-the-top and out of place here. I guess they are here to help keep a viewer's attention? There certainly isn't anything else interesting in this film.
Last, but certainly not least, we have the unapologetically blatant rip off of the good/evil schizophrenic duality in Nina from Fight Club. Kunis is Portman's hallucination of her own evil side, EXACTLY as Pitt's character was to Norton's. (and Cassel is basically the Marla Singer role) The difference is that Fight Club (which I didn't even really care much for) handled this aspect of the plot infinitely better than Black Swan did.
Basically, Black Swan is a pompous, trashy, derivative, and ultimately boring piece of cinematic fluff that takes itself far too seriously. You couldn't pay me to watch it again. Darren Aronofsky, what the hell happened?! How could you go from making such an utterly brilliant, innovative, deep and beautiful work of art as The Fountain to this pile of dung in Black Swan??
Please Darren, take a year or two off. Go on vacation somewhere for a while, then get back to your usual brilliant self. I'm amazed that you made such a terrible flick. I think I am going to go out later tonight to rent The Wrestler and hope it's better than this, simply because I would hate for Black Swan to leave such a bad taste in my mouth as the most recent Aronofsky movie I've watched. He is SO much better than this. I can't emphasize enough just how amazed I am that he would release Black Swan.