Laughably bad - don't waste your money!

Rating: 2/10 (4 April 2011)

In contrast to other reviews here, I will give an unpretentious and honest assessment of Black Swan. It should have been more accurately entitled 'The Emperor's New Clothes', since it is devoid of any meaningful content and has been feted by reviewers who really ought to know better.
It looks stylish (though the insistence on using hand-held camera for long periods has a tendency to make the user feel seasick), but is essentially meaningless tosh. Worse than that, at key moments it is laughably awful. Portman emotes like her life depends on it, but she can't help the stilted script or the director's clumsy handling of his denouement, which in turn says nothing and was foreseeable through the entire film.
Ignore the accolades. This is truly a movie worthy of the Razzies. Please, please do not buy it on DVD and if you were thinking of venturing out to the cinema, stay home and watch Polanski's Repulsion. Now there was a director who knew how to hit nerve endings and portray a descent into madness credibly and scare the audience witless.
So in short, there are no redeeming features - this really is a film that could have been decent in the right hands but which has been sabotaged. Please save your hard-earned cash!