Cisne Negro

Practice makes perfectly insane in Black Swan, a tale of one ballerina's psychosexual freakout.

Portman, saddled with the near-impossible role of an impenetrable heroine we must care for without ever coming close to understanding, delivers career-high work here...

Audiences won't know who to trust and what is real in this terrifyingly great film that will grab hold of you until the final act.

Aronofsky lets us thrill in the in the act of creation without ever letting us forget the terrible sacrifices many artists make to entertain us.

What were they trying to say? What happened?... You're all pretending you know what it means.

The impeccable casting adds an elevated element of reality to a film that already hits so close to home.

Director Darren Aronofsky's darkly enthralling entertainment makes the perfect antidote to too many sugary holiday Nutcrackers.

By the end, Nina's quest for perfection-and Portman's blazing performance-will leave you breathless.

For all his command of adrenalized, propulsive narrative and his dazzling technical facility, Aronofsky's study in female hysteria ultimately favors frenzy over compassion or insight-and remains strictly skin-deep.

Portman hasn't been this good since her early performances in The Professional and Heat, and is deservedly attracting intense Oscar buzz. Kunis brings to Lily a savvy sexiness, and Cassel is entertainingly smarmy.

Easily one of the most emotionally impactful films of the year and is something that will certainly haunt you long after the credits roll in the best possible way.

"Black Swan" may prove to be too arty and dance-y for horror fans. It's equally likely to prove too horror-y for some art house moviegoers. It shouldn't work. But it does.

At times, Black Swan verges on laughably old school. Still, what a brazen, bold riff on the cost - physical, emotional - of art.

Taken in the too-much-is-never-enough vein, "Black Swan" is a fantastic experience...

It is a movie I cannot wait to see again and the longer I ruminate on it the more positive I am this is some sort of psycho-sexual new age ballerina masterpiece close to being on par with The Red Shoes itself.

There's a delirium that runs through Black Swan, a sense of stress and anguish and mad momentum, that's both exhilarating and terrifying.

Portman gives a meticulously controlled performance that culminates in the most haunting and grandiose cinematic coup de grace of the year.

A ballet movie so majestically lurid it almost creates its own genre; a backstage melodrama set in a dark hall of mirrors.

Portman toils slavishly to realize Aronofsky's mad vision. It isn't her fault that, despite Black Swan's visual splendor and bursts of grand guignol excess, this emotionally inert movie never does grow wings.

A sumptuously unnerving, singular experience.