Wings of desire

Black Swan

Crit

Prima ballerina Nina (Natalie Portman) is technically solid, but as her company master (worst. boss. ever.) helpfully points out, she is artistically repressed because sexually repressed. Fortunately, she is also absolutely cuckoo and delusional, always helpful for an an artist. This pic raises as many what-actually-happened? questions as did Inception, but if anything provides even fewer answers.

Darren Aronofsky has never been shy about stirring genre schlock into his intelligent films, and here he gives us an art-house creepy, slashy, supernatchy. Judged by the standards of those genres--i.e., how much I squirmed--it's wildly successful, but I can't really say I liked it much.

Trailers

• Water for Elephants--Fairly screams "from the literary novel of the same title."