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THE NUTCRACKER 3D - REVIEW

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That The Nutcracker 3D lost about $70M at the box-office (ouch!) shouldn't cloud our judgment of it as a film, I feel. Jumping on every bandwagon that comes along is hardly productive so let's take a look at Andrei Konchalovsky's take on Tchaikovsky's ballet (and E.T.A. Hoffman's story) as objectively as we possibly can. The film seems to want to distance itself from what it's based on as much as possible to allow for new creative input, which is fine because often that can mean that directors can allow their unique style to merge with a familiar story to create something fresh and interesting. Unfortunately what's added here just doesn't make sense with everything else. You've got Albert Einstein in some kind of Geppetto role played, oddly enough, by Nathan Lane who once again gives us a cartoon accent we could have done without (also see The Addams Family musical). You've also got a lot of weird Nazi imagery linked to rats and the Rat Kin

TOP 10 BIGGEST BLACK SWAN LOLS

Top 10 Biggest Black Swan Lols from TheRetroCritic on Vimeo .

BLACK SWAN - REVIEW

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Darren Aronofsky's latest has done very well for itself. Then again, after The Wrestler , anything by the man behind Requiem For a Dream , Pi and The Fountain would have been highly anticipated. And rightly so. Marketed as a classy if dark mindf***, Black Swan promised an odd, stylish, original and potentially impressive ride. Surprisingly the result was about as classy as a Burger King karaoke party and far more twisted than expected. Unfortunately, it all feels far too derivative of many other ideas and far too forced to be a flawless treat. You've essentially got three films in one here: the modern version of Swan Lake (sophisticated, raw, powerful), The Fly (or, rather, The Swan) and The Piano Teacher (or, rather, The Dance Teacher) with bits of Lynch and Aronofsky's own Wrestler thrown in. And as much as I love all the influences involved here, Black Swan is an experiment which just didn't work for me. What killed The Fountain for me was n