Black Swan Blu-Ray Review

Black Swan is not Darren Aronofsky’s best movie. In fact, of the five feature length movies he’s made, the ballet drama is in the middle of the pack. But Black Swan was also the best movie of 2010. Oscar voters may not have thought so, but it was. And Natalie Portman is simply phenomenal.

The movie is a psychological nightmare, a drama pretending to be a horror movie, a horror movie masked as a drama. It isn’t about a killer – it isn’t even scary – but it explores the monster lurking inside each of us.

Some people have larger monsters than others.

The Oscar-nominated drama is now on DVD and Blu-Ray. The Blu-Ray comes packaged with several featurettes, including a behind-the-scenes documentary titled Metamorphosis. The 45-minute documentary explores various aspects of the film, but unfortunately is slow paced and not very captivating.

Ten Years in the Making is more interesting; broken into several chapters, this featurette has Natalie Portman and Darren Aronofsky discussing how the film came to be, preparation for the production and how the dance sequences were put into effect. The chapters are pretty short and, while consumable, not as informative as they could have been.

Cast Profiles features interviews with Natalie Portman, Darren Aronofsky and Vincent Cassel. These interviews, presented by Fox Movie Channel, are pretty interesting and provide the most valuable insights contained on the disc.

Additional extras are available via BD-Live, but we won’t count such gimmicks.

The Black Swan Blu-Ray is more than worth owning, but only for the great movie burned onto its underside. The bonus features are adequate but not groundbreaking.

Read my original Black Swan movie review here.

By Erik Samdahl
Related categories: Drama Movies, DVD Releases, Movie Reviews

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