New on DVD: A Princess and a Swan

Tangled

Animated Film

The Gist: Rapunzel, the blond with the long tresses, wants to break free of her tower prison and see the pretty lights in town. Her kidnapper, posing as her mother, keeps the girl locked up for her youth-restoring magical hair. Fortunately, a thief on the lam crawls into the tower just as Rapunzel finds the courage to escape. It’s a match made in Disney. Read our full review.

The Ups: Catchy, fun music and a good story make this Disney princess movie a winner. The theme, instead of being old-school fairy tale or feminist anti-fairy tale, matches today. It’s about finding courage to face the world. The wildly silly secondary characters include a gecko, a horse, and a tavern full of toughies with a dream in their hearts. By poking humor at the princess genre, the film updates it. A winner, all around.

The Downs: No downs. Unless you hate princesses.

The Verdict: Watch it. The whole family will enjoy it, even the boys if you can get them to sit through the credits.

Be Aware: Rated PG for brief mild violence.

Black Swan

Drama

The Gist: A ballerina (Natalie Portman) desperately wants to dance the lead in “Swan Lake.” Very desperately. Like, medication is probably a good idea, desperately. She’s great at the innocent, pure white swan, but needs to naughty up for the saucy, evil black swan. She releases her inner vixen, but how much of it is in her mind?

The Ups: Natalie Portman delivers an amazing performance as a stunted girl who slowly loses her mind. She won several awards for the role, including an Oscar.

The Downs: Too artsy for its own good, the film comes across as pretentious. As it progresses, Portman’s character becomes increasingly self-destructive in physical ways, cutting, scraping, and mutilating herself. These images are pretty creepy. The film is supposedly all about going crazy for your art and having to liberate your sexuality in order to become a real artist. But I found the intense girl-on-girl action to be a cheap way to get lots of chatter about the film. Plus, the movie never satisfactorily answered what was real and what was fantasy.

The Verdict: Skip it, unless you love ballet. Scratch that…especially if you love ballet.

Be Aware: Rated R, this film includes many sex scenes, including the much ballyhooed lesbian scene between Portman and Mina Kunis. There are also disturbing images, language, and drug use.