Black Swan (and the Finnkino experience)

We had some gift tickets for movies from christmas and their expiration date was yesterday, so it was about time to see one. After some negotiations Darren Aronofsky´s Black Swan won the ticket! And that was an experience!

I´m somewhat biased what to think of the film. I must admit that it really works on certain levels very well. But at the same time I´m also irritated about some crucial points. Yes, it is really captivating and intensive movie. It is also very good looking. Aronofsky knows how to make pictures look astonishing! He also builds the suspension very carefully.

But this is also the point where I´m not that keen on this business. Some of the effects are so overused that I would have expected him to be more creative (though they are well made). And the motivation behind characters is beyond being a clichê! First of all, I personally can´t accept the myth of artists being creative enough only when they are having huge mental problems. The second point is that the best experiences are not made to work with fear, I mean the working environment. And I see that Aronofsky has some issues with her mother (for example this theme is also seen in Requim for a dream).

Fortunately the actors save this in the end! They are all very good and they can breathe life to these forced characters. And the techno scene is very intensive!

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I´m sorry for the negative tone of this post, but it is partial caused by the stupidity of the Finnish movie monopoly: Finnkino. Here is a short rant about the bad experience:

- Their website is just horrible: it is heavy and doesn´t load well with mobile connections. It also doesn´t scale to smaller screens well.
- This gift ticket systems sucks big time. When you buy gift tickets for example christmas presents why on earth does the expiration date have to be so short? And why can´t it be randomly changing the last date? Because everyone had the same expiration date there were insane queues for the last day!
- The queues are caused by the fact that you can´t order gift tickets from their website! You can buy normal tickets there with your credit card and you can reserve them but you can´t buy gift tickets.
- You need a code from the ticket to get to the toilets at the theatre (and I assume this changes time to time) but you obviously can´t print the gift number to the ticket (to help the ordering and printing the tickets by yourself).
- Half of the toilets were broken and the room was in horrible condition.
- At the candy store you had to weight the candies youself with a machine that prints a barcode but the clerk still has to type the amount themselves.
- Before the movie you will have to watch half an hour of crappy commercials and even some idiotic propaganda about copyrights (I will write my view of this issue later). I understand that they try to make their business lucrative but the prices are already quite high.
- The movie selection is really week, the amount of independent and generally interesting movies is just really short. This is due to their absolute monopoly in Helsinki.
- and so on... These are the reasons that I don´t go that many times to movies these days. Thanks to internet there is so many alternative options to see some truly amazing films!