- 10
...a florid, often lurid, completely enthralling film held in place by a disarming Portman...
—Keith Phipps Onion AV Club
- 10
...may be talked about as awards-bait, but such conversations obscure the fact that Black Swan mostly plays like a full-on horror movie, with more genuinely earned scares than recent releases which wear the genre on their sleeves.
—Luke Y. Thompson E!
- 10
I've given four stars, our highest rating, to four other movies this year. The one I'd most gladly watch again -- I've seen it three times -- is Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan...
—Lou Lumenick New York Post
- 9
A wicked, sexy and ultimately devastating study of a young dancer's all-consuming ambition...
—Peter Debruge Variety
- 9
A near-irresistible exercise in bravura absurdity, Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan deserves to become a minor classic of heterosexual camp -- at the very least, it's the most risible and riotous backstage movie since Showgirls.
—J. Hoberman Village Voice
- 9
A near-irresistible exercise in bravura absurdity, Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan deserves to become a minor classic of heterosexual camp -- at the very least, it's the most risible and riotous backstage movie since Showgirls.
—J. Hoberman LA Weekly
- 9
The movie is so damn out-there in every way that you can't help admiring Aronofsky for daring to be so very, very absurd.
—Kirk Honeycutt Hollywood Reporter
- 9
...is visceral and real even while it's one delirious, phantasmagoric freakout.
—Manohla Dargis New York Times
- 9
...comes off as intoxicatingly fresh, fearless, exhilarating and exhausting.
—Sean O'Connell filmcritic.com
- 9
...certainly has its flaws and limitations -- it's overcooked and implausible, and I'm not sure its ending lives up to the film as a whole. But it's a magnificent blend of pop and art cinema, the breakthrough we've been waiting for from both Portman and Aronofsky, and a must-see film that people will argue about all winter.
—Andrew O'Hehir Salon
- 9
Director Darren Aronofsky brilliantly lets Black Swan hover hover between thriller and camp... [13 December 2010, p.39]
—Alynda Wheat People
- 8
Aronofsky has only trace elements of wit as a filmmaker; he's more about pounding waves of intensity. But this is his most interesting film to date ? a steroidal melodrama built for speed, motion and cinematic delirium. There's not a more exciting fairy tale for grownups in theaters right now.
—Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune
- 8
... a full-bore melodrama, told with passionate intensity, gloriously and darkly absurd.
—Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times
- 8
...lurid and voluptuous pulp fun, with a sensationalistic fairy-tale allure.
—Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly
- 7
...a hotblooded, head-spinning erotic thriller in which director Darren Aronofsky does to ballet what Kanye West does to rap: turns it into his own beautiful dark twisted fantasy.
—Peter Travers Rolling Stone
- 5
The heightened sense of drama is apt, yes, but the overall effect is ostentatiously calculated, ill-fitting, and emotionally aloof, always for our benefit and almost never symptomatic of its protagonist's living nightmare.
—Ed Gonzalez Slant Magazine
- 5
You won't be having a lot of fun at Black Swan, but the less seriously you take this wildly melodramatic, unashamedly pulpy look at the blood sport that is New York City ballet, the better your chances are of enjoying yourself even a little.
—Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times