Natalie Portman’s blooming career
She’s pregnant on the Golden Globes carpet! She’s glowing during her acceptance speech! And, oddly, she seems to be in every major movie and trailer playing across America.
Sure, you’ve seen her play a demented ballerina in the critic’s darling Black Swan, and you’ve probably not willfully seen her in the dreadfully formulaic and weakly premised No Strings Attached, but she’s also on every magazine cover and the upcoming The Other Woman, Your Highness, Thor.
Natalie Portman | Creative Commons
Never heard of these movies? Here’s a rundown and a little preview on the bizarre, eclectic and diverse repertoire up Portman’s cinematic sleeve. Blame her agent, manager or her, but frankly, we’re a little puzzled by the mixed bag of roles. We all know Portman’s got acting chops, but that doesn’t mean she’s got to take cushy roles for the team.
In this role, Portman plays a mistress-turned-miserable woman who has an affair with a married man, gets him to leave his wife for her and has a child with him. Tragedy strikes with the death of that daughter and Portman’s character is left to grieve with her stepson. We’ll see how more conservative moviegoers react to this interesting film, which takes its story from a novel by Ayelet Waldman.
Directed by the same mastermind that brought us Pineapple Express, David Gordon Green, this period-piece fantasy is Robin Hood: Men in Tights with some major computer generated effects. We’re not sure what Portman’s doing in this cheesy comedy as the bow-and-arrow wielding Isabel next to a painfully dumb James Franco (Prince Fabious) and the predictably hapless Danny McBride, but one can only assume that she had fun gallivanting about in a tunic.
Thor:
Let’s face it: Portman will probably do better than Katie Holmes’ clammy performance in Batman Begins, but frankly, Portman may be wasting her abilities in this Viking-comic-tale that tells the story of one of Marvel’s lesser known heroes, the banished god Thor. Who knows – the movie may be fun, but no matter how many millions of dollars it will score at the box office, we’ll still be scratching our heads at why Portman and Anthony Hopkins, both critically acclaimed actors, have chosen to do a comic book movie.