netflix

Dark Horse: Labyrinth vs Gunpowder Milkshake

Labyrinth vs Gunpowder Milkshake

Two movies about women who are constantly underestimated coming to understand the value of family, blood or otherwise — it's Labyrinth vs Gunpowder Milkshake.

Iliza Shlesinger | Strong Female Leads

Iliza Shlesinger Strong Female Leads

Iliza Shlesinger (Good On Paper, Unveiled, Spenser Confidential) is a keen-eyed observer of life, and she beautifully showcases her worldview in her new hit film, Good On Paper. We chat about where the character of Andrea diverges from Iliza herself, how close she is to becoming a cult leader, and why her story has connected with so many people.

Watch Good On Paper on Netflix | See Iliza’s stand-up live in a city near you | Follow Iliza on Instagram | Listen to her podcast, Ask Iliza Anything

Anna Elizabeth James | Strong Female Leads

Anna Elizabeth James Strong Female Leads

Anna Elizabeth James (writer/director of Deadly Illusions) has revived the psychosexual thriller genre with Deadly Illusions clocking in at #1 on Netflix and she GRACEd me with her presence on the show! Our conversation covered everything I've ever cared about, including how she crafted a thriller with heart, the absolutism of movie critics, and obviously, the milk bath. Deadly Illusions is a FEELING, as is this episode.

Deadly Illusions is coming to all platforms June 1st, including my beloved physical media, but you can watch now on Netflix!

Follow Anna on Instagram | Follow Anna on Twitter | Follow Deadly Illusions on Instagram | Follow Deadly Illusions on Twitter

Heart's Desire: Black Swan vs Deadly Illusions

Black Swan vs Deadly Illusions

Two movies about a woman in a high pressure environment who is unsure of what is real and what is not, and must come to terms with her desires — it's Black Swan vs Deadly Illusions.

Read The Episode

Every episode of Tasteless, I take a critically acclaimed film and compare it to one that shares the same themes but didn't get the attention it deserves — and explain why that second movie is my pick. This week: two women in high-pressure environments who are unsure of what is real and what is not and must come to terms with their desires. It's Black Swan versus Deadly Illusions.

Black Swan

Nina is a talented but unstable ballerina on the verge of stardom. Pushed to the breaking point by her artistic director and a seductive rival, Nina's grip on reality slips, plunging her into a waking nightmare.

This movie came out in 2010, has an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes. Natalie Portman won the Oscar for Best Actress. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing.

These were the Oscars where everyone turned on Anne Hathaway as she tried to save the sinking ship that was getting anything useful out of James Franco. How dare we turn on her. The Social Network beat Black Swan for Film Editing. Are you kidding me? Inception got Cinematography — fine, whatever, because buildings are caving in, but Black Swan was better. Directing and Picture were given to The King's Speech, which I didn't see, but I bet it was about a turd. I will not be looking further into it. Please do not inform me.

Black Swan deserves all the awards and recognition for being a truly compelling look at a woman forced to both repress and expose herself in equal turn for the acceptance of those around her. Natalie Portman does an amazing job. I love this movie. I saw it in theaters, I think twice, and it's stuck with me. I am offended that it only has an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Natalie trained for a year as a dancer to prepare for the role, paid for the training out of her own pocket until the film found investors. Darren Aronofsky attributed the film getting made at all to Portman's dedication and enthusiasm. I think you can tell when an actor has a true passion for a role, and that carries through here. Out of all the awards nominations the film received, Natalie Portman won every single Best Actress category — Oscars, Golden Globes, every single one she was nominated for, she won.

Her performance is one of the most incredible I've seen — the way she goes within herself, the vulnerability, the sadness. To contrast that with the woman who sang one of my favorite songs, the Natalie Rap. She has range. She's brilliant.

Natalie as Nina is desperate for the approval of Tomah — as she says, Tomah, spelled Thomas — played by Vincent Cassel. He heads up the ballet troupe and assigns the roles. While Natalie is a talented dancer, he believes she doesn't have the darkness or sensuality to play the Black Swan and therefore cannot play the multifaceted Swan Queen in their upcoming Swan Lake. She struggles to open herself up and be less regimented, and this isn't helped by Tomah's sexually aggressive nature. She has complicated feelings for him — a schoolgirl crush she refuses to acknowledge when pressed about it by Mila Kunis.

Mila Kunis is perfection in this film as well. There is an easiness to Mila as Lily that is something I absolutely covet. She was so perfect for this role. To get the viewer into the space Natalie inhabits — the envy, the interest. Mila is the kind of person where you just want to be in her orbit.

Although it is fully psycho when she goes into the bathroom Natalie is in, goes to pee, takes off her underwear and hands it to Natalie to hold. I would be distraught if that happened to me. But then when Mila goes to Natalie's house later to apologize — because she had really pushed Natalie's boundaries, talked to Tomah about her — I loved that. She recognizes that even though Natalie is really intense and not nice to her, she still hurt her and tries to make up for it.

She goes to her apartment, invites her out. Natalie takes her up on it. While they're out at a bar, Mila offers her drugs. And I too would take a strange pill for Mila Kunis. I think any one of us would. This is the only fun girls' night out Natalie has had maybe ever. So in her mind it becomes more than it is. She has the hallucination of going home and having sex with Mila Kunis.

Even the response when she finds out it was not real — she goes to Mila and is like, okay, last night can never happen again. And Mila's like, what happened last night? I went home with a dude. Oh my God, did you have a dream about me? And she's not even really mean about it. She's just kind of like, was I good? There's such an acceptance with her — she's not judgmental, she's just open. And it's this ease that Natalie can never achieve.

A lot of that is due to the way she was raised. Barbara Hershey plays Natalie's overbearing mom, and she's so frightening. Perhaps the scariest part of the film, besides the skin strip Natalie peels off her finger, which I still cannot look at no matter how many times I see the movie. There's a theory that the mother was possibly molesting her, and even if we don't take that as fact, the control her mother exerts is sickening. It's very Carrie — this perverted, twisted idea of love being used as a weapon to keep Natalie in line.

Although she wants her daughter to be a success, she encourages and allows for this odd regression. Constantly calling the receptionist at the theater to find out Natalie's whereabouts. And when Natalie gets the Swan Queen role, she says to her mom, he picked me, mommy, and it just makes my skin crawl. Then her mom gets this full sheet cake and Natalie's like, I'm trying to be ballerina-body, I can't eat a sheet cake. And Barbara Hershey goes to throw it away. And then it's like, no, I'm sorry, I didn't — I'm just so proud. It's this constant push of control.

This relationship is so stressful, so tense. Uncut Gems who? This is tension. You see why Natalie is living so much of her life internally and why her view of the world becomes distorted when this is how she was raised — to never feel safe, to always wonder when the other shoe was going to drop.

I was also thrilled to see Winona Ryder as a ballerina at the company who has passed the age where people want to see her perform. She's put out to pasture and accuses Natalie of sleeping with Tomah to take her job. Ksenia Solo, aka Kenzi from Lost Girl, appears as another ballerina. Sebastian Stan is one of the guys Natalie and Mila meet at the bar. I had totally forgotten that.

Here's one problem with this movie: Darren Aronofsky. I am not denying he's a genius in some of the ways we consider people geniuses. But a little piece of trivia from IMDB: Natalie Portman revealed that Aronofsky would subtly try to pit her and Mila Kunis against each other during filming, in an attempt to increase the on-screen tension. This included keeping the two actresses separated and sending each of them intimidating text messages about each other's performance that day. However, according to Kunis, this backfired because they were good friends before filming. Whenever they got wind the other was doing really well, they would respond in congratulatory support, not rivalry.

It's a job, Darren Aronofsky. Don't play mind games. These are excellent actors who can do the job without some nonsense you're trying to put in their head.

Also, IMDB has director trademarks. One for this movie was the film Perfect Blue — an overhead shot of Nina in the bathtub is an exact replica of a shot in the Japanese anime thriller. Years before, when making Requiem for a Dream, Aronofsky bought the remake rights to Perfect Blue just to use that one sequence. Black Swan itself contains numerous similarities to Perfect Blue, though Aronofsky has denied it was an influence. You already bought this movie to use in something else and now you're like, no, that movie has nothing to do with my work. Come on, dude.

Although the film was never marketed as such, Aronofsky has always maintained it was meant to be a psychological horror film. I would say yes — this is the kind of thriller that made me appreciate the genre and realize it can be layered and meaningful and truly frightening. Black Swan is one of my all-time favorite films.

Deadly Illusions

After a bestselling novelist suffering from writer's block hires a new nanny for her children, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur.

This came out in 2021, has a 13% on Rotten Tomatoes — but only eight official critics have reviewed it, so I don't think that's quite fair.

This is one of the timelier episodes of Tasteless. Deadly Illusions dropped last weekend as of this recording and Sam Hurley of Movie Reviews in 20Qs told me it existed and that it looked up my alley. I immediately pulled it up on IMDB and said, yes, it is. And yes, it was. What a film.

I have spoken before about this genre of thriller. Saying "erotic thriller" does always make me feel like a serial killer, but I don't know what else to call it. I would argue Black Swan could fall into the category as well. This was a type of thriller more prevalent in the eighties and nineties that peaked with Basic Instinct and had a late-nineties resurgence with ones aimed at a younger crowd — Cruel Intentions, Wild Things. It's this type of twisty thriller where there's a mystery and the best ones have women using their sexuality to get what they want — instead of it being something they're subjected to, they turn it on the oppressors.

Netflix has been circling this, wanting to bring back the fun twisty surprising psychological thriller with a little sex thrown in, and this is a perfect example.

As our star we have Kristin Davis. Charlotte was always my favorite on Sex and the City. Kristin Davis has shown again and again what a delight she is — between her very funny and supportive engagement with the Every Outfit on Sex and the City Instagram, which has this meme called Woke Charlotte where they correct problematic quotes from the show. Also, Kristin Davis is a big supporter of animals. She has dedicated herself to helping elephants through the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. I just love her.

In this movie she is my favorite kind of character: an author who wrote a bestselling series of sexy thriller novels, but has basically retired from that to be with her family because she feels writing those books have been some of the unhappiest times of her life. Unfortunately her husband Dermot Mulroney does some bad business, so she has to take an offer to write another book in the series to get them some money. And she switches to full writer mode. The cigars, the robes, the cozy sweaters.

Kristin Davis's whole vibe in this movie is so cool. At one point she has her boots up on her writing desk smoking her giant cigar and I could just watch that for eight hours like a video of a Yule log. I have a Reddit thread bookmarked right now to find out where one of her sweaters is from — someone on a knitting subreddit was like, does anyone have the pattern for the sweater? Someone replied, I have this exact sweater. Three people have replied asking where they bought it. This person has not replied. It's been seven days. Please come back, Reddit user, and tell us where you bought the sweater.

Let's talk Dermot Mulroney. Hunk from My Best Friend's Wedding gets his full butt out in this movie. I like parity in my actor nudity — I want a lady butt, I want a man butt. Have it all in there. His relationship with Kristin is overall very refreshing. She says to him, what do you think about women who get plastic surgery? He goes, like fake boobs? And he kind of looks like, no, I don't want you to get fake boobs. She goes, maybe something else? He says, like a fake butt? And he mulls it over. They're kind of laughing. And he says, the hottest thing about you is you're brilliant and you're a wonderful mom to our kids.

Other than Dermot's betrayal with finances, this couple clearly likes each other and is into each other. They are going at it for half the movie. He is so attracted to her. They have such love for each other, such chemistry. It's not the usual — the wife is so busy, she doesn't pay enough attention, or the husband is stepping out with his secretary. No, they're equal partners.

In comes the nanny, with one big braid and different-colored bows and a beach cruiser bike and a lot of white-sock, white-sneaker combos. It is Greer Grammer. She seems like the perfect nanny — she loves reading and kids, is trying to make money for college, immediately has palpable sexual tension with Kristin Davis. All things that are great in an employee.

Greer spoon-feeds Kristin about 18 different foods and I love every moment of it. Honey, chili — yes, there's some sexy chili spoon-feeding. Who doesn't want that? And Greer plays Grace and she just feels so at home with this family. Kristin Davis is a great employer — she buys her bras, she hangs out with her. It seems like a really nice time at that house.

There's something about her that intrigues Kristin. We see Kristin talking to her friend, played by Shanola Hampton of Shameless — who is also a producer on this movie, which I have a lot of questions about. The only flaw in this movie is that there was not more of her. Kristin plays the role of slightly lascivious employer with such gusto. She straight up tells Shanola what's up. She doesn't hide it. She's like, I am very into my nanny. There isn't any shame surrounding it. Shanola asks, are you even into girls? Kristin goes, no, I just like that she'll do whatever I want. And Shanola is like, okay, well, keep working on your book.

So many of these types of thrillers rely on the husband and wife hating each other and lying to each other. That's not what happens here. Obviously Kristin doesn't tell her husband she's very attracted to the nanny, but she's also not secretive. I mean, yeah, they stop making out when the kids come in, but that's just being polite.

There are about 18 twists in this movie, some of which we will get into. But really you just need to watch it — it's on Netflix. And all you nitpickers who are like, what's the timeline of this movie? — shut your faces! If you want a timeline so bad, watch Memento, you turds.

This movie has one of the best visual gags I've seen in ages. There's an incident I'm not going to spoil, but you see Kristin look at the cover of what is very clearly a People magazine — same font and everything — but instead of People it says Persons, in the People font. I was really delighted by that.

Shared Themes

These films explore reality and our perception of it — how fantasy and nightmare can become more tangible and sometimes more desirable than the real world. Natalie and Kristin feel they can't trust their own memory of what has happened, because the world around them has a different view of it altogether.

Natalie in Black Swan is so overwhelmed by her drive to be the best. She is already an anxious person, so to be in a field where that's the crux of it, where there is such competition and it's so cutthroat — it's not good for her. It's not a supportive environment; it's one of pain and pushing yourself to the limit. Natalie's greatest enemy and roadblock is herself. She puts so much pressure on herself that every comment from someone else is a shot to her heart.

She sees her face plastered onto people passing her. She fights a vision of herself. She stabs herself with some glass. She's in a constant war with who she is, but projects it onto her battle with Mila Kunis — thinking this other dancer is her enemy instead of her own insecurities. Natalie is so fragile that each vision of betrayal, of being wronged, of death and destruction, pushes her closer to the edge. She doesn't know what is real and is constantly frightened, unsure of other people's motives. She sees feathers growing in on her back and tries desperately to pluck them out. She sees entire strips of her skin being torn away.

In Deadly Illusions, Kristin becomes lost in the world of her book. She writes tantalizing stories with twists and seduction and killers, and she finds herself living inside one when her nanny is a little too eager to please. She has visions of her husband and the nanny having sex on the kitchen counter, but then both deny it and Kristin is made to feel insane. She even accuses Shanola of having an eye on her husband. Shanola's like, we will talk later, you're being ridiculous because I danced with your weird husband.

Fantasy can be a place of escape and comfort as much as it can be intrusive and frightening. Natalie and Kristin experience both sides. Natalie finally finds release when she fantasizes about bringing Mila home — Mila represents a form of freedom and easiness that Natalie covets but can never quite achieve. Through Kristin's fantasies, she can take the weight of the world off her shoulders. She's adored and doted on by the young nanny who takes care of her as well as the children.

Black Swan and Deadly Illusions explore desire and sexuality in a way that is female-focused without centering their experience on gaining a man's approval. There's freedom and escape within these sexual relationships for each woman.

In Black Swan, Natalie is very closed off — in a state of arrested development, still living with her mom, focusing only on work and being the best. There's no easiness to her. It's why Tomah doesn't believe she can embody the Black Swan, but only the more virginal White Swan. It's clear Tomah has no problem wielding sexuality as a weapon — aggressively kissing Natalie, being thrilled by her biting him. He tells Natalie to go home and touch herself and she takes this assignment seriously, even though it's very inappropriate from her employer. But because she continues to be so afraid of being out of control, she can't turn off her brain. And when she finally does, her mom is there, just sleeping in the corner of her room. She doesn't have a lock on her door — she has a wooden dowel to keep her mom out.

It's not until her night out with Mila — drinking and doing drugs and having fun and not worrying about her career — that within her fantasy of sex with Mila, she's able to let go. She fights her mom, stands up for herself, takes what she wants.

There's an IMDB trivia fact I want to talk about here. An online rumor broke out shortly after the film's release claiming Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis took shots of tequila before shooting their sex scene and were drunk on screen. Kunis denied this, saying, I don't think we could have done that scene if we were intoxicated. There's something interesting and immensely frustrating here because we hear it a lot. When women have to kiss or have sex scenes, some rumor always comes out that they got drunk. We don't think that about man-on-woman sex scenes. There's something we see as other when it's two people of the same sex versus a heterosexual love scene.

Natalie wants the approval of Tomah, yes, but she wants to be Mila. She wants to feel that freedom. And that's the kind of person she can open herself up to.

In Deadly Illusions, Kristin Davis and Dermot Mulroney have so much chemistry. So Kristin can't figure out why she is so drawn to her nanny. But she comments a couple different times how intoxicating it is that she feels the nanny would clearly do anything for her.

In a life where she's so out of control in some ways — where her husband has lost their savings without her knowledge, where her book publishers constantly push for her to write what they want instead of what she feels is correct — in this relationship with the nanny, she has control. She's in charge. That power is potent and hard to ignore. With her husband, Kristin is taking care of him. With the nanny, she is being taken care of.

The nanny at one point — Kristin's in the bath — brings in rose petals and pours milk in the bath. Which I guess is okay? It seems bad. Maybe it's cream. Is that better or worse than milk? Are those the same thing? Either way, the dynamic is not something she has experienced as this high-profile author, as a mother to twins, as someone constantly holding things together. She hasn't just had someone dote on her like this.

Dermot has encouraged her to get help, to hire a nanny. He doesn't think any less of her for wanting that help as she focuses on work. But there is something so different and so important for Kristin in the nanny saying to her, let me make you happy. All I want to do is make you happy. There's no obligation there. Nothing is expected of her. Kristin and Dermot are such equal partners in so many ways, but a lot of the labor of fixing things falls on Kristin. So there's such a different type of freedom with the nanny.

Later in the kitchen when Kristin is trying to talk about her tenth anniversary with Dermot, the nanny is all up on her trying to get a piece of her — you deserve this. Kristin can just take and take without giving anything back. There's no emotional labor. She took her bra shopping and just got one little grope in and the nanny just went about business as usual. This nanny has made it so easy, has just offered herself up to Kristin. Whereas in her relationship with Dermot, Kristin feels like she has to pick up the pieces when he crashes and burns their life — and this is not the first time he has done this.

Neither relationship in both films is necessarily a measure of attraction. Yes, obviously Mila Kunis and Greer Grammer are good-looking. But it's more what they represent. In Black Swan, Mila is easy, carefree, confident, without guile. She doesn't play the same games. She takes what she wants. In Deadly Illusions, Greer is simple, innocent, pliable, and she looks at Kristin with such adoration.

We also see the other side — we see Greer with Dermot where she is aggressive, she bosses him around, because he doesn't get that from Kristin. She brings whatever the other person needs. One of the most strangely intimate moments is when Kristin takes off her bathing suit to hop in the pool and then gestures for the nanny to put it on. Which she does. The nanny puts on someone else's wet bathing suit, which — okay. But Kristin sees herself in the nanny. You see this when she picks out the bras and talks about youth being wasted on the young, wishing she had more confidence in her body when she was Greer's age. And in Black Swan, Natalie Portman sees her own face on Mila Kunis while they're having sex. They are both working through their relationship to themselves in a way that would not be possible with a man.

What Deadly Illusions Does Better

Natalie in Black Swan is a very specific character — someone so stilted in so many ways that despite her immense talents, it's as though all her regular social and emotional IQ have been converted to regimented physicality, not even general comfort in her body. Whereas Kristin in Deadly Illusions is more balanced — an adult struggling with the weight placed on her shoulders as a mother, a wife, the breadwinner. Natalie never truly grows into a full-fledged person, while Kristin has no choice but to explore who she can be in relation to what has happened to her.

In Black Swan, Natalie is not living a regular life. She's raised by an overbearing mother who infantilizes her even as she berates her, making Natalie unable to take care of herself and yet mocking her for that same inability. Each time Natalie starts to break out of the shell — going out with Mila, drinking, staying up late — this step forward is met with two steps back. She's apologetic the next morning, distraught over what she believes has happened.

There's a catharsis in Natalie's death at the end — the acknowledgment that the person she stabbed is in fact herself. She dies in this truly perfect moment. But there's no moving forward for Natalie. There's no true experienced growth. She isn't able to integrate the two sides of herself. Instead, as she starts to achieve that integration, that is how she dies. She cannot live with both sides of herself.

In Deadly Illusions, Kristin makes her choices and stands by them. She's not regretful, simply confused over the turn things take when she discovers Greer's true face. I appreciate that she stays in the nanny's life at the end — because obviously things go down with the nanny. It's called Deadly Illusions. In the promo pictures, the nanny is seductively whispering in her ear. Obviously bad stuff goes down. But despite what the nanny does to her family, she feels a connection and a fondness for this girl who has been treated with such cruelty by her own parental figures.

Kristin doesn't feel shame. She simply adjusts her perspective when presented with the rest of the facts about who this woman is. She doesn't begrudge Dermot for being seduced by the nanny as well — she was too. And despite the ambiguous ending, I do believe Kristin has achieved some sort of happiness and growth. We see she has finished her book, a woman at the office is reading it intently, and Kristin has channeled what has happened to her into that work of art for others to enjoy. Instead of penning the last pages and falling to her swan-like death, she sets to work supporting the people in her life and providing forgiveness to the young girl whose actions were not quite her own.

Forgiveness is something Natalie never is able to give herself. She acknowledges the two sides of who she is, but I don't think she ever fully loves and accepts the pieces of herself that have kept her safe amidst her mental turmoil. Kristin's forgiveness of Greer — as well as of herself — was a really interesting element that allowed the characters to not be black and white.

Natalie ends Black Swan proud of her accomplishment — performing the Black Swan serves as a culmination of her work. All the time she put into this, the way she ruined her body and her mind. There's this continued thing in movies where people can't have balance. Liz Lemon's whole bit on 30 Rock about wanting women to be able to have it all, but they can't. I get that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master of something, and it's admirable to have such dedication. But it's also inhuman. We see Natalie as this otherworldly waif — this ballerina lacking humanity in a lot of ways, all the most timid, scared pieces. Every aspect of her life is so controlled that I don't ever feel I know who she is. Is she anyone? Is she just this combination of skill and fear?

In Deadly Illusions, Kristin becomes involved in writing again because of necessity. She has to support her family, they need money. She's an incredible writer whose books have done very well and clearly gotten her this nice house with a lot of very nice outdoor spaces. But I like seeing someone whose interest isn't at the expense of everything else. You can be passionate about something, skilled at something, while balancing other things. Yeah, she's writing her book by hand with a fountain pen onto various sheets of paper, and someone's going to have to type that up later. But she's not worried about it. She's going to write some pages and then go lay by the pool topless. She's got a life to lead.

So many movies about being the best are just — this is it, this is all you can do. Black Swan, Whiplash, I, Tonya. These people have no life skills and are weirdos because all they can do is this one thing. I like the way Kristin's skill — this way she's able to tap into a book — is also her downfall in that she dives too deep, becomes too involved, and it changes how she reacts to things as she gets sucked into the book. But she can turn that off. She chooses to dive back into this darkness for the good of her family. There's something about that choice I find really satisfying — especially because she lives with the results and doesn't shame herself for what has happened.

I hope you will watch Deadly Illusions on Netflix so we can talk about it. Hit me up at @tastelesspod. Tell me which of Kristin Davis's sweater-plus-cigar combos was your favorite. If you know where any of those sweaters are from and can tell me before the people on Reddit, please do.