Black Swan (Cert 15, 108 mins, Twentieth Century Home Entertain-ment). Starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder ****

Portman deservedly won the Oscar for a career-defining performance that required ten months of gruelling physical preparation before the cameras started rolling. All of that incredible will and discipline in the dance studio certainly pays off – not once do we doubt that Portman could perform the demanding solos from Swan Lake that punctuate this psychological drama. The actress powerfully conveys the disparity between her character’s physical strength and grace, and her mental frailty when insecurities and jealousy steadily gnaw away at her self-confidence, sending her on a descent into madness.

Gulliver’s Travels (Cert PG, 84 mins, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertain-ment). Starring Jack Black, Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Chris O’Dowd, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Catherine Tate, James Corden, TJ Miller **

Film that rides roughshod over the subtle, underlying themes of Jonathan Swift’s classic novel. Black bulldozes through every scene like a child who has been gorging on sweets and needs to burn off pent-up energy. It comes as no surprise when the Lilliputian court goes up in flames that this Gulliver extinguishes the inferno by emptying his extremely full bladder. The romantic subplot with Darcy is laughable, and not in a good way, but Segel is endearing as a commoner hoping to love above his station. A brief foray into a land of giants is presumably Brobdingnag, but it’s unlikely that a sequel will be setting sail for Laputa or the country of the Houyhnhnms.

The Next Three Days (Cert 12, 123 mins, Lionsgate Home Entertain-ment). Starring Russell Crowe, Elizabeth Banks, Ty Simpkins, Jason Beghe, Aisha Hinds, Daniel Stern, Brian Dennehy, Helen Carey, Olivia Wilde ***

Lara Brennan (Banks) is a model businesswoman, wife and mother with a doting husband John (Crowe) and a young son Luke (Simpkins). The family’s world implodes when detectives Quinn (Beghe) and Collero (Hinds) arrest Lara for the murder of her boss. Her fingerprints are on the murder weapon. Lara is sentenced to a lifetime behind bars for a crime she maintains she did not commit. When the law fails him, John concocts an elaborate plan to spring his wife from jail, using inside knowledge from an ex-con (Neeson) to identify the window of opportunity for escape. The film is a well-constructed but slow-burning English language remake of the French thriller Anything For Her (Pour Elle).