Darren Aronofsky's most devout fans will have you believe that he's some sort of Messiah clad in human form - only a man of such high born standings could have pulled off something like Noah, surely? And so here's another very talented filmmaker who has been idolised to the point where we all probably think he's a lot better than he actually is. Which is to say, Aronofsky is a flawed filmmaker, his work borders on the pretentious, and he might have made pretty much the same film twice with Black Swan and The Wrestler (half-joking there, but some could probably argue that point rather well). So there is a feeling that runs through even Aronofsky's best works that seems to say: "Look at how deep this is; can you feel how freakin' deep this is?" to the point that it is almost off-putting. There's no denying that Requiem for a Dream, which is absolutely his best film, is so overwrought that is actually hurts. And in fact, pretty much all of Aronofsky's works seem to hoover in a perpetual state of overwroughtness that genuinely makes them all feel like the offspring of somebody who is trying way too hard. Is it possible to be a truly "godly" filmmaker when your works feel so self-consciously styled? Then there are his "total nonsense" films, which are Pi and The Fountain. Many will argue the worth of these films as highly philosophical and intelligent pictures, and yet they both go to exactly the same place: nowhere.