Movie Details
| Title: | We Need to Talk About Kevin | |
| Director: | Lynne Ramsay | |
| Year: | 2011 | |
| Genre: | Evil Children | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 09.24.11 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 09.24.11 | Alamo South Lamar | This Screening is part of event: FantasticFest 2011 A movie about a woman who's dealing with the repercussions of her son's actions. This one will have to be very spoiler heavy because the story is so minimal that what it's about is kind of a spoiler in itself. So if you want to see it fresh, the takeway of this note is I thought it was "meh" ok. So... still here? cool. Tilda Swinton plays the mom and John C. Reilly plays the dad. Some kid plays the kids, and they did a great job of finding a kid and a teen that look similar enough to be the same character while also both being able to act. The kid winds up doing a school shooting thing and Tilda Swinton is left afterward to live with the guilt, shame, and animosity of the town afterward. So the movie's kind of framed with the story of her after the school shooting, having paint thrown at her house, getting punched in the face on the street, feeling mopey. Then there are constant flashbacks which tell the story of her entire relationship with Reilly and the raising of their child. I'm not really a fan of this type of structure since on the one hand it seems like enveilling that the kid does a school shooting is like the climax of the film, but it's the one thing I knew about the film going into it because it's the ONLY WAY TO SELL PEOPLE ON THE MOVIE. Dude A: "I saw this movie with Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly the other day. It was kind of interesting" Dude B: "Oh yeah? What's it about?" ***SPOILED*** So are they asking me to be surprised by the school shooting or expecting me to know coming in or pick it up in the first five minutes (which isn't hard to do) and have to sit through the whole movie until we finally get around to it. Kind of confused by that. Either way it's not great. Also, these fleeting glimpses... I guess if you're Wong Kar Wai you can do it but I'm not a huge fan. To me, you have to repeat not because you're being poetic but because you don't have a story (or the story you do have is not that interesting). the thing I really thought was interesting (aside from the performances), was how the movie shifted from judging the mom for not raising her kid better to realizing that the kid is just an evil devil child that should be drowned in a lake and it's really not Swinton's fault. I thought that was an interesting turn and I started liking the movie much more at that point because the kid's SUCH a dick. Still, there's a lot to sit through to get to the gems like him intentionally shitting himself so she'd have to clean him, or him not stopping and just looking at her when she accidentally walks in on him masturbating. Evil children; fuck em. |
