We Need to Talk About How Much I Disliked We Need to Talk About Kevin

My taste in movies is fairly broad, but I definitely veer more toward the feel-good end of things, and I try to avoid films with an overabundance of violence. However, sometimes someone else picks the movie, and I’ll wind up watching something I never would have picked on my own. Sometimes I’m glad I took this venture into darker territory, sometimes not. In the case of We Need to Talk About Kevin, the latest such film I viewed, I’m definitely not.

This movie, which was written and directed by Lynne Ramsay, stars Tilda Swinton as Eva Khatchadourian, a cowed, disturbed woman who spends most of the film looking severely traumatized. We’re not quite sure why at first, though a safe guess is that it involves the titular Kevin, her son. The movie is incredibly disorienting, hopping around in time every few minutes, and at first I had a very hard time following it, though I eventually grew accustomed to the different time periods and could usually tell which one we were in by looking at Eva. If not, a glance at Kevin was sufficient, since we see him as an infant, a toddler (Rock Duer), a young child (Jasper Newell) and a teenager (Ezra Miller).

Of course, since Eva, not Kevin, is the central character, there are a number of scenes in which he does not appear, but most directly involve him. Each of the actors portraying him is startlingly skilled at conveying Kevin’s sociopathic tendencies. Even at the age of three or four, this child is frightening, and it’s little wonder that Eva does not relish the time she spends with him, though it is a wonder that she doesn’t aggressively seek psychiatric help for a child with such obvious emotional problems. Then again, she does not have the support of her affable but oblivious husband, Franklin (John C. Reilly), who tunes out any of Eva’s protests that Kevin is an atypical boy, in part because Kevin acts differently around him than he does in her company.

Once I got used to the movie’s nonlinear format, I had a better understanding of how it was building toward one grand traumatic event by showing us ever more unsettling scenes from Kevin’s life, along with a few from before his birth and several that occur after the calamity in question. We don’t know precisely what happened until quite late in the film, but it becomes easier and easier to guess as the scenes progress.

I nearly always find Reilly very likable in his roles, and at first I did here too, but at a certain point, Franklin’s complacency and refusal to take any stock in his wife’s concerns became deeply frustrating. Eva is icy and distant with her son and never bothers to hide the fact that she resents his presence in her life. In fact, she tells him this to his face when he is a toddler. However, in the end, it’s hard to say which parent bears more responsibility for the fact that he just continues to grow more and more cold and calculating, seemingly taking pleasure only in defiance and destruction.

Miller is particularly chilling, reminding me of Sterling Beaumon’s performance as a teen serial killer in Criminal Minds. The title reflects the deep communication rift between Eva and her husband, to say nothing of the total lack of useful interaction between her and Kevin himself, and one wonders whether talking to and about Kevin more effectively could have led to his turning out well-adjusted and sociable. These are the sorts of questions that the sixth Harry Potter book explored about Voldemort, and there’s no easy answer. This is a kid whose life revolves around openly tormenting his mother, deceiving his father and subtly terrorizing his gentle little sister Celia (Ashley Girasimovich). How much of that was preventable?

Both parents here have their issues, but it’s hard to see how any parent could cope very well with the seething malice that Kevin displays from his earliest years, so it’s not clear whether the film is advocating more checked-in parenting or just trying to scare the heebie-jeebies out of anyone who’s ever considered becoming a parent. In the special features, author Lionel Shriver notes that her novel was inspired largely by her examination of her long-held disinterest in motherhood, leading me to lean toward the latter. The friend I watched it with concluded that the message was, “Don’t have kids; you never know what you’re going to end up with.”

If that is indeed the conclusion we are meant to reach, then the film certainly succeeded for me, and I sure wish I could go to sleep without the scarring images from this movie rattling around in my brain. The movie is horrifying and revolting, but I don’t think my strong negative reaction is enough to classify this as a cinematic triumph. It stuck with me, but I certainly didn’t enjoy it, and the only talking about Kevin I want to do now is warning people off it unless they like having their stomachs churned.

Barrymore's Josie Has Never Been Kissed, But She's Got Two Contenders For the Job

Surfing through the channels recently, my brother and I happened upon a movie that had just started. "Oh," Nathan said, "This must be Never Been Kissed." And so it was. So I asked him whether it was a good movie. "Oh, it's okay, I guess," he said. "But it has Drew Barrymore in it." This withering critique was not enough to dissuade me, particularly since I loved Music and Lyrics, her latest movie. And Nathan, for all his protests, didn't mind watching it again with me.

Never Been Kissed is a film with an improbable premise. A young journalist, Josie Geller (Barrymore), gets the first big assignment of her career, which involves posing as a high school student. She's young and girlish enough that this isn't too much of a stretch, though it seems like she would have had a little more trouble with this ruse, and certainly her brother Robert (David Arquette), lacking her professional resources, shouldn't have been able to enroll on a whim so he could look out for his sister. Moreover, she goes to the school without a very clear idea of what her article is supposed to be about, and weeks later, she still doesn't really know; presumably she's only still there because her high school experience has turned into the soap opera that's keeping all her officemates entertained. But what exactly is she doing during this stretch of time for the newspaper? All of her time appears to be occupied with this assignment, but what paper would invest all those resources into such a non-story, especially when at the end of it her article is shorter than this review?

So yeah, it's not the most logical plot in the world. Nor the most original, since it treads all the same territory as typical high school films. I can't condemn it for its glaring similarities to Mean Girls, however, since this movie came out first; evidently that film borrowed from this considerably. While sweet-natured Josie never quite turns to the dark side - befriending members of the top high school clique but not becoming utterly insufferable in the process - the story follows a similar arc. She initially feels awkward and is befriended by math geek Aldys Martin (Leelee Sobieski). She falls for Guy Perkins (Jeremy Jordan), a popular, hunky fellow who isn't as nice as the love interest in Mean Girls. She has a party at her house. She alienates her nerdy friend by getting caught up in the activities of the popular girls, albeit on orders from her boss, Augustus Strauss (John C. Reilly). She's declared Prom queen and makes a preachy speech about how people have to start being nicer to each other. Typical stuff.

But it's a cute movie. Barrymore is winning, playing up the charm as a girl who never fit in when she was in high school and is trying to get it right this time around. While she swoons for Guy, her real connection is with English teacher Sam Coulson (Michael Vartan). Their pairing would be perfectly appropriate under other circumstances, but he believes that she is only 17, so he's deeply uncomfortable with the intense attraction he feels to this mature, insightful student. At one point he even hops on the ferris wheel with her at the fair, which is very romantic, though it sets off alarms. It's the nature of this movie that in context, both of Josie's romantic interests are unsuitable, yet she pursues both anyway Her brother, meanwhile, not only finds a romantic entanglement of his own but joins the baseball team and dreams of being snatched up by a college talent scout.

In the end, pretty much everyone ends up with whatever they deserve, and we're hardly surprised about it. Josie finally blossoms into a confident young woman, having stepped out of the shadow of her traumatic high school memories, most notably being egged by her Prom date while waiting on her front porch in a hideous dress that looks like it was made of aluminum foil. There's plenty of humor in the movie, most of it pretty benign, and the blooming relationship between her and her teacher is very sweet, especially since he never completely crosses the line into an inappropriate teacher-student relationship while he believes Josie is a teenager. It's not the best high school movie out there, but it's a pretty entertaining way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Lots of Razzle Dazzle, But Not Much Else

Two years ago I watched as Chicago took home half a dozen Oscars and wondered whether I would feel bitter about them when I finally got around to seeing the movie. I like musicals, so I wanted to withhold judgment, but when I did get around to watching it I was gravely disappointed. I watched in the company of a roomful of people who loved the film, so I kept my criticisms to myself until I got in the car upon our departure. As it turned out, the members of my immediate family shared my lack of enthusiasm. Maybe we’re just too old-fashioned.

First off, Chicago takes place in probably my least favorite decade of the 20th Century: the 1920s. Anything I see depicting that era seems awash in a haze of cigarette smoke and cynicism. I hated the supposed Great American Novel The Great Gatsby and Chicago didn’t redeem the 1920s for me. I found the dingy nightclub scenes bursting with slinky costumes more depressing than those in the jailhouse.

Don’t get me wrong. This is visually a very impressive film. I happen to dislike all the locales pictured, but I’ll still concede that it looks good. The costumes are flashy, the fantasy sequences are imaginative and the choreography is astounding. I wanted to like this movie, not least because a good friend of mine told me I had to see it. So I gave it a fair shot, but there’s just very little in the film that appeals to me.

I generally find Renee Zellweger irritating, and never more so in this movie, where she plays aspiring star Roxie Hart. When she discovers that the man with whom she is having an affair doesn’t intend to get her into show biz like he promised, she is so enraged that she kills him. Her steady husband Amos (John C. Reilly) rushes to her defense, claiming guilt for himself, until he discovers the affair and has a slight change of heart. I found Amos the only likable character in the whole shebang, and even that isn’t a very strong draw. We feel sorry for him, especially in the song Mr. Cellophane, but in the end he’s bland and not very memorable.

The guy who gets all the attention is Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), the slick lawyer who takes on Roxie’s case and tries to sweet-talk the public into sympathizing with her. This job is made more difficult by the fact that she possesses very limited reserves of tact and restraint, amusingly illustrated in We Both Reached for the Gun. Also making her life harder is Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), the slinky star-turned-murderess she once idolized. Now she stands as her rival to the public’s affections, and Velma’s been around the block a few times and knows how to play the game.

While I can’t find anything remotely likable about either of these leading ladies, Matron “Mama” Morton (Queen Latifah) does hold a certain appeal for me. She is also too cold and conniving for my taste, but she puts forth the appearance, at least, of being warm and motherly at times. There are moments when I think she really does care about the women under her watch, and her African-flavored introductory number is enjoyable enough. She’s my favorite of the gals, but given the company that’s not saying too much.

The whole idea of switching constantly between real life and some dream sequence in the minds of the characters didn’t work for me. I guess I like my musicals more straightforward than that. I have no trouble accepting people bursting forth into song. I do, however, tend to find self-referential theater less than satisfying. It’s a conceit that won many viewers of the movie over, but I’m afraid it turned me off. Add to that the dearth of sympathetic characters, songs that failed to stay with me and an overriding sense of cynicism and what I was left with was a masterfully executed movie that I didn’t get anything out of. It echoed the reaction I had when I saw my alma mater’s production of On Your Toes: Gee, the cast, crew and orchestra are doing a brilliant job, but this is the most pointless play I’ve ever seen. Obviously a lot of moviegoers disagreed with me, so I won’t tell you not to bother with it. But if you’re looking for a good musical, there are a couple dozen others I’d point you to first.