We Need To Talk About Kevin

Harrowing stuff, but, as Douglas Adams once said, sit back, relax, and be harrowed.

The film starts as a stream of consciousness, almost. Tilda Swinton is going about her business, living a pretty nasty seeming life. She's in a run down house, which someone has attacked with red paint; goes for an interview at a run-down travel agent, is confronted by people in the street who hit her and call her names, and virtually every second of this seems to trigger a flashback of some kind to her past, when she seemed much more affluent, is married, and has a child; this is Kevin. So from the outset we know two things; something has happened in her life which has resulted in her being broke, alone, and hated by the community, and that she has a son with whom she fails to bond with from the start, even before he's born.

At the start of the film, this is a very jumbled mess, and I have to say, half an hour in I was thinking "Well, someone needs to talk about Kevin... and soon please?" but as time passes, the vignettes become longer, and more coherent, as I suppose your recent memories are, and we are gradually clued in to what actually happened.

In a way, this flashback device is initially frustrating, with snippets of knowledge arriving in seemingly random order. However, this isn't an accident, and is part of the power of cinema; yes, it's frustrating, confusing, and disquieting, but that's no accident, and being glued to your seat for two hours, it forces you to take your medicine, and eventually this builds into an understanding of the situation that goes beyond the narrative.

It's a film of two key performances, and three actors; Tilda Swinton is pale, awkward and emotionally devastated in a way that I suspect only she can be; by contrast, Ezra Miller as Kevin the teenager (and you know, I really wish that phrase didn't constantly pop into my head) and even more impressively I thought, Jasper Newell as Kevin as a young child, possess a dead eyed confidence, indifference and malevolence, which I think will make them both a long remembered pair of screen psychos.

Ultimately, this is a horror film. A secular horror film. This is Rosemary's Baby meets The Omen, without the comforting fact that, as there isn't really an Antichrist, none of this unpleasantness could really happen. Because he's not the anti-messiah, he's just a very naughty boy. It's a portrait of a psychopath, without the showy theatrics of a Silence of the Lambs. It's just a kid, who we can see just isn't right, and the knowledge that one day he's going to do something appalling that will destroy the lives of everyone near him, and the film delivers a series of emotional punches to the gut which don't let up, right up until the very end.

Red State

Look, up in the sky. Do you see in the distance up there, a four legged beast, which is being ridden by a large fat man? That's Kevin Smith on his high horse again.

In short, in a nutshell, this is Kevin Smith telling us exactly what he thinks of religious fundamentalists. (Hint: Kevin Smith does not like religious fundamentalists.) We start off with some scenes in which three high school lads are considering meeting a woman on a dating site, who says she wants sex with three guys at once. When they finally get there, they end up being drugged, and when they wake up, they're in the compound of some Christian fundamentalist types, whose idea of a good time is luring in homosexuals and fornicators, and putting them to death, having first ranted scripture at them.

Things get more out of control, as the local law enforcement get wind that there's something going on, there's a bit of gunplay, and the ATF are called in, under the command of John Goodman, and it all goes a bit Siege of Waco.

So, we have Fundamentalists and Government forces shooting at each other, and in the crossfire are these three kids who're basically having the worst day of their lives. Hilarity occasionally ensues, but not as much as you'd think for Kevin Smith; this is bitter, biting satire, not a sign of Jay or Silent Bob anywhere.

Basically, this is Kevin Smith preaching, the whole film is Poe's Law in movie form - "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing." He sets himself up a parody of a fundamentalist church, then lays into that straw man for all he's worth. And then, for balance, parodies the government handling of the situation, and lays into that too. I mean, there's straw all over the shop by the end of it.

Having said that, by the end of it, you're shocked and entertained, and constantly wrong-footed, which only goes to prove that Kevin Smith is still a talented film-maker, even if you get the sense that he's not a very responsible one.

Drive

Oddly, just the other week we had Colombiana, which was a virtual remake of Leon. And films do tend to travel in packs. And so here's another, not a remake by any means, not at all, but more a spiritual successor. Ryan Gosling is a driver (that's his identity, he's not referred to as anything but "the driver" or "the kid" throughout the film.) He is, like Leon, an apparent innocent in all ways, but one specific, savant like area. Where Leon was apparently the perfect killer, this guy is the perfect driver. He does getaway driving, he does stunt work for films, there's some suggestion of him getting into racing; he drives, that's what he does, that's who he is. In all other contexts, pretty much, he quietly sits, with a faint smile on his face, apparently taking in the world, but not being of it.

Things begin to go wrong for him, as they did for Leon, when he meets a girl, in this case Carey Mulligan, who lives down the hall from him, who is herself a sweet, quiet girl, bringing up her son while her husband is in jail; he befriends her, and there's an air of innocent romance about them. Her husband finally gets out of jail, and soon he's in trouble; he must commit a robbery in order to pay back debts incurred in jail, and his wife and child will pay the price if he doesn't. The Driver won't have this, so resolves to help him. And then things really go south, as betrayal layers upon betrayal, and the driver must overcome his naivety in order to extricate everyone from the mess.

It's a beautiful, stylish film. Where you would expect this to be a rowdy film about car chases, this is no Tony Scott movie. There's a sense of the culture of the car in the US (and LA in particular) as we see the night cityscapes as the cars move through them. There's moments of quiet and stillness, which are contemplative, and moments of extreme violence which rise up out of nowhere, to great, jarring effect.

So, that, in a nutshell is it. A stylish, highly stylisised crime thriller, with a great poetic sensibility.

Jane Eyre

Interesting adaptation, in that what you'd expect from Jane Eyre is a Gothic Melodrama. Whereas this is relatively sedate. We start with Jane fleeing from a big house, and clearly Something Terrible Has Happened. She runs out onto the moors, gets a bit lost, gets thoroughly soaked, is close to death, and is eventually taken in by a vicar and his two sisters, who nurse her back to health. And then we get, in flashback, how Jane has got to where she is right now, from her dreadful, dreadful childhood, to her becoming governess of the ward of Edward Rochester, a well-to-do gentleman of dark moods and a dark past. He and Jane hit it off immediately, apparently through a mutual belief that everyone else in the world is a blithering idiot, and a forbidden and probably doomed romance begins to blossom. I say probably doomed; she runs out onto the moors to die of exposure right at the start, so they've blown that one.

It's odd, I think, in that the two principal characters, Jane and Rochester, both have the air of almost modern characters; everyone else is very much buying into the social mores that bind them, whereas Jane and Rochester more sort of seem to accept them with the eye-rolling reluctance of teenagers who have to accept the ludicrously outmoded rules set by parents. That modern image isn't exactly dispelled by casting either Mia Wasikowska (who played the teenage daughter in The Kids Are Alright) or Michael Fassbender (Magneto!). Neither of them really puts a foot wrong, performance wise, and they've got ample support from the likes of Judi Dench and Sally Hawkins. However, I do get the sense of liberties being taken.

I can't claim to be a scholar of the text, nor really having paid attention to previous adaptations, but what I really get a sense of is a script and director trying to give the film a modern sensibility. And while that does make it undeniably watchable, I'm wondering whether it really does the text a service.

Troll Hunter

Cheeky stuff. A fake, found footage mockumentary, which you can see as a variant on Blair Witch Project or This Is Spinal Tap, at your discretion. Essentially, a bunch of film students are making a documentary about bear hunters, and get interested in this one guy who all the other hunters say isn't one of them and thus must be a poacher. So the film crew try and interview him, and he rebuffs them, acting all mysterious. This only intrigues them more, so they tail him, and film him going about his business - which turns out to be hunting trolls.

Norway, it seems, has trolls. These are wild creatures who live in remote areas, usually having nothing to do with humans, but occasionally straying into settled areas, where they cause all kinds of bother, so the government calls in Hans, their troll hunter, who takes care of it, then the government cover it all up by framing a bear. Lately, though, it seems that the trolls are restless, and Hans is getting brassed off with the shitty working conditions, so he agrees to let the film crew film his work. So we're off hunting trolls, and investigating why there seem to be so many of them about right now.

The joy of this is the same joy as This Is Spinal Tap; it's played straight, but the subject is so ludicrous that it's hilarious. The trolls make it funny. They're funny because this isn't a case of doing the horror film thing of taking a legendary monster, but giving is a cool, modern, scary redesign; these are the big-nosed flappy-eared trolls from storybooks, with all the mores and behaviours that implies. Which is not to say they're not bloody impressive when in action, in fact, that's what really funny - they look absurd, but are 15 foot tall, roaring and crashing about the place, smashing trees, eating people and generally causing utter mayhem. Hans, meanwhile, treats this ludicrous situation in a stoic, morose, matter of fact way, reminiscent of someone who tracks badgers in a BBC wildlife documentary.

So, there you have it; part monster movie, part snarky satire, all tremendous fun. If there's a complaint, there's occasionally sequences in which we're driving around in cars too much, and seeing too few trolls, but when it all kicks off, it's absolutely worth the wait.

Warrior

Ok, I'm going to lay upon you the completely unbelievable bit of the plot now. There's a Mixed Martial Arts tournament which is for the top sixteen competitors in the world to duke it out for a big cash prize (plausible).  Two estranged brothers, neither of whom have ever taken part in a MMA competition get into the competition as wildcard outsiders (implausible). Ignore this. It's macho sub-Rocky bullshit, but this is not where any of the useful stuff in the film is. So just go with it.

Ok, brother number one is an ex-Marine played by Tom Hardy, who rocks up on the doorstep of his recovering alcoholic father, Nick Nolte. The two haven't seen each other in years, since the son and his mother left, because the father was beating their mother while drunk. The mother has since died, and the son has returned, but with no apparent interest in reconciliation. Then he finds out about the tournament, and manages to swing himself an entry by essentially leathering the middleweight US champion in a sparring session. Having done so, he insists his father, who was his high-school wrestling trainer, train him for the tournament.

Brother number two is a physics teacher played by Joel Edgerton, who's about to lose his house because he can't afford the payments (having basically bankrupted himself paying medical bills for his daughter), and so starts doing exhibition fights in parking lots for a little extra money. The school catches on, he's suspended without pay, and all of a sudden, he's forced to make the fighting his main job again (having retired from the sport years ago). Using his old connections, he manages to get an entry into the tournament. He is also estranged from his father (for the same reasons as his brother), but also from his brother (because when his brother and his mother left, he refused to follow them, and stayed to be with his girlfriend.)

Anyway, what this film is really about is the epic amount of rage and pain within Tom Hardy's character, and his inability to allow his family to help him through it. Instead, he is effectively torturing his father, by being around him, but throwing any attempt at reconciliation back in his face. And that's where this film is absolute dynamite, the abusive relationship between Hardy and Nolte. It's filled with epic levels of bitterness and recrimination, and has a level of emotional brutality that eclipses any of the mere girly slaps going on in the MMA ring. Eventually, of course, it comes to a head as the two brothers inevitably meet in the ring, and the physical pain becomes a metaphor for the emotional pain.

Overall, powerful stuff, and something that is absolutely worth digging beneath the surface layer of slappy fighting to get to.

Thirty Minutes Or Less

Your Plot: A pair of idiot ne'er-do-wells need to get a bank robbed. They don't want to do it themselves, so they order a pizza, and when the delivery guy arrives, they kidnap him, strap a bomb to him, and tell him that if he doesn't rob a bank and get them some money, he'll be blown up. So the delivery guy enlists his mate, and they go and rob a bank. Meanwhile, the idiots have hired a hitman to kill the father of one of the idiots, and the bank robbery money is to pay him off, and he gets more than a bit pissed off as things don't quite go to plan. Light blue touchpaper, retire, watch the fireworks.

Your Cast: Idiots - Danny McBride and Nick Swardson, with Danny McBride as Lead Idiot. Basically, he's really funny, as a puffed up egotistical moron; Supporting Idiot is fun as an ex-military bomb-tech, who's really naive.
Deliverer - Jesse Eisenberg, who's always good value for money. We've seen him before in this kind of role, and while it's no stretch for him, it's smart casting. Aziz Ansari is his sidekick, and while I'm usually pretty immune to his comic charms in stuff like Parks and Recreation and Funny People, he delivers the goods here.

The Verdict: This isn't the most original film you've every seen, but the script has the right pace, if full of funny dialogue, which is in the hands of comic actors who know what they're doing. In short, it's a comedy that'll make you laugh, nothing more, nothing less. And let's face it, these days, that's far from guaranteed.