Stan And Ollie

Lorra Laurel Laughs

Stan And Ollie
UK/Canada/USA 2018
Directed by Jon S. Baird
Entertainment One
Blu Ray Zone B

I skipped Stan And Ollie when it came out in cinemas... primarily because I knew I’d probably end up watching it with my dad on Father’s Day and I wasn’t so sure it would be any good, or at least not good enough to sit through a second time. As it happens, now that I’ve done exactly that on Father’s Day, I have to say that this is a beautiful movie, both in content and on a technical level too.

The film hasn’t made a huge amount of money given its budget but it has more than doubled it on worldwide box office and so, honestly, the film has not done that badly. It could... and certainly should... have made considerably more but I can understand why fans of both Mr. Stan Laurel and Mr. Oliver Norvell Hardy would be somewhat horrified that anyone would try and catch their particular brand of lightning in a bottle these days. Also, I’m pretty sure that not enough kids nowadays know about this dynamic, comedy duo who made a gazillion silent movie shorts followed by about another gazillion talkies (and the odd feature film), many of which were remakes of those early shorts, if memory serves.

When I was a kid, Laurel And Hardy shorts were playing on TV pretty much all the time throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. It was almost impossible not to catch at least one Stan And Ollie movie a week and, frankly, that was no bad thing. Everybody loved them. They were as much a fixture of daytime/early evening TV as the abundantly aired Tom And Jerry cartoons which also seemed to have disappeared from our screens around about the same time. And that’s what happened to Laurel And Hardy... they disappeared and suddenly stopped being broadcast due, I believe, to complicated legal wrangling about who owned the rights to the transmission of their films and it’s been only up until recently that they’ve started to be televised again. Alas, modern TV is not the beast it used to be and rather than be bombarded with these wonderful little films like I was when I was growing up, you have to go out of your way to look for these now and get lucky if you want to see one... although there is still the wonderful world of physical media such as DVD and Blu Ray if you want to do them right.

So most of the intervening generations between the 1980s until now just wouldn’t have had too much of an opportunity to be exposed to their films and I suspect this sad fact also played a role in the box office performance of this movie (although personally I think more than doubling your money is more than enough of a good thing).

The film had me right from the opening, it has to be said, with a beautifully designed shot after the opening credits which starts out as a static composition of Laurel and Hardy on the two sides of the screen in front of their make up mirrors during the making of Way Out West, with a void of dead area at the centre of the screen. As the two converse with their backs to the camera, we can see each of their faces reflected in their mirrors talking across the screen from each other. It’s a dazzling shot set up which completely threw me off listening to the content of their conversation at this point but then the shot doesn’t remain static, as the two get up and walk out of their dressing room... and then out and then back in through a studio for a long tracking shot as the conversation keeps going. It’s a gorgeous opening and it all just works really well because... not only is it technically brilliant and more than easy on the eye... it’s also wonderfully performed by the two actors. I’ll get to the performances in a little while.

The film then, after Stan has a brief run in with Hal Wallis (played by Danny Huston), who kind of put the two together in the first place and produced their films, shows us a little of the making of the film’s famous dance scene and then gets a little darker as Stan’s contract runs out and he tries to get Ollie to break his contract and come over to 20th Century Fox with him.

The story then jumps the 1950s and the rest of the movie concerns the two’s originally shaky but ultimately successful triumph on their last theatrical tour of the British Isles, before ill health forces Oliver Hardy to retire, a few years before his death.

The beauty of that first shot is built on throughout the course of the film and there are certain echoes in other shots as the director sets up a few things where reflected surfaces feature heavily in the way you watch the two interact, from time to time. It’s almost voyeuristic in the way it sometimes uses reflection as a distancing device but the ultimate expression of the strong sense of ‘fly on the wall’ effect you get here is in one of the last scenes in the movie, where Stan and Ollie are once again re-enacting the little dance they performed at the start of the film on the stage in Ireland. The director brilliantly keeps panning back from their feet to dwell on the shadows of these two projected behind them before coming back to them and then doing this a few times. It’s amazing how much tension this creates in the movie because, each time the camera slides back to the dancing silhouettes, you feel like this could be the moment Oliver Hardy takes a fall and it would be just too horrible to watch as anything but the visual metaphor of a projected shadow. As it happens, things don’t play out exactly the way I thought they would but, obviously, I’m not going to spoil that experience for you with this review.

So let’s get to those all important performances...

I’m not exactly the biggest fan of Steve Coogan so consider me doubly impressed with his performance here. Yeah, everybody will say it’s easy to ‘do Stan’ but it’s really not going to be as easy as people think. Coogan looks, sounds and acts so much like the real Stan Laurel that it’s almost impossible to tell them apart. This way of giving the ‘real life’ Stan characteristics which he may or may not have had in real life but certainly had in his on screen characterisations (so probably did, I guess) pays dividends when we get to the actual drama and dark sections of the picture. He’s as believable as you could ever hope for and the same can also be said of the great John C. Reilly. Reilly is always watchable but here he’s also unrecognisable as himself and there’s very little you could latch on to, to try and distinguish him from Oliver Hardy. He’s played absolutely perfectly here by Reilly. Well... wait... my dad did make the comment that he couldn’t look at the camera and treat it like an intimate friend in quite the same way as Oliver Hardy could but, frankly, it’s more than good enough for me to complete the illusion and nobody is ever going to get these things 100% right... that would be impossible.

So yeah, these performances are tip top, as are the more caricature-like cameo performances of past actors such as James Finlayson and Harry Langdon. However, let’s not stop there because, although there’s not much to compare them to, the wives of Laurel and Hardy are equally impressive, with the always wonderful Shirley Henderson playing Mrs. Hardy and the equally enthralling Nina Arianda as Mrs. Laurel. Frankly, it would have been easy for either or both of these two characters to be upstaged by Coogan and Reilly here, given the nature of their performances but... these two do a fantastic job of portraying two wives who don’t really get on that well but who are an absolute rock for their respective husbands. There are so many good acting turns in this movie but these two are definitely two of the best.

The film also has a pretty nice score by Rolfe Kent which does some interesting things. I wasn’t sure about it first as, although the main Laurel and Hardy music that everyone associates with the two characters (The Cuckoo Song) is used only sparingly throughout the film and, pretty much, only as source (or diegetic) music, Kent goes off on a different tack. However, it’s pretty good and what he seems to be doing... and I’m not great at analysing music or expressing it in words so go easy on me here if I’m saying this the wrong way... but he takes the base rhythm of the famous music in a much understated orchestration and weaves that into the fabric of the score to give it a lighter touch than you would expect but, as it happens, it works beautifully and is never heavy handed or inappropriate throughout the film.

So yeah... that’s me done with the Stan And Ollie biopic and, frankly, it’s a great one. Fans of Laurel and Hardy should definitely brave this one, I think, as it’s never once disrespectful of the great men being portrayed and performances, sets, lighting, editing, music and cinematography all come together to compliment each other nicely here. Definitely one for all the family and a very moving film too, as it happens. A wonderful job here by everyone involved.

Kong - Skull Island

Kong-A-Thon, Live In Bone, Sea Skull

Kong - Skull Island
USA 2017 Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts
UK cinema release print.

See, this is why I love watching the odd movie every now and again. You never know when something’s going to surprise you and be an absolutely brilliant helping of cinematic art and entertainment.

I had really low expectations for this film.

The thing is, and if you read my last review you’ll already know this, I have a lot of respect and admiration for the original 1933 King Kong movie (and you can find that review just here). Most of the other movies to either feature King Kong as a character in a different storyline (such as this one) or trying to remake the original have, for the most part, been a little entertaining but mostly dull. I think my favourite of the bunch of movies to utilise the character over the intervening years since the wonderful 1933 version has been the second of the Toho Kong movies from 1967, King Kong Escapes. And, frankly, how could you not like a movie where a giant ape has to fight a giant mechanical simulacrum of itself... that’s always going to be a winning formula.

So I was pretty surprised when this new movie, Kong - Skull Island, turned out to be, pretty much, the best of the US Kong movies since the original. I went to a 3D IMAX showing of the movie at my local Cineworld and ended up having one of the best movie experiences I’ve had in a while.

The film is actually not a remake of the original as such and, if you were following the poster campaign and the not so great trailers then you’ll know the marketing people were very much trying to channel the look and feel of Apocalypse Now (the brilliant Vietnam war epic which takes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as its source material and then embellishes it with... almost everything else in the movie). I can see the temptation of selling the movie in this way... this film is set in 1973 when the Vietnam war ended and there are a lot of military helicopters and loud late 1960s/early 1970s rock songs blaring out as diegetic music on the soundtrack. That’s about where the similarities end here though... John C. Reilly is not channeling Dennis Hopper’s character from Coppola’s classic movie and Kong himself is certainly no Kurtz.

This movie does its own thing and, it does it very well, it has to be said.

It looks great, for a start. It’s also big and loud and has a very fast pace to it. This is not a film about bringing Kong back from Skull Island, either. You won’t see any rampages through the concrete jungle of New york in this movie. As the title implies, the majority of this film takes place on Kong’s home turf and the motivations that drive the characters are a little different too. There’s also a great cast which should have tipped me off, from just the quality of the actors involved here, that this movie was worth a look. You have John Goodman, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson and the aforementioned John C. Reilly, to name just a few. And the way certain people are introduced into the story and allowed to develop a little before being thrown together, albeit quite quickly, is a wonderful example of character depth through brevity captured on film. Also, that whole backlash against Brie Larson’s character when the first images were released on the internet last year is totally unfounded. She may be fleshed in quick but she’s a very strong character, without being an in your face, kick-ass femme fatale and I really appreciated her inclusion as a photojournalist on this one.

If you want to look for parallels to the original King Kong, you could say the character played by John Goodman is a very distant cypher of the Robert Armstrong character and this is further enhanced by the costume design for him... but he’s not that close a comparison and neither are Hiddleston and Larson close comparisons to Bruce Cabot and Fay Wray either, for that matter. That being said, Larson’s Mason Weaver character does have a special relationship with Kong in this movie but it’s handled slightly differently while still, at some moments, being totally poignant... so I was really pleased with how this turned out.

Kong himself, actually, is great work and he reminds me much more of the 1933 Kong, despite being about six time taller and the audience will probably find an emotional connection with him (or at least this audience member did). He’s not just surrounded by a fantastic human cast either... there are some nasty species of wildlife on this island and some of them make the mythical lost spider pit sequence from the original King Kong sound tame in comparison. I was amazed this only got a 12A rating over here... I would have thought a 15 rating may have been more appropriate. There’s one sequence where a character played by Toby Kebbel (who also motion captures Kong for this movie too) sits down on a log and... ah, no way I’m spoiling this one for you but I honestly didn’t see that one coming.

A minor criticism would be in some of the scripting. It would be true to say that this film belongs to the ‘Person A says there’s absolutely no way he’s doing [insert appropriate stupid thing]... cut to a shot of Person A then doing the aforementioned stupid thing’ school of film-making and I did face palm at that cringeworthy point in the movie. While other parts of the screenplay seem quite cliché-free and tight. Almost like there’s a clear division noticeable between the multiple writers of this thing. However, like I said, a minor criticism.

I’d heard bad reports about Henry Jackman’s score to the film but, heck, I certainly don’t know why. Not only is it a good match for the monster mayhem in the movie but it’s also pretty exciting stuff. Granted it’s no Max Steiner Kong score... or even Akira Ifikube or John Barry... but it’s pretty cool and I’m suitably angry that I can’t listen to it away from the movie as, so far, there’s only a download version available. Let’s all hope that Watertower Music comes to their senses soon and release a proper CD into the wild. I really want to get this one.

From it’s opening logo audio homage to the original movie which, it turns out, dovetails nicely into an opening sequence set in 1944 (which almost plays out like a mini version of John Boorman’s Hell In The Pacific) through to a truly exciting post-credits sequence (which is supposed to set the movie up as a prequel to a big movie which came out a few years ago but which, given the characters involved in this 'must see' end sequence, really feels more like it would only work as a reboot when we get to the timeline of the next movie), Kong - Skull Island constantly demonstrates that it’s a truly entertaining blockbuster movie. I really can’t recommend this film enough to anyone who loves monster movies and Kong in particular. Don’t miss seeing this spectacle at the cinema or you might just regret it. And like I implied just now, stay past the end credits if you want to see a big hint at where the next film in the franchise is going. I can’t wait. 

Guardians Of The Galaxy

Groot Point

Guardians Of The Galaxy
2014 USA
Directed by James Gunn
Cinema release print.

I was both pleasantly surprised and achingly disappointed by the release of the new Marvel Phase 2 movie Guardians Of The Galaxy. When the film was first announced as being another of the series in the linking Marvel story arc that kicked off with the first Iron Man film... I was a bit taken aback. The comic this is mostly based on is the 21st Century incarnation of the Guardians Of The Galaxy as opposed to the original 1969 team... and I have not read any of their original stories in any of the various team line-ups to be able to pass judgement on this film as an adaptation. I was, though, very worried about how Marvel would be able to pull off a movie with characters like Rocket Raccoon and Groot in it and still make it fit in with their other properties in such an intimate manner. The various trailers didn’t exactly endear me to the idea of going to see it either.

Sure, the groundwork had been done by Marvel in terms of sowing the seeds for a more intergalactic piece of their giant cinematic puzzle with the Thor films (which are reviewed by me here and here), which are set off-world, so to speak... and, of course, The Avengers movie (reviewed here), which shares a common villain with this one. The character of The Collector, for example, had already appeared in the second Thor movie and Thanos had already been revealed at the end of The Avengers (aka Marvel Avengers Assembled) as one of the major players in the conflict depicted in that movie. However, this didn’t change the fact that I was finding it mighty difficult that a film of this nature, which would probably end up as “just another space opera” (and kinda did, actually), would be able to slot in neatly with the other films in the series without looking incongruous. It’s a lot easier to get these kinds of mismatched crossovers to work in comic books than it is to do it in the movies, I’m sure.

That being said though... I was, as I said in my introduction, pleasantly surprised by the movie. For two reasons.

One is because... it’s not a terrible film. It’s not great but it is at least watchable and has some quite good moments which give it some entertainment value. The other reason is because, as it stands, I think this should just about slot into the current Marvel universe if the producers, writers and directors can do it very carefully and write to the various characters’ reactions and interactions with each other as they meet up in various films. I can imagine, for example, that a well written scene between Tony Stark and Rocket Raccoon would go down a treat.

This film opens very, very strongly with an opening, pre-credits sequence which is guaranteed to tear at the heartstrings and bring trickles of moisture from the audience’s eyes. We see the young Peter Quill, aka Star Lord, as he refuses to hold his mother’s hand and then she dies before he gets a chance to do that. He runs out of the hospital in his grief and is immediately kidnapped by aliens, one of the original members of the 1969 Guardians Of The Galaxy as it happens, although in this movie that character (played by Michael Rooker) is portrayed as a villain rather than a hero.

The cast is strong and the main players... Chris Pratt as Peter (Star Lord) Quill, Zoe Saldana as Gomora, Dave Bautista as Drax The Destroyer, Bradley Cooper as Rocket Racoon and Vin Diesel as Groot... are all really good in their roles... with special mention of Bautista who does a really good job at making me care about his character’s motivation. They all get some really nice dialogue in their scenes and it’s when they are interacting with each other in a way that doesn’t involve people punching, kicking, shooting or stabbing each other to death that their characters really get to shine through.

Similarly, there’s a good supporting cast of particularly reliable actors who are great in this including the always watchable John C. Reilly and the highly talented Karen Gillan, an actress I felt was somewhat wasted in this. She plays it very strong but the scripting seems to be working against her, I felt and the denouement of her character seemed to me, to be a triumph of the “quick technological special effects punchline” as opposed to anything which seemed earned by the main protagonists. It doesn’t help that a similar sequence is used right near the end of the movie either... people seem to be pulling out big guns and unloading them in the direction of the bad guys as a “quick fix” too often in this movie, I felt. It has to be said that Gillan’s portrayal of Nebula marked her out as the only villain in the movie that I felt even remotely intimidated by... so maybe casting her as a henchman... um... henchwoman, in a film which is already full of those kinds of characters, was a mis-step. She needed a bigger role to flesh out, I felt, and I hope the people in Hollywood are taking note of just how good she is at what she does. They need to play to her strengths more, I think.

However, for all of the good stuff... I had a very strong dose of negative vibes from the film also.

It’s a good film, no doubt about it. It’s entertaining when it needs to be and I felt like I could root for all the main protagonists in this one with no trouble. However, the plotting on this one seems a bit obvious and the film, filled with epic action and effects as it is, felt to me to be a bit like overkill when the story isn’t justifying it a whole lot. I would have preffered a much simpler film which doesn’t hurtle you from one scene to the next quite so blurringly. Also, I have to say, that apart from those often but brief bits of shiny dialogue, the whole thing felt kinda dull to me in places.

Of course, it didn’t help that I couldn’t follow the action on this one too easily, either. I’m sure the choreography of the various battles made a lot of sense on paper but, frankly, the way these scenes were edited together just kept losing me. I could maybe see a vague sense of the direction of the thing in the battle scenes but, honestly, I lost interest a little way into most of these scenes because they were either unremarkable, distractingly edited or seemed to be serving a storyline which seemed over simplistic for the “everything and the kitchen sink” attitude which seems to be prevalent for most of the film. About the best action sequence in this is when the five protagonists break out of prison but... that happens fairly early on in the movie and so, as far as action scenes go, you’ve already seen the best one before the film is even half the way through.

Again, I wasn’t feeling the music in this one either... which is strange since the inclusion of music in a diegetic role and as an important component of the Peter Quill character, means that music almost becomes a character in itself in this one. It was a main hook of the trailers too, as I recall, but... although I’m okay with pop music, it’s not really my main source of musical interest and I really didn’t like most of the songs featured in this movie. Tyler Bates score is appropriate and serves the film by giving it what it needs but, again, I didn’t notice anything really remarkable in this one... although that’s not always possible when it gets buried in the noisy mix of an action vehicle like it tends to here. I’ll probably get more of a feel for it if I ever get around to buying the score as a stand alone listen... but nothing in this movie screamed out at me, in terms of the music, which made me want to rush out and buy the score.

And that’s really all there is to it in my view. Guardians Of The Galaxy is not the disaster I was expecting it to be... but it wasn’t that great either. It’s an establishing movie, though, and it could well lead to better things for the on-screen Marvel Universe at a later date, I suspect. If you’re a fan of the Marvel movies in this cycle then you probably won’t want to miss it.. although I suspect it’s not as major a set up for the incidents in next year's The Avengers: Age Of Ultron as I’d initially suspected it to be. In terms of the overall arc I’ve a feeling that this one could probably be dropped out of the equation entirely and the next movie would still make 100% sense by the inclusion of key players from previous movies... so there’s that. Not a movie I will be rushing back to the cinema to see again anytime soon but I’ll probably take another look at it on DVD at some point next year because... I know my mother liked it. As usual with Marvel films now, there is both a mid-end credits scene and a post credits scene and, I have to say, I wouldn’t be surprised if neither of them are necessary for understanding the next movie in the cycle... but if you are so inclined, you should probably stay for the final drop. All in all though, I wouldn’t exactly say I got hooked on a feeling for this movie.

Carnage (2011)

Roman Quartet

Carnage 2011 UK

Directed by Roman Polanski

Screening at UK cinemas.

Okay... so here we have yet another movie called Carnage. As though we didn't already have enough movies called exactly the same thing. This one’s directed by Roman Polanski and co-written with him together with Yasmina Reza, who wrote the original play on which this movie is based, Le Dieu Du Carnage... which is possibly the title they should have gone for here (or at least an English translation of it, since it’s shot in the English language) instead of giving us a movie called the same name as many other movies called... well, you know... Carnage.

Now Roman Polanski has always been a director I’ve found a bit hit and miss. When he’s good he’s great, churning out some cool movies like Repulsion and The Ninth Gate. However... when he’s bad... you get junk like Frantic.

Roman Polanski isn’t much of a draw to get me into a movie these days, I have to say, but the four lead actors in Carnage are all particularly good at their craft with one name in particular, that of Christoph Waltz... who has been largely wasted in Hollywood roles like the lead villain in the recent disaster that was The Green Hornet since his stand out performance (a long way into a very long and distinguished career as an actor) in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.

Waltz is one of those actors who pretty much lights up the screen with his presence whenever he’s around. On top of this his three co-stars are Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly and Kate Winslet... so you know that no mater how bad the script is... you’re going to get some seriously interesting performances out of this people sharing the same scenes.

Luckily, in terms of dialogue at least, the writing fairly crackles, giving these four stalwart actors something really great to get their teeth into. It has to be pointed out though that, like a lot of movies based on plays, the piece does not greatly benefit from being translated into a work on film. Apart from an opening and closing sequence shot from the same angle, more or less, of a park, the whole movie is set in two rooms and two hallways from the same apartment, which is fine but, you really feel the confines of the camera trapped in the same sets in this one.

The four actors play parents of two children, one of whom has lost two teeth due to being hit in the mouth with a stick... which you see at the start in a small sequence that I expect was absent from the original play, which runs during the credits to Alexandre Desplat’s powerhouse score (which is only present in the opening and closing credits... there’s no room for music in the rest of the movie). The tone changes from pleasant and mannered to hostile and aggressive and lots of other things through the course of the play as one of the couples, played by Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz, keep trying to leave but constantly encounter excuses and distractions which force them to stay in the building... much like the darkly magical curse of social manners which force the inhabitants of the house in Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel to remain when they are desperate to depart... just not quite as much fun.

The film could best be described as a comedy of manners perhaps, rather than an exploration of the psychology of the four people trapped in the artistic space of the movie/play, but there is a certain level of fakery going on due to the confines of the environment and the plastic way in which every individual character gets their moment in the spotlight... which I found a little more distracting than I might normally find in something which has started off as a theatre piece. To be fair to Polanski, there are not that many “theatre into movie adaptations” which really escape the confines of their original setting and I’m not for the moment saying that there neccessarily should be. This artifice presented in this kind of way may be exactly the tone Polanski was after... I just feel that movies like Educating Rita did the whole stage to screen relocation a heck of a lot better than this particular movie did.

I’m not knocking the film though... it’s short and sweet and there are some laughs to be had from it. It’s not something I’d recommend that many people to see, to be sure, but it’s not a bad movie either and, frankly, when you get four actors who are this good trapped in a series of rooms together... well... you almost owe it to yourself to go and see what they come up with. And, to be fair to all involved, there were some nice shot compositions towards the end, on occasion, where the perspective was deliberately screwed by the juxtaposition of large and small elements sharing the same horizontal space... just not enough of that stuff to really hold my interest in it... at least not as much as the acting.

So Roman Polanski’s latest is not as great as, perhaps, it could have been but, honestly, I don’t know what kind of tone he was after so bringing up the artifice of the basic building blocks of the source material may not be the fairest way to go. A slight film but a fairly pleasant way to spend 80 mins... and Christoph Waltz is always worth watching.

We Need To Talk About Kevin

Straight N’ Arrow

We Need To Talk About Kevin 2011 UK/USA

Directed by Lynne Ramsay

Screening at UK cinemas.

Warning: There are kind of spoilers here I guess...

although it’s pretty much all worn on it’s sleeve

from the start of the movie.

I didn’t really know much about the latest Lynne Ramsay movie, other than it had an unpleasing (to my ear) and unwieldy title and, consequently, I didn’t really know what to expect from it. My expectations hadn’t changed any after having seen the trailer either. Somebody had said, after also having seen the same trailer, that they assumed it was about some kind of devil-child like in The Omen movies. I couldn’t myself disagree with them entirely because, in many ways, the trailer was was cut like a horror movie, to some extent.

As you've probably guessed by now... I’ve not read the novel on which We Need To Talk About Kevin is based and any reference to the rather grim actions of the title character in the trailer were oblique at best. What I did know, however, is that it was directed by Lynne Ramsay, it’s her third feature length film and that I’d seen her last film, Morvern Callar, and thought it one of the most extraordinary films of that year. So, on the strength of Morvern Callar and the fact that one of the more artistically reliable actresses of contemporary cinema, Tilda Swinton, had a major role in it... I thought it best not to miss this one and I braved London as the times of the single daily screening at my local cineplex were preposterous, and watched it at a time better suited to the needs of the average cinema going public.

I was pretty sure, on the strength of her last feature, that We Need To Talk About Kevin would highlight a solid artist of the cinema directing a work which would demonstrate impeccable taste, great cinematography and a cast capable of giving some of the best performances in current cinema... and I was right. We Need To Talk About Kevin does all that and more. But for me, there were a few little negatives in their which kind of balanced out the movie so it became a little less than jaw dropping on this occasion.

The story, if the movie can be said to have one (as much as this director could be said to deal with such a locked in sequence of events that could make up such a thing as “a story”), is about Kevin’s mum Eva (played by Tilda Swinton) as she looks back over periods of her life of trying to raise an extremely difficult, hostile child, in the aftermath of a high school slaughter in which Kevin has taken a bow and quiver full of arrows and maimed and killed, not only all his classmates but also his father (played by the always fantastic John C. Reilly) and his little sister.

Eva, aggressively ostracised and terrorised by her local community in the wake of her son’s murder spree, now inhabits a world of red where the red paint from her vandalised house and car (which she is forever scrubbing away) is a constant visual metaphor for the blood on her son’s hands. The film is cut in a slightly less than linear way as visual or aural signals trigger her memory and jolt us back to different parts of her life. This kind of technique to give the viewer a slow sense of everything developing at once, like an old self developing polaroid picture will slowly fade into being all at once rather than bit by bit, coupled with the use in this film of large amounts of red, made me think of the closeness of style between Lynne Ramsey in this movie and another of my old directing heroes, Nicholas Roeg. Although Roeg’s sudden flash-back or indeed flash-forward cuts will often be a lot more dramatic in speed and intensity throughout the majority of his movies, the technique is very similar with Ramsay being, perhaps, a more laid back version of Roeg. Laid back in terms of the speed of the contrast, if you will, but not necessarily laid back in terms of dramatic gravitas, it has to be said.

One thing Ramsay seemed to be doing, and I didn’t notice this until a good two thirds of the way through the film but I suspect it holds true for the majority of the running time, is to pitch static shots against hand-held camera shots when the camera does need to move. For example, think of the cinema of Ozu where a scene is comprised of shots from locked down cameras with no motion from the apparatus involved at all... although in this movie there are certainly some of those static shots which have a lot of movement going on within the frame of the shot and which, on one memorable occasion, may trick your eye into thinking the camera is moving. This shot after shot after shot gatling gun technique creates a little jolt on the subconscious when immediately followed by a jerky, hand held shot as a character is being followed around by the cameraman and this kind of dynamism created by the juxtaposition of image types obviously gives the film a lively pacing to it which kind of seeps into you without really calling attention to itself. This is, of course, more evidence to support Ramsay’s genius as an artist of the moving image.

For me, though, there were a few things about the movie that made the final version much less than the sum of its parts, even though the thing taken as a whole was surely not a visual treat that was, in any way, uneasy to digest.

First of all, the film is being promoted with a quote implying that this is Tilda Swinton’s finest performance. Well it may be or it may not be but I don't think one could categorically say that this performance is in any way better than several of her others. And this is not to derogatise or diminish Swinton’s presence in this movie... I’ve certainly made it no secret in the past that I consider Tilda to be one of the most interesting on-screen personalities in many years and the quality of her work in this particular movie is as astonishing as some of her previous roles. It is, though, very much an ensemble piece with John C. Reilly giving good support and some absolutely amazing performances by the various actors playing Kevin at different stages of his life... you will have absolutely no sympathy for this character in any way, shape or form and his totally evil nature will grab ahold of you and not let you go.

My main problem with the movie, though, is that it never really gets grim enough for my liking. Here we are dealing with a terrible subject and a character who is all but going to pieces as she tries to cope with holding everything together... and yet we never really see that inner turmoil unleashed as something tangible on screen and nor do we see the actual events in question as they played out... only the reactions of those around the events. Now I’m not stupid (well, not completely), I realise that this muffled visual expression is designed to keep the tension just this side of the watched kettle never quite boiling and I know the actual events of the high school slaughter are designed to be more enhanced due to the audiences own imagination... and that kind of stuff usually works really well for me in that the implied narrative event will often be much more enhanced than the actual visual realisation of it. However, on this one I just needed more bleak and gloomy and ultimately the film didn’t quite measure up to my own expectations created by the set up of the films opening. But, frankly, that’s my own problem and not something a prospective viewer should worry about when going in to see this movie for the first time.

So... when we come down to it, what we really have is this. We Need To Talk About Kevin is not a film I could watch again like I could with Morvern Callar (which I’d be happy to watch at least once a year) but I’d still have to recommend it on the grounds that, despite the baggage I personally brought with me when I turned up at the cinema to watch this film... it’s still also everything I’d assumed it would be which was, to quote myself from above, a film made by “a solid artist of the cinema directing a work which would demonstrate impeccable taste, great cinematography and a cast capable of giving some of the best performances in current cinema”... so I was right all along, there’s absolutely no point in missing out on this one. Catch it before people start talking about things other than Kevin.