We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

Director: Lynne Ramsay
Writer(s): Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear, from a novel by Lionel Shriver
Starring: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, and Jasper Newell

Films about evil children are nothing new—in fact, such stories tend to be a fallback for the horror genre, with one, it seems, opening in theaters every month, or going direct-to-video every week. It's a popular storytelling device, perhaps mainly because of the success of The Omen franchise, but also because there's immediately a built-in relation for the audience: parents can imagine if their child(ren) acted this way, how they would cope; expectant mothers can get a tinge of fear just from the mere thought that the child they are carrying may be the devil himself; even those without children can still identify, because we were all children once, and generally put our parents through moments of sheer hell without being the spawn of Satan...imagine how much worse it would be if we were! The whole mother-child bond is the strongest in the world, with the father-child bond generally close behind, and so there's the automatic potential for response from the audience, because we've all experienced it in some way or another.

It is also the focus of Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin. But while it may deal with very common themes, it is not your typical “evil seed” film; in eschewing the “normal” causes of fictional wicked boys, Ramsay has created a chilling work that lays much of its foundation in reality. An exorcism won't save Kevin, because he's not possessed by anyone, or anything; he's just inherently evil, and makes it his life's work to psychologically torture his mother any possible chance he gets.

The film is interestingly told in a freewheeling, almost dreamlike manner; the effortlessness with which it works makes me wonder why more films, especially horror ones, don't attempt it more often. We cut back and forth in time frequently, with “present” events involving Eva Khatchadourian (Kevin's mother, and the object of his hatred) giving way to specific, painful memories of her past. It is in this fashion that the entire story is told. It might sound confusing, and it is at first, but it's done in such a manner that within just a few minutes, it becomes second-nature, as clear and concise as a standard narrative.

Through fragments, we follow Eva and her husband, Franklin (journeyman John C. Reilly, who can't seem to turn down a role) as she learns she is pregnant with Kevin, a development that she clearly isn't interested in. Is it because she has a feeling that her son will be an emotionless ball of hate, or is her reservations toward motherhood partially responsible for making him the way he is? Once he comes out into the world, things do not get better for poor Eva: her (forced) attempts to bond with him are met with disinterest, even from a very young age. As Kevin gets older, his “disinterest” grows with him, into complete contempt: his mother may tend to be the focus of this, but it is also clear he has a disregard for just about everyone around him.

Then Eva learns she is pregnant again, and this time, with a girl. The hope is that having someone to play with will turn Kevin into a good person, but the new family member seems to have no effect on his mean-streak—within moments of her birth, he's sprinkling water on the newborn baby's face, making it cry. Time does not seem to tame his violent tendencies, and he makes life miserable for his sister, culminating in a tragic “accident” that leads to her need for a glass eye.

Now a couple of the holes start to show in an otherwise tight script, because Franklin continues to side with Kevin at all costs. In the beginning, it makes sense, as Kevin does go out of his way to show his father he loves him, while remaining cold toward his mother. But fifteen years later, and the father still can't see the evil that surrounds his son? This gives way to another tired contrivance: Franklin thinks all of Eva's complaints are in her head. If we, as the audience, are also supposed to question her sanity, the film never bothers to make that clear for us—what is made abundantly clear is that Kevin really is a contemptible child, and despite her best (half-assed) attempts, Eva can never penetrate through the emotionless shell that is her son.

These individual scenes lead up to one catastrophic event that ruins everyone's lives; it is an event so horrific, that random passersby still randomly smack Eva out in public, and vandalize her property, excoriating her for something that she had nothing to do with. I understand in this society, parents are generally blamed for the actions of their children—sometimes accurately, oftentimes not—but the level of scorn that she faces is completely over-the-top. At first, it creates sympathy for Eva, which I think is the point, but as the ridicule continues, she just comes off as an idiot for not escaping a town that makes it painfully obvious that she is unwelcome there.

When all is said and done, We Need to Talk About Kevin is nevertheless an effective slice of evil child horror, offering up a difficult scenario that offers no easy answers. It is frequently confrontational and more than a little disturbing, relying on solid writing and a dread-filled atmosphere to keep the viewer interested, rather than resorting to gore or cheap shocks. It also functions as an eye-opening counterattack to those that frequently hold parents accountable for the violent actions of their children, positing the uncomfortable notion that some children, despite their surroundings, are simply born to hate.

RATING: 7.5/10

As a side note, the film version curiously seems to want to make Kevin's crime a secret—if you want it to be, don't read the single-sentence synopsis for the novel, which plainly states what it is. I made that mistake during a break in the movie (dog had to be let out), and while I can't say it ruined anything for me, I would have rather found out during the course of watching it.

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Entertainment (2015)

Director: Rick Alvarez
Writer(s): Alvarez, Tim Heidecker, and Gregg Turkington
Starring: Gregg Turkington, John C. Reilly, and Tye Sheridan

I like Neil Hamburger. Like, a lot. His “stand-up” performance is one of only a handful of live shows, music or otherwise, that I have ever been to. His comedy is an acquired taste, and one that most people probably don’t have any interest in acquiring: Neil’s entire set consists of telling question-and-answer jokes to the audience, gagging and coughing loudly to cover the silence in between the question and the answer, to prevent his fans from revealing the answer before he can (example joke: “Why does Arby’s lather their sandwiches in mayo? (long pause featuring constant hacking and coughing while crowd shouts out answers). So they’re easier to flush down the toilet!”). Not surprisingly, he is also awkward, presenting himself as a sad-sack loser who frequently sobs in between jokes that are of particularly poor taste, blaming the audience for making him tell it.  He occasionally berates audience members who are too loud, unleashing vulgar, brutal tirades that are probably more authentic to him than we realize. You would think it would be a thankless, dead-end job, but he has opened for acts such as Faith no More (another one of my faves), and Tenacious D, and has also been booed at quite a few festivals, comprised of audiences that aren’t quite in on the joke. It’s a shtick that shouldn’t be funny for more than a couple of minutes, but I find him absolutely hilarious.

What makes the whole setup even more “endearing” (for lack of a better term) is that Neil Hamburger is actually a character played by Gregg Turkington, a well-respected member of the music underground. He ran Armadillo Records for a few years in the early-to-late ‘90s. He was a tour manager for Link Wray, and one of my personal favorite bands, Mr. Bungle. He was a founding member of the musical duo Zip Code Rapists, collaborated with Trey Spruance (also a member of Mr. Bungle) in his band Secret Chiefs 3, has provided voices to mostly one-off characters in several animated shows, including “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and “Adventure Time”, made small appearances in films like Ant-Man, as well as in television shows, like the series finale of "CSI", and ran the clever blog “Warm Voices Rearranged: Anagram Record Reviews” with fellow musician Brandon Kearney. This is one of those guys that manages to be both prolific, yet criminally underrated at the same time.

If you’re already lost on any part of the above two paragraphs, then I'll be frank: Entertainment is not for you. It wasn’t for my wife, who doesn't share near the affection for Mr. Turkington that I do, and it almost wasn’t for me. I really can’t see this movie appealing to anyone that isn’t a huge fan of Mr. Hamburger, because when he isn’t telling his trademark “jokes”, then he’s just walking around, as his “real-life” alter ego Gregg Turkington, in a variety of barren desert settings. It starts off intriguing, but once the formula repeats itself over and over again, it gradually threatens to become an endurance test; thankfully, it redeems itself a little bit toward the end, when his character goes off the deep end, and the events, and people, surrounding him get weirder and weirder.

There really isn’t a plot to speak of, at least in the traditional sense; I wasn’t joking when I said that this film more or less follows a rather repetitive formula: Gregg travels to a new location in the desert in his old white car, then there are a few shots of him looking quiet and depressed as he gets ready in the dressing room of some dingy bar, usually while the character credited as “Eddie the Opener” (an intentionally-terrible mime, played by Tye Sheridan) performs on stage; occasionally, the two come together to have an awkward conversation. After this, he goes to his hotel room, where he calls his daughter on the phone and leaves her a message about how his day went. It’s always a message; even she doesn’t seem to want to hear from her father anymore. Then, he usually stares off into the distance for a while longer before going to sleep.

When he wakes up, he usually takes some kind of a local tour (of an oil field, or automobile graveyard, or some similar “attraction”), where we get more quiet stares into space. If we’re lucky, we might actually get some human interaction, though even those instances get more and more bizarre as they slowly get more frequent. In the beginning, he meets up with his cousin, John (John C. Reilly, who you just knew had to show up here somewhere), whom he hasn’t seen in a decade. John thinks like a businessman, and is constantly thinking of ways that he can help Neil gain larger crowds for his shows (he also appears to be just as sincere praising his cousin’s work, as he is completely baffled by the material). But Neil doesn’t seem to have any interest in bigger or better things; as depressed as he always appears to be on the outside, he is apparently more content than we think. Either that, or he’s simply just unmotivated.

One night, he has a brutal encounter with a woman at a bar; after she causes a disruption in his set, he goes off on her the way he does anyone daring enough to interrupt him. However, she doesn’t take it well at all, and throws her drink at him. This only makes him more mad, as he verbally tears into her with a reckless abandon, going above and beyond the norms of decency; he crosses the line here from a “mock hatred” of his audience to genuine contempt, and watching the result is genuinely uncomfortable. She confronts him outside after the show, breaking his glasses and tearing his shirt. Oh, the life of an entertainer. (As an aside for the uninitiated, his performances in real life are way more fun and less cruel than they appear on here; unless he’s the opening act, or playing at a festival, the audience is always in on the joke and play along accordingly. If the audience isn’t familiar…well, things feel more dangerous for Neil than anyone in the audience.)

The film’s minimalistic style, the lack of a narrative, and Neil’s cringe-inducing jokes are going to be enough to turn off a vast majority of its audience. The constantly-droning score doesn’t really help much, as it always sounds like it's hinting at ominous events that never happen. Unsurprisingly, critics—who always have to feed off of each other and pretend to get things that they don’t actually get, much like a wine connoisseur pretends to have the capability of differentiating a 100-year-old bottle of Dom Perignon from a recent vintage of a grocery store brand, simply based on taste—have taken to it, while audiences seem to loathe it. That’s about what I would expect from a film that seems to try very hard to capture the desolation and loneliness of its main character. Occasionally, it works, but it relies on silence and empty stares far too many times to convey its message, as if having it take place completely in a seemingly endless parade of desert didn’t already establish that from the outset.

I hinted at it earlier, but things get really bizarre toward the end, with a nervous man named Tommy (played by Michael Cera) waiting for The Comedian (as he is credited in the movie; he is never referred to by name) and asking to stay with him in his car. But even scenes like this, ones that could have some kind of emotional resolution or resonance, are treated with a blatant indifference that borders on maddening; after the rather mysterious encounter, in which Tommy keeps insisting that The Comedian offer him some company until help arrives for his broken-down car, and The Comedian’s tolerance seems to be reaching an inescapable boiling point, it simply cuts to the next scene. There’s no resolution, and no mention of what either of them decided to do. I get that passiveness is simply part of its style, but the distance with which it treats its main character only serves to further alienate the viewer.

Despite the film's overall tediousness, I have to say that I actually kind of liked it, though again, it all has to do with my familiarity of the material (and its subject) moreso than actual execution. The ending, which I mentioned earlier, also helped to save it a bit for me; that’s when things start to go off the deep end, culminating in an emotional moment that works, even if it is simply because it’s one of the only concrete things that happens in the entire film. Unfortunately, it still manages to ramble on a bit longer, culminating in an abrupt ending that was more frustrating than anything else. When all is said and done, the final joke ends up on the viewer; then again, maybe that was the whole point all along.

RECAP: Much like this review, Rick Alverson's Entertainment is wandering, and overlong, and pretentious, and repetitive, and boring, and it feels like an “inside joke” more than a cohesive movie. But I have a certain fondness for the character of Neil Hamburger (a stand up “comic”, played by Gregg Turkington), so I tolerated the ensuing nothingness a lot more than most will be able to. In fact, many have dismissed this as complete garbage, something that, looking from the eyes of someone else, I can’t really argue. The soundtrack is actually really good, the few times that actual music is heard, while the droning, electronic score, which seems to suggest an ominous threat that isn’t there, is overused. If you’re a fan of Neil, then you might find something to like here; if you’ve never heard of him, hate him, or are indifferent to his existence, then you stand to gain nothing by watching this.

RATING: 5.5/10

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The Lobster (2015)

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Writer(s): Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou
Starring: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Jessica Barden, and John C. Reilly

I have never minced words when it comes to the kinds of films I tend to like. For example, I avoid Hollywood “blockbusters” like the plague, because watching $200 million worth of computer effects, mixed with embarrassing tidbits of required “humor”, just does nothing for me. Likewise, I get bored very easily, so slogging through derivative drivel is the quickest way to ensure that I'll be dozing off at around the midway point. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that I'm somewhat of a cinema snob, and that's precisely why Yorgos Lanthimos's The Lobster appealed to me.

It's the kind of film where all you need to do is read a couple sentences of the plot synopsis to know that it is strange: It all takes place in a mysterious future society where single people are rounded up and taken to The Hotel; there they have 45 days to fall in love with a suitable match, or else they will live out the rest of their lives as an animal of their own choosing.

In this case, we follow David (Colin Farrell), an awkward (as everyone in this movie is), unconfident nerd of a man that chooses the titular character because, among other reasons, he “enjoys the sea”. He arrives at The Hotel with his dog, which also happens to be his brother (he failed to find a mate during his 45-day sentence) and is notified of the ground rules: no sex between single people is allowed, nor is masturbation, but oral sex from the hotel's maid is fine. Other than that, the Singles are free to walk around and mingle, but must arrive in time for dinner, where all inhabitants watch mandatory dinner skits extolling the virtues of partnership (in one, a woman walking alone is attacked by a man, which doesn't happen when she has a husband walking with her; in another, a lonely man chokes to death, whereas his wife performs the Heimlich and saves him).

The humor, which is rather dry and awkward, unquestionably won't be for everyone, but there are some moments that I found downright hilarious. A majority of them involve David's forced attempt to match with a lady known only as Heartless Woman, so-called for her stunning disregard for human suffering. In one instance, David joins Heartless Woman in a hot tub, where she proceeds to choke to death on an olive, with David making no effort to help her—as it turns out, she was merely attempting to test their compatibility together. Ironically, by not doing anything to save her, Heartless Woman agrees that they would make a good match.  On paper, this sequence might not sound funny, but thanks to the atmosphere of deadpan humor, Yanthimos pulls it off with straight-faced fervor.

Since it's a movie that will widely be classified as “bizarre”, that means John C. Reilly is required by law to appear in it; he fulfills his contractual obligation by playing a character known only as Lisping Man (none of the Singles in the mansion are referred to by name; instead they are called by identifying traits), who ends up receiving a harsh, primitive punishment for masturbating in his Hotel room (in a scene that somehow manages to be both unnerving and completely absurd).

Shortly after this, Heartless Woman discovers that David has only been pretending to be like her all along, when she beats his dog/brother to death. Upon hearing this, and seeing the evidence of blood all over her feet and legs, he runs into the bathroom to cry, and is caught; feeling their partnership was founded on a lie, she threatens to report him to the Hotel Manager, where he will be subject to punishment. David has other ideas, though: with the help of the maid, he tranquilizes Heartless Woman, and turns her into an unspecified animal. Realizing he will probably be caught if he sticks around, he escapes the Hotel and runs off into The Woods, joining a pack of nomads known only as Loners.

Even the Loners have their own set of rules, and chief among them is that romance between Loners is punishable by the “red kiss”: that's where the offending couple have their lips cut off and are then forced to press them together. Our narrator, who is known only as Short-Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz), mentions that there is also “red intercourse” punishment, but she has never seen it done and doesn't even want to imagine what it could possibly entail. She gets closer and closer to possibly finding out, as she quickly falls for David, something that gradually starts to rub the leader of the Loners (Lea Seydoux) the wrong way. Will their love be enough to save them from the ire of their group, or will they have to face their stiff punishment?

There is a lot of social commentary in The Lobster, and perhaps the most effective bit is the way that partnership and marriage is forced on the inhabitants of The City; it's not a far cry at all from the way single people are generally referred to as “inferior” in today's society. From the moment we are old enough to listen, most people are taught that a life well-lived means falling in love with someone, getting married, and having children; the laws of The City consist of this idea taken to chilling extremes.

The performances are hard to critique, because all of the actors are intentionally wooden and awkward, which feed into the film's deadpan style; this was clearly designed to bring attention to the emotionless state of this future, where people quite literally go through the entire motion of life. It's a fascinating little touch--one that, like everything else in this movie, seems designed to divide viewers right down the middle—but an artistic decision that also makes sense within the context of the story. Even more telling is that it's impossible to imagine this film being played straight.

It doesn't always succeed in what it's trying to do; it does manage to taper off a bit as it winds down from its identity as awkward comedy, and starts focusing more on the love story aspect. I thought the first 90 minutes were actually pretty brisk, with everything moving along at a great pace, and then it kind of seemed to run out of ideas, ironically once the focus came on the budding romance between David and Short-Sighted Woman. That's not to say that I found it dull at any point, just that it's ideas taper off at just the moment I was expecting them to kick into overdrive.

There is also quite a bit of animal cruelty, so those with an affinity for the well-being of animals might have a difficult time making it through a couple of parts. Of course, these scenes are simulated, so no animals are actually harmed, but the scenes are realistic enough that it could easily upset people. This is neither a “pro”, nor “con” so much as it is just a warning...I was unprepared for it, and while the animal violence didn't upset me, it definitely did my wife, to the point that I don't think she would have agreed to watch it with me had she been made aware of it beforehand.

Lanthimos, you may recall, is also the director of Dogtooth, another film that's fairly well-known in some circles for its abounding strangeness. If you like that film, chances are you will like this one; at the very least, you will know what to expect. I liked Dogtooth, but wasn't blown away by it. The Lobster, though, feels like the perfect natural extension of his talents, taking a surrealistic set of ideas, and somehow combining them in such a way that it could appeal to more open-minded mainstream viewers; for this reason alone, it should be considered some kind of masterpiece.

RATING: 8/10

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