Category Archives: Lynne Ramsay

You Were Never Really Here (2018)

I’m conflicted. Lynne Ramsay’s (Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About KevinYou Were Never Really Here is not a great movie. Yet it received an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and four stars on Roger Ebert’s website. A few times during my viewing, I wanted to say aloud, “This movie sucks,” but, of course, that is something I would not do. But you can imagine how surprised I was when the movie received applause after its conclusion. I was flabbergasted, but I was in an art theatre (this was the only place it was showing). It had been a good year and a half (Arrival) since the audience had last clapped after a movie. So, I decided to read a little about this movie and see what I missed that others saw. First, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance (Gladiator, Walk the Line) was excellent. He was so even and heavy as a down and outgun for hire suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from what he witnessed while serving in the military and from suffering from events of his childhood he was never able to process.

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We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

we need to talk about kevin movie posterWow. We Need to Talk About Kevin is not a movie for everyone. It’s a movie that most people I know could not get through. This movie aimed to educate and encourage discussion about a topic that feels like it is becoming all too familiar. It’s hard to target an audience for this movie. It has two things going against it that might turn viewers within the first 15 minutes or at any point after that. The first and more important one is the topic. This movie tells the story of a mother whose 16-year-old son is in prison after having murdered many of his classmates in a mass killing that resembles the Columbine High School massacre. There will be a large number of people who will not even consider watching a movie based on a topic like this. The second, and far less important, reason, why people might struggle to make it to the end is because of its, at times, randomness. It goes back and forth between the present and past and between real and imagined life. The transitions are inconsistent. If you’ve seen either Melancholia or The Tree of Life, it sometimes has that sort of feel. I liked Melancholia and hated every second of The Tree of Life. However, I gave. We Need to Talk About Kevin a chance. It held my attention for the entire movie.
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