alicecbr Having had 5 children AND a software engineering career, I know how hard it is to raise children AND have a career and of course, you are always conflicted. This woman is a complete dolt, unforgivingly forgiving her monster son for blinding in one eye, their daughter and staying with the dolt of a husband who blindly favors his son, never blaming him for anything. Wonder how much truth there is with the school shooters. But only the Conn. kid killed his mom first. Wish I knew how similar this story is to the actual school shootings.Tilda Swinton at least plays the mother as a low self esteem creep, emotionally dependent upon her egotistical husband, pulled screaming AND KICKING INTO MOTHERHOOD.

Pjtaylor-96-138044 'We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)' is almost like a puzzle, one that doesn't have a definitive solution but is an enigma nonetheless. It unravels itself in a loose, dynamic way in which the very fabric of the film is used as a canvas for the central character's trauma to be splashed across the screen, explored in a volatile and vibrant way that gives a real sense of some sort of post-traumatic stress. This is not a film that holds your hand, nor is it even interested in answering any of the questions it asks, not directly anyway. Instead, it portrays its perhaps controversial events in a dream-like fashion, exuding a sense of an inescapable past that might as well be happening now. It's like our protagonist is wading through a waking nightmare, unable to move on from the events that shape the film both in her head and on the streets. It's a fantastic decision, then, to put us directly in that mindset, to force us to face her fears as she does the same. We are never outside of this story, never above its characters. Instead, we are right there with them, behind their eyes, seeing exactly what they see and still just as powerless to stop it. Not only is the direction, and the decision to edit it non-linearly, perfect, but so are the performances. The eponymous kid is quite creepy, though only in the most mundane of senses, and we simultaneously feel sorry for him, want to empathise with him and truly fear him. It's only natural to be afraid of what you can't understand and the central debate, of nature vs nurture, is expertly told almost exclusively through visuals. Until, that is, the feature's only misstep, which is still a minor one, that sees the final scene dip deeper into dialogue than ever before and almost over-explain it all. Thankfully, restraint takes hold before this sequence reaches its tipping point, so it just sticks out as its most unsuccessful moment as opposed to a totally tone-deaf and destructive one. In the end, we are perhaps no closer to understanding why the events of the film happened the way they did. Certainly, there are theories you can come up with, little hints here and there that could suggest motive. That's perhaps its most realistic aspect, though. The lack of a proper, and inherently cinematic, resolution that ties everything up in a little bow. Real life isn't like that. It's messy and sometimes it doesn't make sense. People do things without good reasons, regardless of their mentalities. The lack of a definitive answer is the best full-stop the feature could have provided. Because if we want to understand the character, and prevent things like this from continuing to happen in real-life, we need to talk about Kevin. 7/10

venusofhollywood The thing that bothered me the most about the story is the fact that the parents never held Kevin accountable for anything that he did, ever! It seemed like no matter how awful it got, they just let it go over and over again. I'm not entirely sure how he could pour chemicals into his sister's eye and get away with it with absolutely zero repercussions. I mean, she would have been screaming and in horrible pain, but she acted like she wasn't even upset about it or even remotely afraid of her abusive older brother. And why did the parents just let him call his sister stupid all the time? Normal parents would not stand for that! And as his actions get progressively more violent, they continue to just let everything go without ever saying anything. I mean, the guinea pig thing...really? She's just going to let that go without saying anything to anybody, particularly Kevin? What kind of parent would never once try to correct a child who is so cruel and destructive and violent and never shows any remorse? I haven't read the book, so I'm wondering if maybe the book portrays the mother a bit differently than the movie. I couldn't understand how she could be so weak. She basically allowed him to do what he did. She should have gotten psychiatric help for him years ago. He belonged in an inpatient treatment center of some kind. I felt sorry for her in a way, but in other ways she infuriated me. Overall it was well acted and visually interesting, but very dark subject matter. I don't mind dark subject matter when I can sympathize with the good guys, but in this case it was sometimes hard to sympathize with the mother since she never did the obvious things to try to get him to stop doing the things he was doing, never even once told him that he shouldn't do those things!

mikey-242-435767 The modern way of making a movie is to present situations and people in them that we have no backstory on. We are simultaneously trying to watch the movie, figure out what is going on and figure out who all these people are as well as what's going on. That's a horrible way to tell a story. I assume that there is some idea of "involving the viewer". Well, most viewers don't want to be "involved", they simply want a story told that they can understand. And any good story needs a base to spring from. Add to all the already mentioned problems that this movie just wanders all over the place in time. You hardly know where you are, when you are and what's going on. So this is bad times about 6 so it will not get more than 2 stars. That's the maximum for such a mess of a movie. I am 33 minutes into this and have so little idea of what is going on that I don't care. And I certainly don't care enough to continue watching it. Bye bye to a piece of utter trash. I might as well be watching Eraserhead again.