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Lynne Ramsay is one of the prime examples of how directorial talent doesn’t ensure an easy cinematic career. She started her career explosively, captivating Cannes in the mid-90s with her student shorts, before releasing her critically lauded and Criterion-captured freshman feature Ratcatcher in 1999, and the daring Morvern Callar in 2002. But then Ramsay disappeared from the cinematic landscape, plagued with behind-the-scenes creative and financial woes. She spent four years adapting The Lovely Bones, before it was handed over to Peter Jackson for a less than stellar adaptation. She was courted for Jane Eyre, but refused the offer when she wasn’t allowed to adapt the material herself. Her luck began to turn when Lynne Ramsay settled on Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. The road was hard, as the filmmaker battled financial woes and rigid timeframes, but Ramsay persevered to create one of the most captivating...

Chicago – Many critics failed to take Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin” seriously, dismissing it as an art house retread of “The Omen.” Such a simplistic label fails to take into account the film’s carefully textured portrait of a deeply fractured mother-son relationship. Though the film takes its premise to melodramatic extremes, it does harbor considerable insight into the repercussions of a disconnect between parent and child.

Eva (Tilda Swinton) is the sort of mother who causes strangers to wince while passing her in the supermarket. She can barely contain the intense dislike that she feels for her child. Motherhood is a form of entrapment in her eyes, and her attempts to care for her young son lack any sense of genuine compassion. When she snaps on a hollow smile to calm her crying son, the moment is both chilling and darkly funny. It only gets...

Lynne Ramsay likes to trudge through the dark depths of the human spirit, and after a nine year period without a film in the can, she’s made a return to form that surpasses her early work in nearly every way. We Need To Talk About Kevin is a masterfully made, soul pummeling psychological drama about the depth of motherly responsibility, and the malicious psychopathy of unwavering evil. Her third feature shines with a power house performance by the always wonderful Tilda Swinton, as well as strong showings by a cast of different aged kids (from eldest to youngest – Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell, and Rocky Duer) that portray her utterly terrifying son with unhinged brilliance. But it’s not just the astute acting that shines. Ramsay’s choice in seamless non-linearity, and a striking visual palette that constantly prophesies the violent climax we all knew was inevitable, culminate to make...

We were very much on the fence for a long time in terms of covering We Need to Talk About Kevin, and I'm glad we came to our senses because what we have here is a truly chilling tale of madness. The good news? You can see it for yourself this May!

We Need to Talk About Kevin stars Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell, and Ashley Gerasimovich.

Per DVD Active, Oscilloscope Pictures has announced DVD ($29.99) and Blu-ray ($34.99) releases of We Need to Talk About Kevin for May 29th. Extras will include extra footage from the famous "La Tomatina" tomato festival in Spain, an interview with author Lionel Shriver, two featurettes ("Behind the Scenes of Kevin", "In Conversation - Telluride Film Festival Honors Tilda Swinton"), the original theatrical trailer, and an exclusive essay by psychologist Mark Stafford.

Synopsis

Kevin's mother struggles to love her strange child, despite...

We were on the fence about covering Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin for a long time around here because we weren't sure how much of a horror flick it is. Having just seen it, we are happy to report that, yes, it's well within our genre, and we dug it a lot!

So much so that we set out to score you cats a chance to win yourself the special limited edition one-sheet for the flick. To enter, just send us an E-mail Here including your Full Name And Mailing Address. We’ll take care of the rest.

We Need to Talk About Kevin stars Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell, and Ashley Gerasimovich. Look for it in limited theatrical release opening wider each week.

Synopsis

Kevin's mother struggles to love her strange child, despite the increasingly vicious things he says and does as he grows up.

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Quite deliberately, We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) provokes discussion. Why is Kevin evil? Was he born that way? Did his mother make him that way by withholding love? Is he a manifestation of his mother’s own hatred toward humanity? Questions one could argue that director Lynne Ramsay and screenwriter Rory Kinnear (adapted from Lionel Shriver’s novel) never intended their audience to be able to answer satisfactorily.

To describe the film as ‘arty’ would be doing everyone involved a disservice, but there is no getting away from its obvious stylisation. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designer Judy Becker and costume designer Catherine George deserve credit for combing their talents to form a cohesive palette which incorporates flashes, splashes and swathes of deep red. Incidentally, Lynne Ramsay...

Lynne Ramsay’s We Need To Talk About Kevin made waves earlier this year when it played at the Cannes International Film Festival and the drama has enjoyed a slew of critical praise since. Focusing on the rearing of a child that goes horribly wrong at the hands of Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly, this is a film that asks more questions than it answers. In other words, it will spark discussion (or talk, if you will).

Last month I had the pleasure of speaking with Ramsay over the phone. We discussed a film with a similar premise, the difficulty with making the film, how they shot the opening sequence that depicts the La Tomatina festival, and much more. Below you can find the full transcript, and you can look for the film in limited release now.

The Film Stage: First off, let me say that I loved the film.

Chicago – The mother and son relationship is perhaps one of the most complicated ever invented. In giving birth to an opposing gender, the woman must then deal with a maturation process foreign to her own, with all the potential psychosis attached. Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller play the game in “We Need to Talk About Kevin.”

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Adapted from a novel in bold emotional detail by director Lynn Ramsay, “Kevin” pulls no punches in following the mother/son conundrum from birth to adolescence, chronicling a born-to-be-bad social misfit and the desperate means he practices in the push-pull of dear old Mom. The Oedipal Complex – boy wants to have his mother and kill his father – is also thematically on display, with stark ramifications for a combination of that theory with a modern, violent society.

The story is told in flashback through Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton), a woman who is living in...

Chicago – In the new film, “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” there is a breakout performance that is simply mind-blowing. Playing opposite the conflicted mother – portrayed by the great Tilda Swinton – is Ezra Miller, as her son Kevin. The character is a teenager in crisis, motivated by forces beyond his control.

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” is remarkable because it casts no judgment as it presents the members of a typical American middle class family. In this circumstance, the son is born to be bad, and increases his erratic behavior in crossing over to adolescence. How Tilda Swinton reacts as his mother and John C. Reilly as his father is the consequence of a bad dream-like situation. The film is as real as it is exaggerated, and adds insight to the modern expectations of the “perfect” nuclear family.

Ezra Miller Rosins Up the Bow in ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin...

A new poster has debuted for We Need to Talk About Kevin, which expanded to theaters nationwide on January 13 after a successful run in limited release. Tilda Swinton stars as the mother of a mysterious child named Kevin (Ezra Miller), in a story that follows her family's horrific plight through both present day and flashbacks. Take a look at this retro 1-sheet below, which is reminiscent of horror poster designs from the 1960s.

We Need to Talk About Kevin was released December 9th, 2011 and stars Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell, Rock Duer, Ashley Gerasimovich, Siobhan Fallon, Alex Manette. The film is directed by Lynne Ramsay.

We Need To Talk About Kevin has been gathering acclaim since its debut at last year's Cannes Film Festival.  Lynne Ramsay's first film since her 2002 critical hit Morvern Callar, paints a claustrophobic nightmare for the mother of an evil son whose committed unspeakable acts. The film begins a gradual, national rollout this weekend in New York as its star, Tilda Swinton is a Best Actress nominee (Motion Picture-Drama), across the country, at Sunday's Golden Globes in Beverly Hills.  Ramsay's also seen her share of glory for Kevin, including a Best Director win at the British Independent Film Awards (England's equivalent of the Indie Spirits).  The writer/director made time for Collider during a hectic press tour.  Hit the jump for the transcription and audio of her interview about Kevin, including lots of exclusive details on why she probably won't give Patti Smith's autobiography a big screen treatment, other...

We Need to Talk About Kevin represents an immensely exciting piece of filmmaking from Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar). That might seem like an odd label for this adaptation of Lionel Shriver‘s best-selling novel, considering the relentlessly harrowing subject matter in question, but it’s hard to come up with any other phrase to describe the sheer vivacity of Ramsay‘s directorial approach. This is indeed a film that keeps your emotions in constant flux — terrorized by the actions of the titular character in one moment, happily floored by Ramsay’s consistently fresh choices the next.

It’s worth mentioning, too, that Ramsay, along with Rory Kinnear, wrote the film’s screenplay, which is a unique feat of adaptation in its own right. Like a few recent films — Sean Durkin‘s Martha Marcy May Marlene jumps immediately to mind — We Need to Talk About Kevin bleeds the past into the present,...

Countdown to Top Ten 2K11 is a column with one simple goal: to help you decide what films you need to see before making your end of the year top ten list. Each installment features my thoughts on a critically acclaimed 2011 movie, a sampling of other critics' reactions, the odds of the film making my own list, and the reasons why it might make yours.

This time we're covering "We Need to Talk About Kevin," the disturbing story of a mass murdering kid and his shell-shocked mom. But will this mother-son drama end up as the big daddy on your year-end top ten list? Let's find out.

Movie: "We Need to Talk About Kevin"

Director: Lynne Ramsay

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 84%

Plot Synopsis: A woman struggles to come to grips with her teenage son's brutal crimes, which have left her a pariah and an outcast in her hometown.

What the Critics...

Writer-director Lynne Ramsay discusses We Need to Talk About Kevin, working with Tilda Swinton, and much more.

Lynne Ramsay is a director who has gained a cult following through her first two movies, Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar, and (hopefully) will gain a larger following with her third offering, We Need to Talk About Kevin. This wonderful indie drama follows Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton), a mother whose traumatic plight we follow through a unique narrative style. I recently had the privilege of speaking with Lynne Ramsay over the phone about We Need to Talk About Kevin, which opens in limited release December 9, and here's what she had to say.

I stuck around for the Q&A after the movie, and Tilda (Swinton) talked a bit about the differences between the book and the movie. I haven't read the book, but I thought it was interesting that the book, it seems, is a series of letters.

We Need to Talk About Kevin Trailer. Lynne Ramsay‘s We Need to Talk About (2011) movie trailer stars John C. Reilly, Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller, Siobhan Fallon, and Ursula Parker. We Need to Talk About Kevin‘s plot synopsis: based on the book by Lionel Shriver, ”Eva puts her ambitions and career aside to give birth to Kevin. The relationship between mother and son is difficult from the very first years. When Kevin is 15 , he does something irrational and unforgiveable in the eyes of the entire community. Eva grapples with her own feelings of grief and responsibility. Did she ever love her son? And how much of what Kevin did was her fault?”

We previously posted the We Need to Talk About (2011) UK movie trailer.

We Need to Talk About Kevin also stars Ashley Gerasimovich, Lauren Fox, Jennifer Kim, James Chen, Anthony Del Negro, Jasper Newell, Kimberley Drummond, Joseph Melendez,...

Oscilloscope has released another great poster for Lynne Ramsay's unnerving drama We Need to Talk about Kevin, while New Line Cinema continues to throw out unimaginative posters for New Year's Eve. While I wasn't enamored of the UK quad for Kevin, the past two have been terrific, and this is the best one yet. It's the first poster to show young Kevin (Jasper Newell), who is even creepier than the teenage version (Ezra Miller). I'm not sure where Newell came from, but the movie wouldn't work as well without him. Of course, the real gem is Tilda Swinton who gives the one of the best performances I've seen this year. And then there's New Year's Eve, which should just change its title to Famous People Paid for a Few Days Work. Hit the jump to check out the posters. We Need to Talk about Kevin and New Year's Eve both open on December 9th.

Tilda Swinton leads an excellent cast in a thoughtful and deeply disturbing adaptation of Lionel Shriver's novel

The general outline of Lionel Shriver's novel must be widely familiar by now. We Need to Talk About Kevin has been around for eight years, there's a brief synopsis of the plot on the cover of the paperback, and the film was widely discussed when it premiered in Cannes last May and to most people's surprise failed to win a major prize.

It is an astonishing, truly shocking book that connects unspoken terrors in the domestic world to social horrors exploding in public. It uses the epistolary method, which like the diary form was popular among early novelists as a way of giving fiction a documentary authenticity. In this case the letters are written by Eva Khatchadourian, an adventurous travel writer and tour organiser, to her absent husband. She's a classic unreliable narrator,...

We Need To Talk About Kevin hits cinemas today, but there's still time for one last poster! And it's a rather unsettling one too, what with those Joker-friendly colours and Ezra Miller's disturbed and disturbing Kevin looking rather intense in the middle.The film, for those who haven't read the Lionel Shriver novel on which it's based, tells the story of Eva (Tilda Swinton), her son Kevin (Miller as a teenager; plus Jasper Newell and Rocky Duer as his younger incarnations) and her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly). It's largely told from Eva's point of view, as she looks back on the family's life following a monstrous tragedy.We Need To Talk About Kevin has already been wowing them at festivals all over the world, so get along and check it out.

Tilda Swinton generally never fails to impress audiences in anything she turns her hand to. Indeed, what can honestly be said about Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s riveting and utterly chilling book, We Need To Talk About Kevin, is that the role was written unquestionably for Swinton – or even the book’s character for that matter.

Shriver even quotes in the back of her book that the film adaptation is “well cast, beautifully shot and thematically loyal” to her novel. Any anomalies that arise from watching the film are purely subjective as a result of what you’ve already visualise while reading mother Eva’s (Swinton) story – and there are a few, perhaps, minor ones.

Travel journalist Eva never wanted to be a mother, certainly not to a boy who murders seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who tried to befriend him.

We Need to Talk About Kevin UK Trailer. Lynne Ramsay‘s We Need to Talk About (2011) UK movie trailer stars John C. Reilly, Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller, Siobhan Fallon, and Ursula Parker. We Need to Talk About Kevin‘s plot synopsis: “Eva puts her ambitions and career aside to give birth to Kevin. The relationship between mother and son is difficult from the very first years. When Kevin is 15 , he does something irrational and unforgiveable in the eyes of the entire community. Eva grapples with her own feelings of grief and responsibility. Did she ever love her son? And how much of what Kevin did was her fault?”

I have been waiting for a good representation of We Need to Talk About Kevin to post and this UK movie trailer is it. It doesn’t give everything away from the book yet hints at the three acts of the film very cleverly through the editing.

Updated through 5/17.

We Need to Talk About Kevin "heralds the rebirth of director Lynne Ramsay, who shot Ratcatcher in 1999, Morvern Callar in 2001 and then dropped clean off the map. She's been away too long." The Guardian's Xan Brooks finds this comeback "extraordinary — a maternal nightmare fired by a narrative that's not so much fractured as liquid; blending and folding its time-frame to mesmeric effect. Tilda Swinton is the middle-class American mum, toiling to process the actions of her sociopath son (Ezra Miller, positively sulphurous). Along the way, Ramsay's intense, distinctive visuals work a curious alchemy on Lionel Shriver's source novel, navigating a central conceit (the demon seed!) that in other hands might come across as crass and cheap."

"The novel was a series of letters, written by Eve (Swinton) to her husband in the aftermath of Kevin's actions; the film flickers and skips between moments like memory, or a bad dream,...

Reviewed by Aaron Hillis

(from the 2011 Cannes Film Festival)

Directed by: Lynne Ramsay

Written by: Lynne Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear

Starring: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller and Ashley Gerasimovich

Only slightly more prolific than fellow cinematic impressionist and Cannes competitor Terrence Malick, Lynne Ramsay’s third film in a dozen years (following 1999′s “Ratcatcher” and 2002′s “Morvern Callar”) is worth the wait and, indeed, a marvelous and moving work of art we need to talk about. Sustaining a disorienting rigor without losing its emotional focus, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” radically transforms the first-person storytelling of Lionel Shriver’s acclaimed 2003 bestseller — about a mother’s grief, guilt and ostracism after her teenage son orchestrates a high-school massacre — into a phantasmagoric tone poem and booby-trapped bad-seed drama.

Always remarkable but here a revelation, Tilda Swinton wears no monster makeup to play a zombie named Eva — that is,...

Reviewed by Aaron Hillis

(from the 2011 Cannes Film Festival)

Directed by: Lynne Ramsay

Written by: Lynne Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear

Starring: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller and Ashley Gerasimovich

Only slightly more prolific than fellow cinematic impressionist and Cannes competitor Terrence Malick, Lynne Ramsay’s third film in a dozen years (following 1999′s “Ratcatcher” and 2002′s “Morvern Callar”) is worth the wait and, indeed, a marvelous and moving work of art we need to talk about. Sustaining a disorienting rigor without losing its emotional focus, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” radically transforms the first-person storytelling of Lionel Shriver’s acclaimed 2003 bestseller — about a mother’s grief, guilt and ostracism after her teenage son orchestrates a high-school massacre — into a phantasmagoric tone poem and booby-trapped bad-seed drama.

Always remarkable but here a revelation, Tilda Swinton wears no monster makeup to play a zombie named Eva — that is,...

Adapted from a novel written by Lionel Shriver in 2003, We Need to Talk about Kevin is told from the prospective of a mother whose teenage son commits a massacre at his high school. The mother deals with the murders that her son has committed by frequently writing letters that discuss the nature of her child to her estranged husband. With beautiful cinematography and symbolism, Lynne Ramsay, a Scottish film director, has approached her third film in a distinct way. Ramsay grasped the concept of the story and created her own interpretation in this adaptation.

Dramatically opening with a striking scene where actress Tilda Swinton, who plays Eva, is submerged in a sea of smashed red tomatoes. The camera gives an overhead shot of Eva being carried away crucifix style by a group of people. As the scene quickly changes, we are reacquainted with the color red, as red paint covers...

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

The two toughest questions out of the many I kept posing myself during yesterday morning’s press screening of Lynne Ramsay’s powerfully gripping and emotionally charged drama We Need To Talk About Kevin were;

1) Can someone be born evil?

2) What would it be like to be the mother??

Upon leaving the Lumiere theatre the answer to the first was a definite yes and the answer to the second you can only know having seen We Need To Talk About Kevin, a unique movie about overcoming extreme loss and perhaps not since Memento have I been so affected by a troubled and lost soul searching for answers at the back of the memory tank.

An adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s popular but harrowing 2003 novel, Tilda Swinton stars as Eva, the broken mother of her teenage son’s unimaginable decision to cause a cold-blooded massacre at his school.

Era Miller and Tilda Swinton in We Need to Talk About Kevin

Photo: BBC Films and UK Film Council We Need to Talk about Kevin opens with a ghostly backdoor drape wafting in the night breeze. The sound of a sprinkler echoes throughout the theater as we're drawn deeper into a bright ethereal light. White is soon replaced with red as we're whisked to the La Tomatina festival in Valencia, Spain. It's our first glimpse of Eva (Tilda Swinton) as she's carried on her back over the masses before she's lowered to the ground and showered with tomato pulp. Drenched in red. Alive. Laughing. Happy.

The scene flashes once again. We're placed in an unknown future. Eva's hair is longer. She's no longer smiling and her house and car have just been splattered with red paint. The metaphorical gore drips from her awning, kicking off one of the most elegant horror films I've ever seen.