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Sarah (7798 KP) rated We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012) in Movies

Jan 15, 2019

Lacks the punch of the book

The book about this is one of the most enthralling and haunting books I’ve ever read, and I was really hoping the film would be just as good, but sadly it falls a little short. And I know I shouldn’t compare film to book, but that’s pretty much impossible.

Don’t get me wrong, the film is quite good. It’s has great performances from Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller, with an unusually creepy soundtrack and in general it’s a very bleak and dark film. It does well to get across the main parts of the book, but the main problem for me is that it doesn’t include anywhere near enough detail from the book. It covers the bare minimum, but i feel like it misses out a lot of the detail. I know a film can never include everything from a book, but for me this was missing a lot, especially about some of Kevin’s crimes and dark deeds. This is probably a case of reading the book ruining the film, I’ll admit I maybe should have watched the film first!

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Kelly (279 KP) Jan 15, 2019

I agree, totally. The book was disturbing and stayed with me for a long time, challenging my perspective on nature vs nurture in the case of Kevin. The film seemed to lack same punch, I think this is because a lot of the book is wrote around Eva’s personal thoughts and feelings, sadly books like this rarely translate onto the big screen.

Kudos

Sarah (7798 KP) rated Dark Waters (2019) in Movies

Mar 4, 2020

Good, if a little drawn out

I recall watching a documentary on DuPont and Parkersberg a while back, but was really interested to see the dramatised version of how this all came about.

Overall this is a rather haunting and tense film, with a great score and performances especially from Mark Ruffalo. It has such a dark appearance and overtone, and this works really well. It all feels rather ominous. The story itself is hugely interesting, although I think there are parts in this that are way too drawn out. Virtually all of the family related scenes were entirely unnecessary and made the film a lot longer than it needed to be. They could have cut all of these out and it would've had no impact on the main story. Because of this lengthy run time, the film only just held my attention and purely because the story itself is fascinating. I mean how a company gets away with doing something like this is absolutely crazy.

However if they'd have cut a good half an hour out of this, I probably would've rated it a bit higher.