Igby Goes Down

The cynical son of an upper-class New York family bedeviled by booze, pills and mental illness strikes out on his own in this caustic, darkly comic drama. Igby Slocomb (Kieran Culkin) and his older brother, Oliver (Ryan Phillippe), are are in the process of killing their mother, Mimi (Susan ...more

Although it followed Tadpole and The Good Girl in 2002's "Catcher in the Rye" revival, this urgently cynical picture is a far cry from Gary Winick's sweet fable or Miguel Arteta's tragicomic treatise on good intentions. Playing the rebel without a cause for neither melancholy warmth nor laughs, Kieran Culkin invests his bratty character with a black heart and an air of indifference, both of which he retains even when the credits roll; if this isn't a star-making performance, something's wrong. ...more