Kinsey
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Movie Reviews of Kinsey
Movie Review: Biopics are always a little disappointing . . .
Summary: 4 Stars
No matter how well scripted, they're hidebound by having to stick to the outward facts of their subject's life. I haven't seen a good one since LADY SINGS THE BLUES and even that wasn't awfully good, though it was fascinating. So is KINSEY, I expect, though people don't seem to want to go to it. Me and my friend Wayne went last night and three women sitting behind us and to the left were laughing at themselves and their own naivete because, as it turned out, they had come to the theater thinking they were seeing "Kinsey Millhone," the Sue Grafton heroine, brought to life by Laura Linney. They didn't know whether to laugh or cry when they discovered they were in for a picture showing how America gradually opened up to the idea of sex when supported by science.
Another rule of thumb is, most movies starring John Lithgow and Veronica Cartwright as the parents are probably going to be pretty overplayed. This was the case here. Seeing this movie was like going into a time tunnel of the cinema--so many of the actors haven't been in an "A" movie in ages. Timothy Hutton, Lynn Redgrave, John Lithgow, Katherine Houghton (the young girl from GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER, now looking unimaginably aged) and even Chris O'Donnell from the Batman movies. How did he get another job? He's looking good. But Peter Sarsgaard provokes most of the attention by slipping out of his clothes in a cheap hotel room and heading for the shower. Kinsey doesn't know which way to look but you can see where his eyes are straying to. Peter Sarsgaard isn't the luckiest guy in tbe size department, but he's got nothing to complain about, and once his pants come down, you can predict what's going to happen through the rest of the movie. I wonder if the real Clyde Martin is still alive? If so you'd think he'd ask for someone with a bigger endowment to play him. Oh well, he (Sarsgaard) is extremely good in the movie and many fans will beat a path to his door.
Linney and Neeson are good, too, but they are often harshly lit and madeup to look awful. Laura Linney in particular has been given some nice hairdos and 30s and 40s dresses, but then they blotch her skin with a disgraceful aging makeup that makes it hard to believe she's not supposed to be playing a homeless person without access to moisturizer or even soap. As for Neeson, how old is he anyhow? Playing a young man he looks older than Walter Huston, and he doesn't get any better as he ages.
All in all the movie is too ambitious and tries to cover too much territory. GODS AND MONSTERS, Bill Condon's previous biopic, took the subtler approach of limiting the story to the events of the last days of James Whale's life. This story might have worked better with a little restraint, though I can see Condon pushing for that epic feel which he just misses--what a pity.
Movie Review: Everybody's doing it.
Summary: 4 Stars
Alfred Kinsey, the pioneer sex researcher, gets the cinematic treatment in "Kinsey," written and directed by Bill Condon. Liam Neeson lends both strength and vulnerability to his portrayal of a man obsessed with taking sexuality out of the dark ages and into the realm of scientific inquiry.
Kinsey was born to a sweet mother and a fire and brimstone preacher of a father, played with self-righteous cruelty and bombast by John Lithgow. Kinsey senior railed against sexuality from the pulpit and he ruled his children with an iron hand. Whenever he could, young Alfred fled to the woods where he began his lifelong love affair with nature. He later obtained a doctorate in zoology, which led to a college teaching career at Indiana University and an interest in entomology.
Eventually, Kinsey saw another way that he could serve society. He would amass a large survey that would document how people behave sexually. To help him, Kinsey would recruit assistants who would interview the subjects and record their responses. The data from these interviews would be published in a scientific study of human sexuality. Kinsey's 1948 book on sexual behavior in males was an immediate sensation. His later work on female sexuality was not as well received, partly because the country was in the midst of a Cold War. Many influential people thought that Kinsey was helping the Communists undermine America's moral values.
Neeson is a superb actor whose eyes and mannerisms express his thoughts as much as his words do. His portrays Kinsey as a maverick and a crusader who is so obsessed by his desire to quantify sexual behavior, that he becomes blind to the harm that he is doing to his family and to his young associates. Laura Linney is luminous as Mac, Kinsey's wife, a woman who finds herself at the center of a maelstrom as a result of the controversy surrounding her husband.
"Kinsey" has many moments of laugh-out-loud humor. Dr. Kinsey punctures people's pomposity, both in and out of the classroom, with his frank and shocking speech. There is an amusing segment in which Kinsey tries to encourage newlyweds to become more comfortable with one another physically, and another in which a woman describes how Kinsey's work helped her achieve sexual fulfillment.
I must insert the caveat that there are graphic scenes of nudity and sexual behavior in this film as well as explicit conversations about sex that may offend some viewers.
In addition, the film falters at the end when Condon tacks on some heavy-handed scenes in which the media, the clergy, and others take pot shots at Kinsey, vilifying him for the moral and social harm he is doing. However, if you like controversy and you want to see some fine acting, fasten your seat belts and see "Kinsey."
Movie Review: The Story Behind "The Kinsey Report" & Its Unlikely Author.
Summary: 4 Stars
"Kinsey" is the story of the life and research of Dr. Alfred Kinsey, the University of Indiana zoology professor whose 1948 study "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" got Americans talking about sex. Writer/director Bill Condon consulted Kinsey biographies, the Kinsey Institute, and some of those who knew the man in writing Kinsey's life story for the screen. The film uses the device of Kinsey (Liam Neeson) giving his sex history to an interviewer -which he did many times in training his researchers- to frame and pace the narrative. This provides a convenient means of exploring significant events in Kinsey's life while skipping over others without seeming clumsy. "Kinsey" follows the professor's life from his childhood as the son of a puritanical Methodist minister, through his 20-year study of gall wasps, his relationship with his wife Clara "Mac" McMillen (Laura Linney), teaching UI's first "marriage course" that was Kinsey's introduction to sex research and the beginning of his crusade for education, through the research for his best-selling book on male sexuality and the public wrath brought by his book on female sexuality.
Needless to say, Liam Neeson doesn't look like Alfred Kinsey, but he conveys just the right combination of academic nerdiness and enthusiastic curiosity to make the audience understand why Kinsey embraced sex research and education with the same obsessive zeal that he approached all of his projects. Laura Linney is wonderful as his perceptive and tolerant wife, through whom the film puts Kinsey and his research in perspective. The supporting cast is like a who's who of New York stage actors and Hollywood character actors. Peter Sarsgaard always brings something interesting to his characters, and here he is Kinsey's seductive assistant Clyde Martin. Timothy Hutton and Chris O'Donnell play the other research assistants whose interviews of various volunteers give the film some laugh-out-loud moments. John Lithgow makes Kinsey's father an interesting character to watch even though the man seems one-dimensional, rather like a broken record. "Kinsey" is a biopic that reveals the story and the personalities behind America's most famous sex study, as well as the impact that boiling everything down to numbers had on the researchers and their families.
The DVD (20th Century Fox 2005 single disc release): Although there is a 2-disc Special Edition available, the only bonus feature on the single disc is an audio commentary by writer/director Bill Condon. The commentary is heavy on the process of getting the film financed and made, with occasional analysis of scenes, discussion of characters, themes, and style. Subtitles are available for the film in English and Spanish. Dubbing is available in Spanish and French.
Movie Review: Common Sense
Summary: 4 Stars
Watching Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson) in the classroom lecturing about human reproduction and sex, showing parts of the female and male anatomy on a slide projector, I am struck by the fact that the time period is approximately the early 1950's. I am struck by the candor, the directness, the calling a spade-a-spade frankness of the entire scene.
What is unfortunately sad and hurtful about the scene is that it would never happen today: 50 years later.
With the FCC cracking down on what is said or shown on TV, PBS stations refusing to air certain sexually explicit scenes and the Moral Majority generally railing against anything sexual, it is obvious that we have taken a large step back from Kinsey's time even though, to be honest, Kinsey was himself, after not too long, taken down by a number of academic and governmental agencies himself. He and his groundbreaking work, of course have since been vindicated.
Whether or not,"Kinsey's" director Bill Condon (the superb "Gods and Monsters") wanted to make a comment on Life 2005, he has by the sheer weight and breath of his subject matter as presented on the screen.
Alfred Kinsey and Clara Kinsey were bigger than life and though Kinsey was a Dr. of Zoology his warm demeanor and deep sense of caring soon brought his students to his office with questions and advice about life, society and particularly Sex. And so Kinsey began his quest to enlighten and remove barriers about the then (and now, really) taboo subject of Sex.
Liam Neeson does a remarkable job in the difficult role of Kinsey: driven and driving as well as warm yet brittle and cold when need be. His Kinsey is a man conflicted about what he is doing yet does it because his need to teach and enlighten is stronger than his natural tendency to be shy and out of the limelight.
Laura Linney as Clara Kinsey is not called on to do much but be supportive, but she has a couple of scenes with Peter Sarsgaard (as one of Kinsey's assistants, Clyde Martin) that are jewel boxes full of intuitive and understated yet demonstrative acting.
If there is anything amiss in "Kinsey" it is the scene with a sexual predator and psychotic,
Kenneth Braun (William Sadler), which seems out-of-place and tacked on in order to add more fuel to the fire, as it were.
"Kinsey" is an extremely important film particularly in these times of repression and censure. And I'm sure Condon's common-sense point of view on this subject matter will get him censured by those prone to such things. But if nothing else, the subject matter, the way it is presented and the towering portrayal of Alfred Kinsey by Liam Neeson will fuel many a water cooler conversation for a long, long time.
Movie Review: An interesting film you should see!
Summary: 4 Stars
I have to admit I know little about Alfred Kinsey so I was eager to see this film. After watching this movie, it seemed even more timely considering the current political climate, with the pendulum swinging back to the conservative right. Bill Condon starts us early on in Kinsey's life, seeing young Alfred living under the overbearing eye of his father (played wonderfully by John Lithgow). Through glimpses of his past we see Kinsey's father preaching against the dangers of immorality and how badly he treated his own family. Alfred finally breaks free of his father's grasp, leaving the university his father approves of and attending another to study his true love, biology.
By the time he is teaching in college, Kinsey is extremely dedicated to his study of biology but neglectful of his own life. Eventually he meets "Mac", his wife (played by the conisistently entertaining Laura Linney). After trouble during their first sexual experience and realizing the problems other people face in sexuality, Kinsey becomes interesting in studying human sexuality. Once he begins teaching, his classes fill up and his dedication to statistics and data intensify as he and the students who work with him delve through America's sexual diversity.
Kinsey utilizes the gay community to tap into an unused resource of sexuality and begins to break through such taboo subjects as oral sex, extra marital sex, etc. Once he begins transversing the country, his data gets grows and his published work of male sexuality becomes a best seller.
The film is full of good performances. Neeson in the main role does a good job, presenting a man that is so consumed by facts and statistics that he often looks over the emotional facets of sexuality. His portrayal is charming and one of his best to date. Laura Linney, again gives a really good performance. She is an oft overlooked actress who deserves to be recognized by the academy. Peter Saarsgard is also good as the student who seduces Kinsey and gives him his first homosexual experience. Tim Curry, John Lithgow, Timothy Hutton and Chris O'Donnell also do good jobs in their roles. One standout in those "subjects" who are questioned, is Lynn Redgrave as on older lesbian. The scene she is in, though very short, pretty much sums up how his information helped society better understand sexuality and gave those who were not considered "normal" hope that there were others out there just like them.
I highly recommend this film. This film will be a welcome addition to my dvd library once it is released as a dvd.