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Liam Neeson,
Liam Neeson,
Laura Linney,
more...
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Bill Condon,
Bill Condon
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: 
: 20th Century Fox
: Drama, Costume Drama/Period Piece, Biopics
: English, Spanish, French
: English, Spanish
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Alfred Kinsey was an entomologist who taught at Indiana University and had a keen interest in an area of human behavior that had seen little scholarly research -- human sexuality. While the courtship and reproductive patterns of animals had been carefully documented, Kinsey believed that most "established facts" about human sexual behavior were a matter of conjecture rather than research and that what most people said about their sex lives was not born out by the evidence (a subject that had personal resonance for him given the troubles he and his wife Clara Kinsey had in the early days of their marriage). After introducing a course in "Marriage" at Indiana University which offered frank and factual information on sex to students, Kinsey began an exhaustive series of interviews with a wide variety of people from all walks of life in order to find out the truth about sex practices in America. When he published Sexual Behavior and the Human Male in 1948, his findings were wildly controversial, indicating that most men had a wider variety of sexual experiences than most people imagined, including a number of practices commonly thought to be dangerous or perverted (including pre-marital sex, same-sex contacts, and masturbation). An even greater outcry greeted Kinsey's next volume, Sexual Behavior and the Human Female, which contradicted common notions than most women went into marriage sexually inexperienced. Kinsey is a film biography written and directed by Bill Condon which examines Kinsey's life and work from his strict childhood until his death in 1956. Liam Neeson plays Alfred Kinsey, and Laura Linney co-stars as Kinsey's wife and colleague Clara. John Lithgow highlights the supporting cast as Kinsey's repressed and moralistic father, while Chris O'Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard, and Timothy Hutton play members of Kinsey's research team and Tim Curry appears as an IU faculty member at odds with Kinsey's teachings. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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| Two Thumbs Erect!
by ZenBones
May 20, 2005 - 11:39 AM PDT
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6 out of 7 members found this review helpful
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I was looking forward to seeing this, but I did have some fears that it would be very 'Hollywoodized'. I was pleasantly surprised that it had very little of the formula that Hollywood uses, especially for a biopic. I also thought the movie pretty - excuse the pun - ballsy, in that it showed clinical shots of both male and female genitalia. There was also more salty language said in this film than one might hear in any dozen films, but it's almost always spoken with a sophisticated air of whimsy (one would guess that Cole Porter would love this movie). This film perfectly illustrates what made Kinsey and his research so threatening to Americans fifty years ago, and why it is still extremely relevant today. But that's not the only reason I liked it. I also found it refreshing to see a film on sex that's realistic and doesn't have the usual male adolescent 'aren't we being naughty' attitude. I've also been starving - even as a teenager - to see movies about adult relationships and their struggles. Falling in and out and back in love in long-term relationships makes for exciting drama, but we almost never see the strains and joys of such relationships in movies.
My second erect thumb is for the bonus disc. Fabulous stuff! There's over an hour-long documentary that is actually very interesting. I usually find the documentaries on bonus discs to be incredibly dull; they mostly consist of shots of people standing around on the set drinking coffee and looking bored, or endless extreme close-ups of the director's face blankly staring at the actors on the monitor. But the interviews here are all interesting, and virtually everyone down to the boom operator is interviewed - most of it about their sex life! Normally, I don't think I'd have any interest in hearing that stuff but again, the tone of sophistication and whimsy was delightful. There's also around 30 minutes of TERRIFIC deleted footage, a brief but interesting tour of the Kinsey Institute, a funny gag reel, and ohboy ... a sex quiz!! Both discs are definitely worth renting!
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