User Reviews

This film is so caught up in it's own revelatory ideas and themes that it comes off too strong and too pretentious. If a film wants to make a commentary on sexual dynamics and people's inner dialogues maybe it should let these stories tell themselves a bit more and let things develop a bit more naturally. I like monologues and cerebral conjecture just as much as the next guy but when it becomes exhausting and tiresome to listen to and the movie in effect starts to isolate me then it has failed in it's original objective. If your objective is to educate and be insightful you should probably make sure your audience still cares at the end of the film. I know it is just my opinion but this film turned me off completely even though I really wanted to see it.

This movie may make you want to discuss it afterward with whoever you viewed it with but it never did move me emotionally. A woman interviews a series of men for her academic research and, in between interviews, interacts awkwardly with men in her life. I enjoyed the mystery of it, as I'd not read the book, and that mystery was (for me) what the heck is this woman researcher's field and what's her thesis topic? A number of the men she interviews are a bit hideous but many are not. The most common neurotic symptom the men display is projection, and I grew a bit tired of it, feeling that yes, I'd gotten that, and you can pull out a new device now. At different times in the movie I thought perhaps she was interviewing convicted rapists at a prison (and seeing their attitudes spookily reflected in the men in her quotidian life), or men who had answered an ad regarding sexual dysfunction, or men culled from a dating service or ... well, I wasn't sure, and it was a vaguely pleasant experience puzzling about it. The answer to that mystery is disappointing and bland, by the way, so my musings probably could serve as something of a Rorschach test for me...but as a technique driving the movie (in lieu of narrative drive) it didn't work very well because the payoff was absent.

I appreciate a movie that is thoughtful and isn't yet another stupid Hollywood film about crap blowing up and running gun battles, and I'll give it some stars for trying...but in the end, I found it sterile and without significant effect. In a week, I strongly suspect I'll have forgotten it. But thank you, filmmakers, for making something aimed at thinking adults rather than the adolescent/sociopath who loves watching crap blow up for the zillionth time.

The film is a movie adaptation from a play based on a series of short stories based on interviews with people about their intimate beliefs. As such, it is only expected to understand only half of it, enjoy only a part of the opinions of the people in it and maybe even dislike or be bored by it. When a director mixes the scenes and moves them back and forth in time, making obscure connections and playing with the perspective of the viewer, it only gets even more obscure.

That doesn't mean it wasn't well done. I appreciated both the ideas presented in the film and the ingenious mode in which the movie was montaged. The actors played well and the soundtrack completed the scenes perfectly. What I do mean is that I am sure I only got about 10% of what the makers of the movie wanted to express, and that is clearly a failure of communication.

Maybe other people got other 10 percents and so it was meant to be, or maybe I am not sophisticated enough to get it, yet this is my bottom line: a great story is not so much about the things happening in it, but on how it is told so that both author and reader/watcher understand the same thing and enjoy it together.

I'm sorry, but this was the most self-absorbed, void of emotion movie I've every seen. Monologues were WAY too long and had NOTHING to do with the supposed subject and story of the movie. It felt like it was drama written for drama's sake by a Yale lit major. The idea was worthwhile (but didn't deliver any message), and some of the editing was very good and interesting, but it was so jumbled in it's presentation, that I have no idea what I'm supposed to extract from this.

I couldn't wait for it to end and shuffled through the gentlemen going on and on about his father's job and through Krasinski's over-detailed description of the hippie girl's rape. It all felt like psychiatric deflection to me. And our protagonist said NOTHING. This movie wasn't about anyone or anything. I've not read any of the author's books, but somehow I can't believe the book had so little to say.

I have heard for some years about BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN because of its star studded cast consisting of mostly modern actors that from time to time even make theater released movies, and also because of the subject. Last June, finally, I saw it and while I didn't loved it I still liked it.

Sara Quinn (Julianne Nicholson) is a soon to be graduated student of anthropology that in the beginning is left by her boyfriend, and she wants to know what went wrong. So she has the idea of consuming her energies on a research interviewing various men for understanding better what drives men to act the way they act. More she does the interviews, more she discovers disturbing and real things about human relationships and, most important, about herself.

What stroke me for the first time I looked for this movie was the cast. I mean, look at it: Will Arnett, Bobby Cannavale, Josh Charles, Dominic Cooper, Will Forte, Timothy Hutton, John Krasinski, Christopher Meloni, Chris Messina, Joey Slotnick and Corey Stoll... where you can find such a cast with so much talent and recognazibility? Only in the recently released OPPENHEIMER, I would say. But also in this all the big name actors shine in their moments and some like Stoll and Meloni have some funny bits. Julianne Nicholson shows that she can be a competent lead and I really liked her observations after all those interviews.

If you are into indies or star-studded films, then you shouldn't miss this one if you have a chance. And it's not a movie just for women, because men can feel the lead's sensations towards the opposite sex as well.

Couldn't finish watching this film. It used the contrivance of men being interviewed to create an exposition on male / female relations.

I found it choppy (quick cuts between scenes and interviews and even within interviews). It pontificated and had the stilted quality of a stage play. The interviews were uninteresting and stereotypical monologues and the men were mostly caricatures. While it tried to be deep, it was deep in the way an undergraduate is deep (meta criticism within the film itself) - a fist full of knowledge, poorly digested and portentously revealed.

The lead actress was a passive doll throughout most of what I saw with whom I neither empathized or cared. I didn't care about any of the characters, and the construct of people talking to the camera outside the interviews was too self conscious.

It was a film school, self-conscious mess with no heart and too much head, uninterestingly directed.

This movie was universally panned on just about every site on the internet. Sometimes it works, most often it doesn't. Perhaps it's the films pretentiousness. Or the flippant direction by John Krasinski. I agree with the critics on this one. Although it's not a disaster, it is an incoherent mishmash of interviews, interspersed with various dramatic and comic moments that amounts to a lot of nothing. Not once did I care about any of the characters, except perhaps Julianne Nicholson, who really is about the only ray of sunshine in this film. It's pointless and even though it is only 80 minutes long, it gets tiring after only 20 minutes.

Walking into the cinema, I didn't know what to expect. I'd read David Foster Wallace's book years ago and I enjoy The Office (Particularly Krasinski's performance) but I was doubtful the two would be able to cross over successfully. While I certainly will say that I was wrong, there are quite a few flaws that the movie has. First off, certain aspects of the film felt undeveloped. From the book, I realized that she'd asked a question before each interview that we weren't able to hear, but in this for the uninitiated you were expected to rely on various lines scattered across the movie to solve it all. Secondly, Julianne Nicholson, while an interesting character felt undeveloped (Which I understand was the purpose of the movie, for her to be disconnected) but other than her, there weren't any other characters for the audience to grasp onto and truly connect with (One of the key rules of all movies: That you should allow the audience to quickly gain an emotional connection with the character from their back story and not simply rely on it from the point that they're the main character) Other than those minor viewpoints though, I must say that I was impressed with Krasinski's debut and with such a difficult source material he did a fine job and I have certainly gained respect for him. I would advise this movie perhaps for watching and re-watching in an attempt to understand the movie entirely and all of its little subtleties.

The source material for this film, "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" by David Foster Wallace (DFW), is a compilation of unrelated stories tied together thematicaly. These stories are verbose, precise in the their language, concise, and morally ambiguous.

The are the direct translation of their book equivalents. It seems, when creating the scrip John Krasinski didn't want to compromise the character richness and straightforwardly quoted them throughout the film. Which is great, because I simply love the way they are written in the book. Now it's just a club of expressive reading, where actors animate the characters into the real world.

However, the film suffers from the interdependent decisions of John Krasinski that diluted the complicated brilliance of the book (the compromise which, it seems ought to be payed in a film adaptation). Conceptually, I like that John K went toward knitting this compilation of male characters together through expanding on the life of the woman interviewer, which as the book author himself explained was the silent, but major, part of his book. In isolation it sounds like a wonderful plan. However, it doesn't seem to work/the execution wasn't persuasive enough.

The woman interviewer is haunted by manly, selfish, self-consciously serene, and unapologetic stories, which despite their disturbing nature earn sympathy. At least in the book they do. The movie makes it seem like every men the interviewer meets is a cartoon cut-out of a male stereotype, despairing her. In the book these stories are meant to be terrible, but human. In the movie, when contextualised by the interviewer, all of them become alien and cold (except the story of the towel boy).

Still, wonderful visualization of the book, withstanding only as its companion. Without the book and the enjoyment of the book, the film is probably somewhere around 4/10.

College student Sara Quinn (Julianne Nicholson) conducts a study by interviewing men with stories of disturbing behavior. She also starts observing men in the outside world. She has dates with Ryan (John Krasinski).

Nicholson is playing it very passively. The interviews are visually extremely static. There are so many men as subjects that none of them are compelling enough to care about. I suspect that the source material is difficult to adapt. John Krasinski may not be equipped to do so much of the heavy lifting. In the end, he did not find a way to translate this into a watchable movie.

I have read Infinite Jest, and am a fan of David Foster Wallace's work. Rather than making the obvious Book>Movie comment, I would like to comment on where it worked and where it didn't. DFW, for me, brings to mind the haunting descriptions of melancholy missing from the movie(Though John Krasinski does a decent job in his monologue, surprisingly.) The editing, though true to the style in the book to a certain extent, could have been better on screen.

DFW's linguistic talents and extensive vocabulary are retained throughout the movie, which makes it seem unreal(DFW does a great job of separating his voice from that of his characters, I feel). This leads to a strange sequence with the man speaking of his father which is strange to watch.

The movie suffers from trying to be a bit too true to the book, but not really knowing how to. There are a few intense scenes reminiscent of DFW's style, but can't really hold the whole movie together.

All in all, I wouldn't call the movie a waste of time, but I'd recommend DFW's books anyway.

This is an incredibly boring film.

The pretentiousness is unparalleled, as other reviewers have said. There isn't anything insightful here, it's just a mismatch of overly-dramatic monologues that don't make a coherent point either individually or in the aggregate.

Before I judge Krasinski (the director) for the writing, I should consult the book from which the film was sourced. But such would be too tiresome. Whatever the original text offered this film discards. It also wore me out on Krasinski. I recommend skipping this one and avoiding his other work in the future. He's just not content with the trite, but funny, Jim from The Office. This is one actor / director who wants to reach deeper and will sacrifice coherence to pretend it.

Misogynist Film of the Moment: Brief Interviews With Hideous Men 10 Dec

sexdrugsmoney.com

This movie has a pretty recognizable cast. A lot of NBC actors were involved in the making of this movie. There's like four people from The Office in it. But its not a comedy. Its like an art house, weird, documentary / drama. A few highlights throughout, but not that big of a story plot, because the plot is all about telling stories. In the movie, the main character, Sara Quinn (played by Julianne Nicholson) is a grad student conducting interviews with various men of different backgrounds for a research paper. This also follows a life changing breakup with her boyfriend. She seeks to discover a reason why men doom their relationships with women by doing this case study. The movie is directed by John Krasinski (jury still out on this guy) who takes some pretty good pictures, but didn't edit right, so slow people might get lost early in. Its a crawler of a movie. The dialogue, which consists of a lot of monologue and testimony, is on point and strong. Some of the characters are endearing, but many of the men serve to reinforce stereotypes of misogynist men in the modern era, and nobody portrays that very well (bad casting-shucks NBC!). At times, it seems like feminist propaganda. But the movie is based on a book by David Foster Wallace, and unless that a masculine pen for a femme, it couldn't be feminist. Well it damn sure ain't misogynist.

Quinn unlocks the inner thoughts of the 100 or so men in the clinical interviews where they open up about relationships with women while her personal life turns into a mess (but a polite one. no Hagen-daz or bon bons and hate fests with the girls). In doing so she is hoping to understand why her boyfriend has made her feel so bad. Some like subject #17 blame the women for the failures. Some like subject #30 are happily married and in love (but only because his trophy wife stayed a trophy wife through 50). Some, like #42 and #15, are Freudian cut examples of what a man should be. A student shares a horrific story with her, stretching her notions of manhood, like an outlier on a graph, and she begins to gain insight finally. She thinks she understands it. Men are unique. Men are simple. They say they are unfaithful. They say they are sorry. They are all cowards. She thinks that men only see women as things. But when her boyfriend returns to explain the break-up, she learns the truth about the way men love.

2/4 Stars. Worth watching once. But only with your lover as a conversation piece.

—— Ryan Mega sexdrugsmoney.com

Indie, pompous, obnoxious, flat, boring, poorly edited man shaming. Essentially unwatchable.

This film adaptation of David Foster Wallace's "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" is turned into a lackluster film on the hands of actor John Krasinski, who writes and directs here making his directorial debut (he also has a small yet pivotal role). It's a pitiful disappointment that slightly wastes the talents of everyone involved, and also makes waste of good and thoughtful ideas. It's not a total disaster, I've seen worst in similar themed films or not, but it certainly viewers wanting for more, both for its attacks on men's point of view on women but also because the cast involved hadn't got much to work with - although some actors manage to shine through their monologues.

Julianne Nicholson stars as the interviewer who selects several men to talk about something from their personality, which can vary from relationships with their wives, lovers, girlfriends or anything related with their views on male power structure or its frailty. This is a college report she's preparing for a teacher (Timothy Hutton) but also a personal quest of hers in trying to understand the male psych after being dumped by her boyfriend (Krasinski, playing an almost complete opposite of his tender/likable characters). Neurotic, misogynist, misantrophes, affected, pitiful men come her way during many random interviews that reveal plenty to us in the audience but doesn't seem to affect anything on her or any indicative that she's definitely learning something with their experiences. She points her camera, gets her interviews of which we never see her questioning them neither makes some remark about what's being said and the men just blurt out some thought that comes to their minds, almost as if being analyzed by a shrink.

Anyway, the movie doesn't connect things in an accessible way and the formula gets tiring after a while as very little of the young woman's life progresses. Some of the interviewed men are part of her circle of friends, and others she just bump from place to place such as the waiters/friends (Lou Taylor Pucci and Max Minghella). Those two are quite special since they're not actually interviewed. Krasinski makes them pop time and again in different scenarios, sometimes interacting with other characters but most of the time they address to us in the audience sharing their thoughts about the differences between men and women, how they act and react towards them. I didn't read the whole Wallace book but this part in particular I followed there and it's interesting because the dynamic is different from the rest since they act alongside rather than a series of monologues as the interviews are presented.

What bothered me the most was in seeing Julianne's character. The main issue is to find out if she actually learn or grows with those interviews. Does she evolve in any way, shape or form? A simple pay-off should've come in the movie because the film format demands it since it's not a novel; a change could have happened, or at least her teacher saying about her grade or going into a deep discussion about anything she collected through her work. Instead, we are left empty and judgemental, highly critical about men's role in society, the toxic masculinity that only serves to affect women without those guys realize the internal damage they can also cause on themselves.

But the movie isn't all wronged. There are sheer moments of brilliancy through the monologues delivered by Frankie Faison sharing a past reflection of his father as poor hotel worker who's invisible to the eyes of the wealthy clients yet necessary enough to handle towels and carry bags; Dominic Cooper's dual moment where he presents a dramatic story about a man who hurt a women in his life (his segment is somewhat crazed since he keeps changing the facts from his story, and this also has to do with the fact he's writing a reactionary work of which Julianne has to evaluate and she doesn't want to); and Krasinski giving himself the greatest monologue of the piece. Let's face it: he gave himself the best role in the movie and weird as it may sound: he plays a jerk but one with intense reasoning that you almost feel sorry for the guy.

And it isn't a total waste of Krasinski's efforts in trying to create a good script or a good adaptation. He makes interesting and acceptable choices since he doesn't follow the book idea (which could have resulted in a good movie although boring in a trapped format where actors address themselves to the camera). Instead, he presents some interviews, the waiters make a connection with the audiences, and a couple of others make the interactions along with the leading woman such as her teacher who has a frank talk with her relating to his pregnant wife which almost gave him a panic attack in wondering if he could love her again after her body growth. The dialogue is perfectly captured and verbatim from the book.

Here's a slightly ambitious project with a stellar cast that sadly never satisfies, never fully pleases its audiences. The material is good but its translation just hit some bits but mostly it's a miss. If the ultimate reaction must come from us rather than the student and her project what can we say that we learned from those men? Well, that they are pathetic waste of spaces, some are just fine but overall they're far away from redemption or worthy of sympathy. As for our master and commander, he evolved to become a talented director, "The Hollars" is an amazing dramatic comedy that needs to be seen. 5/10.

Although you're unlikely to see it if you live the UK, with only a fourth quarter 09 release for 'Brief Interviews' in the States, and curiously Greece, at the Athens Film Festival, John Krasinski's adaptation of American maverick David Foster Wallace's book of the same name is something that you really shouldn't allow to go under your radar.

This shortish film (eighty or so minutes, dependent upon the version you see) has many head-spinning nuances that warrant your attention. Personally, this was a surprising turn for Krasinski, who displays a brilliant eye for a project and impresses upon his audience an ability far outweighing his popular persona of goof or funny man. It is delightful to see a harder, more serious edge to him. I was both shocked and delighted by this film and have happily become a convert of Krasinski's work, but on a whole new level.

Having not read the Wallace book and knowing little about the film prior to watching it, I feel I have benefited from not having any pre-conceptions about the story or how Krasinski decided it should be filmed.

I am grateful for the fact that I went about my usual business and avoided the reviews that had gone before me, as most reviewers have found that they either love or loathe it. Regardless, the film cannot be ignored once seen, and opinions abound about its relevance. Such is the subject matter and wealth of passionate feelings it both incites from its audience and the messages it dares to tell us about ourselves.

The 'Hideous Men' of the title are few and far between, however, and this may be different in the book, but the majority of a clearly hand-picked multitude of talented actors come across as having opinions on women that are heard all too infrequently. You get the impression that these voices would have remained unheard had a tape recorder and a camera not been placed in front of them and the right type of questions posed from an apparently unassuming and coercive questioner.

The acting talent throughout is exemplary, with one notable exception. Our lead Julianne Nicholson came across as slightly average through an uninventive, passionless and oblique performance as Sara Quinn. This is quite possibly due to her fellow performers and who can be surprised. These hideous men we come across all deliver outstanding monologues with Krasinski, Dominic Miller, Michael Cerveris and Frankie Faison being particular examples of unmissable, gripping talent.

The story is simple enough, Quinn is interviewing men on the back of a project to understand the progress of feminism and decides that the best way to understand at least half of that would be to interview men on their feelings about women, taking a broad cross-section of subjects to get as broad a result as possible.

What we get is a warts and all (and I do mean all) story about how some of these men view women in general. How some are unmoved in their philosophy and how others, at the more cognitive end of the masculine spectrum have started to realise that maybe this isn't their world after all. While some are bitter or delighted, most are confused by their relationships with the women in their lives, but all of them are nonetheless vocal about their feelings, even if those feelings are not what Quinn would really like to hear.

With an impressive cast, who appear to be mostly right on form, a screenplay adapted by Krasinski that is at times witty, funny and above all brilliantly observed by Wallace and some impressive editing by Zene Baker and Rich Fox, Brief interviews With Hideous Men is both a lesson of our times for men and women everywhere with meaning in every line. This makes romantic comedies seem dire by comparison and I would suggest that even though this is most definitely a look at relationships as much as anything else, it would be wise to avoid it when picking a DVD for a second date, as this raises some uncomfortable questions that are thankfully not glossed over with comedy.

A real treat for fans of rational thought and superlative acting skills.

This film "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" is adapted from a collection of short stories of the same title by the deceased David Foster Wallace. The short story form remains paramount. Several themes are investigated: what is love? what bonds a couple together? how do private life events affect public research agendas? what b.s. is stereotypically common? You might assemble ideas in a novel way; you might have an epiphany ...but you might not. The story doesn't much care. What's more important is the dramatic arc of the story itself.

I didn't notice the running length of the film (although several others have commented on its relative shortness). To me the length was "right" for the story. Figuring out the time sequence of the events might be tricky, and might steal your attention more than it should; keep the synopsis "a graduate student copes with a recent breakup by conducting interviews with various men" in mind at all times.

There's lots of variety in the ways the mens' stories are told. Initially I imagined a list of unbroken formal interviews back to back - various "talking heads" sitting on the same chair in front of the same wall. But the reality of the film isn't like that at all. Each of the threads makes use of different devices: flashbacks, flashforwards, flashsideways; intermixing formal interviews with informal contacts; overheard conversations; jumping between internal narration and external events; casual conversations at house parties and academic department parties and bars; imagination played out realistically right in front of your eyes; characters morphing into others; asides with related characters; and so forth. And almost all of the threads are broken into segments that are intermixed with other threads; themes are much more of an organizing principle than time. Even the formal interview segments are broken up by cuts --or faux cuts-- so there's never a dull visual moment.

Some of the cut techniques are new to me. In every case the sound is seamlessly continuous - a spoken sentence remains a spoken sentence without any gaps or shifts. But the words are sometimes split between the same character at different times saying the same thing. Or they're split between different characters speaking a very similar --or even the exact same-- thing. Or they might (and this is what I've termed "faux cuts") have a hitch in the image as though a few frames had been spliced out - nothing as big as a change of camera angle, but a visual discontinuity nevertheless. (Are these faux cuts the next "Ken Burns effect"?) To my mind considerable audio and visual editing skills --well beyond what's typical of most new director's efforts-- are demonstrated here; the conventional words are "production values are high".

If you listen very closely there are a few internal jokes. For example usually the interviewer pokes the tape recorder and says "do you mind if I turn this on?" But once she says "do you mind if I turn this off?" The words make no sense and aren't consistent with the action, and are easily overlooked.

I liked the adaptation of the short story form, and I hope it blazes a path for other future films. To my mind the weak link though is the acting. Much of the material is extremely subtle and challenging, and would overwhelm even many A-list stage actors. But the film's actors are neither veterans nor geniuses. I found a couple of the casting decisions just plain jarring: one of the waiters seemed awfully wooden, and failed to convey some intended humor; and the imagined father figure bathroom attendant looked younger than his son! Apart from these, the acting varies from workmanlike up to quite good ...but nobody "burns up the screen" even when the material cries out for it.

The well-known TV persona and skills of the director (which admittedly I'm not at all familiar with:-) don't seem to be any sort of guide to something as completely different as this. Like a typical "art house" film, this is not for everybody. At the small screening room where I saw it, one person noisily fell asleep and another walked out. But while this film asks for an open mind and some investment of mind-share, you'll be richly rewarded.

POSTSCRIPT: I've become aware from some others' comments and from an interview with John Krasinski that some of my impressions and even some of my "facts" may be so far off the mark they're just plain back-assward. I seem to have missed some of the comedy, misidentified some of the characters, misjudged some actors' experience levels, and who knows what else. Now I'm doubting myself, wondering if I really saw the same movie or if I paid sufficient attention the first time. Ambiguity and multiple interpretations are part of the point, but not so much as to account for all the distance between my views and some others. I'm now resolved to watch this film a second time. In the meantime please put what I've opined under advisement -- and go see for yourself.

POST-POSTSCRIPT after second viewing next day: I couldn't find any evidence of "the hitchhiker" character, either in the film itself or in the credits. My hypothesis is after Lucy Gordon's unfortunate death but before final release, the film was re-cut to remove all the scenes that included her. My guess is there were originally a lot of flashbacks in what's now John Krasinski's monologue. That's where the hitchhiker's story appears to fit best, lots of cuts there too would have made that segment much more stylistically similar to the rest of the film, and the film would have had a more typical length. Also, I've softened my view on the acting – many of the performances are really very good. My bottom line is unchanged though: in the end the extraordinary material overpowers the acting. We're talking King Lear here, but we're not quite talking Laurence Olivier.