User Reviews

Patrick Stewart flies in this - for him - very quirky role, a somewhat over-the- top, deliberately isolated, and often rather silly and kinetic aging ballet teacher at Julliard.

Playing Tobias (Tobi) Powell, he's lived around the world and pretty much seen it all. He's been on a million adventures, slept with a million people, lived the prototypical and seemingly enviable life of a globe-trotting artiste - a ballet dancer who many years before blew out a muscle that kept him off the stage permanently. Now he teaches ballet at the world-renowned school of music, theater, and dance in New York City, Julliard. Settled into a quiet, out-of-the- way if funky ethnic neighborhood in Manhattan, Tobi's on the comfortable down slope of a long career in the arts.

Inserted into his comfortable world are two people who want to learn about his life and the history of ballet - at least, that's what Tobi is lead to believe initially. That's of course just the beginning of the story. Though the many spoilers give away the plot, I won't here. Better to discover it for yourself.

Carla Gugino and Matthew Lillard as the seemingly mismatched married couple Lisa and Mike Davis, are contrasting sides of the same coin. Mike is brutish, somewhat taciturn, forceful. Lisa is sweet, lovely, kind, thoughtful. They each in their own way lend powerfully to the story.

Lillard is surprising in his role - he often plays pretty silly, crazy, and ridiculous characters himself, but here he is the straight man. In this particular role, it's ideal. He does well.

Gugino is very good as the wife, crushed and withered by difficult circumstances and history between she and Mike. She comes across gently, carefully exposing her many wounds to Tobi who frequently meets her halfway in her moment of crisis.

But, ultimately, this is a story of redemption. In this respect all characters come back together in funny, heart-wrenching, and unexpected ways.

And what can be said of Patrick Stewart as Tobi? Wow. Just wow. He is really so very, very good. He's incredibly silly at times - saying crazy and really inappropriate things, but almost always hilariously. It's often due to nervousness but he's really kind of an ADD case, blurting out at times brilliantly absurd comments about love, lust, sex, and all kinds of people. He's really, really funny.

He's also incredibly poignant. He has a huge heart, is loving and sweet, ridiculous and silly, over-the-top and flamboyant. He encapsulates all that you expect an artist to be. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't be enormously entertained by Stewart's performance in this film.

"Match" is an insightful film about the twists and turns hidden in the life we think we've lead, about the decisions we've made, about maybe what we've left behind or left undone. Well worth a watch.

Through a relatively common search - a son finding his unknown father and demanding answers, this movies shows the importance of tackling the deep reasons behind our most harmful behaviors.

For the son, this movie shows the perspective of self doubt, denial of early pursuits of happiness such as having kids and becoming violent and disrespectful towards others.

For the wife, this meeting is the last chance to save her marriage and throughout the journey she finds herself feeling trapped and finds answers that let her feel vulnerable and in touch with her emotions to the point that she admits to herself to her long lost goals and the realization of the things that matter to her the most.

However,the most profound discovery is the one of the potential father, who finds out that there is more to life than solitude and the passion towards his profession. His liberation may be the biggest, because the solitude that he maintains, may also be his way of punishing himself for choosing dance over family. At the end his quest to join a simple party with his colleagues shows the most rewarding step towards self liberation.

I will divulge that I am a gay man of 66. Any resemblance to Patrick Stewart's character ends there, but I got his character completely. I was also so please not to see another movie about an old gay man coming out at 70.

This piece is very deep from my perspective. It is not a light glossing over of the core issues of aging, commitment, loss and imagined alternate realities. It is a hard look which is very touching without being overly melodramatic. Unlike Tobi, I don't cry easily, but I did at the end of this film.

Matthew Lillard's performance as the emotionally stunted cop was dead on. I come from a cop family, so I can testify to that. And Carla Gugino played the well-meaning cop's wife equally well. The pace of revealing secrets and emotional baggage was very well done in the screenplay. While I had an inkling of the plot line's end, it did not matter as much as seeing how it would play out with these engaging performances.

"Not surprisingly, the disclosure of information about unsuspected paternity comes with potentially devastating effects." David L. Katz Match is essentially a three hander with Patrick Stewart as the epicenter of a talky drama that revels in the secrets and lies we all work with. Full disclosure: Stagey films are my nectar, where the spoken word, and never enough of it, is the drama. Although director Steven Belber adapts his play to this film, it receives criticism for being static—all the better, I say, to concentrate on what gives the most life to human interaction: words. Tobi (Patrick Stewart), an aging professor of dance at Julliard, agrees to an interview by a troubled married couple. Lisa and Mike (Carla Gugino and Matthew Lillard), ostensibly for her dissertation on dance history. As in most good drama, all is not as it seems. The ultimate goal is to flesh out Tobi's alleged paternity of Mike sometime in the '60's. Whether or not Tobi is the father (not certain despite cop Mike's devotion to certainty)is less important than the dissection of Tobi's solipsism, the release of Lisa's inhibitions, and Mike's coming to terms with the terms of Tobi's paternity and Lisa's happiness with their marriage. Although Match lacks the robust universality of Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? it stands up well at getting behind the characters' facades and into their hearts. Match is a literate take on the matches we make in life, such as Lisa's apparent mismatch with Mike or Tobi's unwillingness to match himself with his alleged son from his birth. Along the way is a match with a profession, benign with Tobi, not so with Mike, and not so with Lisa on more than one level. As the characters admit their mistakes, writer Belber offers the possibility that life choices may frequently be non-negotiable and for the best. Who knows? We're all just doing our best given life's limitations. This is one heck of a drama, stage or film.

Wow. I cannot believe a man of Patrick Stewart's talent and experience could present a character as boring, ugly, and bizarrely unbelievable at this stage of his career. Even if his director begged him to perform this poorly I cannot believe he would do so. I am sorry. But, do not waste even five minutes on this movie.

Matthew Lilliard, as the potential son, created a character that was so unreal that no one should be asked to suspend disbelief. His character is not a cop. There is a sense of un-realness to this performance. There is no believable reason for his character to be such a bore. This could be a career ending performance.

I honestly cannot believe anyone put money forward to produce this, one of the worst movies I have seen in years.

What a delight finding this is. Patrick Stewart beautifully carries this delicate film. A complete tour de force of acting. It is slow to develop, but the turn is brilliant, thanks to the writing and direction. Stewart is aged, but he ups Captain Pickard at his most powerful here, and in a way that isn't trading on that meme. This film is surprising and unexpected. It almost wholly takes place in an apartment, it's not much about dance (other than the zen of it), it's not about romance, it's not about even being a father, it's about life and choices. And forgiveness, the lack of which will eat you alive. As a senior, I can very much relate. Those choices can't be undone and you don't know at the time you make the choices how they will impact you or others.

I cried from the brilliant turn to the end, and am still tearful, which is a considerable time. Granted, I am losing my father (step-father, but such an ugly word, for the man who loved and raised me), but this is the first film to bring me to tears in a long time, and I watch a lot of them, so I don't think it's just my current state of emotions. My birth father was not much in my life, until just before he died, so there is that, too, and perhaps that is what is stirring me. I don't spend much emotional time on that, so a little undiscovered country there. If you have any of these issues, then this film is cathartic, instructive, and sensitive. If you don't, then just enjoy it for what it is, an amazing, rare piece of art from gifted actors and filmmakers.

Match is a three person play that takes place in the NY apartment of Toby Powell, a bisexual ballet instructor. Toby has traveled the world and is now teaching in NY. He knits and saves his finger nails in a glass jar. Lisa (Carla Gugino) travels from Seattle to interview the quirky Toby on the history of the industry from the 1960's. Along with her is her husband Mike (Matthew Lillard) who records the conversation. During the interview process, things open up, and Mike slowly becomes more hostile and pointed in his questions as we quickly realize there is something else going on.

This is a well acted drama. Carla reminded me of a young Sally Field. The production attempts to become a tear jerker at the end, but I thought it fell a bit short in that regard.

Guide: F-bombs. No sex or nudity.