Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009)

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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.

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.

Caveat: I have read nearly everything David Foster Wallace has written, including his treatise on the mathematics of infinity (twice).I've spent the last ten minutes sitting here wondering how to format all the thoughts I have about this movie. As a translation, it was superb. The ultimate book/movie translation, in my very limited memory, is No Country For Old Men. Sure, sure, Messers Miller and Rodriguez did an outstanding job with Sin City (and the only reason I may give more weight to No Country may be that I am older, and it is nearer in my mind), but the Coen brothers made me feel like I did as I read Cormac McCarthy's words.John Krasinski did the same with Brief Interviews, and in some ways I think his challenge was the greater. I just finished watching this less than an hour ago. I will definitely be watching it again, and recommending to others.

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.