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109 of 127 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A preoccupation with sex, November 3, 2004
KINSEY is the story of Alfred Kinsey, here played by Liam Neeson, the author of "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) and "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" (1953), both of which raised, um, eyebrows.
As the film succinctly shows, Alfred, the son of a puritanical minister that went so far as to rail against zippers for giving idle hands easy access to occasions for sin, grew up to be a zoologist whose obsession with collecting and studying the gall wasp gained him a measure of obscurity. However, after marrying Clara McMillen (Laura Linney), with whom he achieved sexual liberation after sorting out a few physical impediments with the help of a knowledgeable physician, Kinsey achieved local notoriety at Indiana University by teaching an enlightened and graphic sex education course for students and staff. It was there that he first utilized questionnaires to elicit personal sexual histories, the methodology, administered by trained interviewers, that he later used in the thousands across the nation to build the database for his two books. In KINSEY, we also see depicted the Kinsey couple's unconventional sexual relationship, as well as those of Alfred's cadre of interviewers and their wives. Hugh Hefner would've been proud to have the investigative team over to his mansion for a frolic.
Insofar as it goes, KINSEY appears to give a reasonably accurate summary of the sex researcher's bio. I base this conclusion on my own sketchy knowledge of the subject, hastily gleaned from a website. The film does skip over a couple of minor points. It doesn't share that Alfred was an atheist who thought Judeo-Christian sexual ethics repressive. It also seamlessly transitions from Kinsey's sex-ed class at IU into his larger national study without revealing that he was replaced as the class instructor because his lecture content was too racy for the times. In any case, Neeson's performance is certainly worth an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, and perhaps Linney for Best Actress also.
Perhaps hoping to be on the cutting edge of sexual expression, as were Kinsey's two books, KINSEY has two brief shots of full-frontal male nudity (involving supporting actor Peter Sarsgaard), something not often seen in American theatres in mainstream releases. Kinsey would be pleased.
KINSEY is a finely crafted, entertaining, and instructive look at a simpler time and place before AIDS and HIV became parts of the sexual equation.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Exceeded my expectations...., June 22, 2006
I won't rehash the movie, enough has been stated in previous reviews. I will say that I put this movie on the back burner for months as far as rentals go, thinking that I wouldn't really like it. I was wrong. It was thorougly entertaining with good performances by all of the leads (not great, but good).
There are some images of female & male genitalia, so if you're uncomfortable with viewing this, you might want to think twice about seeing the movie. There are also some scenes (not many though), where one of Kinsey's interviewees talks about his sexual experiences with minors - this was hard to watch, and I wanted Kinsey to beat the guy to a pulp. He didn't.
If these scenarios don't really bother you (and note, bother is different than affect), then I highly recommend this movie.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Morality, McCarthy, and science - oh MY!, December 12, 2004
KINSEY is so well acted that it seems nearly the most perfectly scripted documentary in the history of film. The acting performances were stunning. Liam Neeson was strong, confident, and zealous, and Laura Linney was entirely believable as a spouse that married a collector of bugs and became the spouse of a man who collected `scientific data' on people's sex lives. Although that does not do Kinsey's work justice. In my opinion, his work was some of the most important scientific/sociological work performed in the 20th century.
What struck me through nearly every moment of the film was how strikingly similar the climate of his day is to today's social climate. Second to that, I was amazed that society was progressive enough to allow Kinsey to conduct his work, although in the end his funding from the Rockefeller Foundation was cut - yet another "Hey, Thanks!" to good ol' McCarthy (the nut job).
Today we're seeing heightened conservatism with regard to sexuality. Some of that has to do with disease - specifically, AIDS. Some of that is also related to recent attempts by many gay groups to make gay marriage legal. (This is something, by the way, that one day society will look back on and say, "duh!", just like interracial marriages, and giving African Americans and women the right to vote. How so many people don't understand that boggles the mind. [That should get me some negative votes!]) So the release of this film, at this particular time, illustrated how most events are cyclical. I drew hope from the film, because looking back on history I know that the McCarthy nonsense went away, and today is spoken of mostly in embarrassed tones. I believe that in the next decade, we will see a similar shift in "morality".
I read the Kinsey Report in high school, and remember thinking - by gosh, I'm normal! I'm not going to go blind after all, or grow hair on my palms! I found out that on a "normal" scale, if there was such a thing, I was far closer to normal than I had ever believed. Like the last scene in the film, a touching two minute "interview" with a character played by Lynn Redgrave, it changed my life.
This movie was full of surprises. I don't know if the depictions of Kinsey being as strict and preachy and zealous as he was in the film are correct, but if they are, then Neeson really hit the mark. He does such a good job when playing real people: Schindler's List, Michael Collins, Kinsey. He is able to immerse himself into the reality of the situation, and what we see on the screen isn't acting - we see the person he is representing. That takes talent, and he has it in spades.
Like the social climate I mentioned above, the movie itself is cyclical, coming full circle. It begins by showing Kinsey's love, even as a young boy, of observing and noting nature, and ends on the same note. He is still working on his "sex studies", of course, but we see him appreciating the thing that interested him in science in the beginning, and we're simply reminded of it at the end.
Of all the wonderful performances, there was one other standout. John Lithgow - always wonderful - played Kinsey's father: a preacher, a domineering husband and father, and an all around jerk. (There's a better word, but I doubt Amazon would publish this review if I used it.) If he doesn't get an Oscar nod, it's only because he wasn't on the screen long enough. But whenever he was, he stole every scene.
But he was so basely mean that at his own wife's funeral, when offered condolences, he remarked, "Well it won't be as if I'm alone. My overweight daughter has no marriage prospects, and my other son has moved back home because he [failed at something]. Prock [Albert Kinsey's nickname] is working on some ridiculous study..." Basically, he humiliated his children at their mother's wake.
In a typical Kinsey moment, he placed his hands on his hips and directed the full intensity of his character at his father (which is, trust, me, significant). "Do you want to know what I'm working on? It's a sex study, and I'd like you to participate in it."
Oddly enough, the father agreed, and when the topic of manual stimulation came up the answer was one of the most shocking things that's even passed through these ears. You'll have to hear it yourself to believe it.
This is one of the best movies I've seen depicting a true story that I've ever seen.
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