Movie Review: Kinsey (2004)

A biographical drama about the scientist who revolutionized the understanding of sexuality, Kinsey treats its subject with well-rounded respect, revealing the man's determination and faults. The film is an efficient recounting of a unique career, suffering only slightly from some character repetitiveness.

At Indiana University in the 1930s, insect researcher Professor Al Kinsey develops an interest in researching human sexuality. In flashback, Kinsey's background is revealed. Born to a strict father (John Lithgow), Kinsey refuses to follow the path of engineering and chooses biology instead. He pursues an interest in the migration and evolution of gall wasps, and meets and marries Clara McMillen (Laura Linney). His early sexual experiences with his wife as well as his bisexuality contribute to his curiosity about human sexuality as a science. The current texts in circulation are religious and moralistic nonsense disguised as fact.

Kinsey recruits his students including Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard), Wardell Pomeroy (Chris O'Donnell) and Paul Gebhard (Timothy Hutton) to form the core of a research team. Supported by university president Herman Wells (Oliver Platt) and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation represented by Alan Gregg (Dylan Baker), Kinsey and his researchers fan out across the country interviewing thousands. The research findings, first published in the late 1940s, shake the foundations of American society. The former insect professor becomes a celebrity and household name. But a backlash also awaits, and Kinsey's singular obsession with the pure science of sexuality takes a personal and professional toll.

Directed and written by Bill Condon, Kinsey clocks in at under two hours and wastes no time on padding. This is a disciplined, focused film, stylishly divulging the man, the mission and the consequences. Enough background is added to create context without getting lost in side quests. Condon captures the clever simplicity of Kinsey's observational and interview methods, and then the ground shift of awakening unleashed by the resultant research.

Al Kinsey is presented as a visionary, a pioneer and a flawed man, inheriting a lot of more from his intolerable father than he wishes to admit. The scenes of Kinsey's early life are interspersed throughout the film with a light touch, colouring childhood influences in subtle shades. Kinsey the adult becomes dogmatic about his science the way his father was about his brand of religion. After demonstrating a propensity for diving deeply into a narrow topic with his improbable gall wasp obsession, he locks onto sexuality as pure science, reducing human intercourse to a subject stripped of emotional, psychological or societal resonance.

Liam Neeson contributes to the film's appeal, owning the role and settling quickly to embody the scientist as beady-eyed, stubborn and sure of his stance as others recoil in shock when the covers are thrown off to reveal exactly what is going on in the national bedroom. Neeson's intensity helps to ride out the more repetitious scenes, Condon overemphasizing his main character's obtusely stubborn traits. Laura Linney excels as his wife Clara "Mac" McMillan, first astounded by her husband's liberal views of sexuality and then embracing what freedom may mean to her and her marriage. Peter Sarsgaard as Clyde Martin is the most prominent of the researchers who bring Kinsey's research methods to life both professionally and personally.

Kinsey emerges as a dispassionately cold proponent of understanding human coupling for the sake of reckless exploration and personal satisfaction, and eventually pushes too hard and too fast. For all the good that the research achieved, this is a story of the quixotic renegade shoving society two steps forward but one step very much backwards: support seeps away, damage is caused within the team, and a shocked nation reaches the point of too much information. Scientific advancement can be a messy and imperfect path.

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Movie Review: Batman Forever (1995)

A limp entry into the tiresome superhero comic book adaptation genre, Batman Forever offers nothing new beyond the usual ridiculous chases and over the top characters spouting warmed-over dialogue.

In Gotham City, Harvey Dent, better known as Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones), is the latest villain terrorizing the populace and trying to lure Batman (Val Kilmer) into a trap. Two-Face has a split personality and a split physical appearance, normal on one side and hideous on the other, the result of an acid attack. Dr. Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman) arrives in town to help analyze Two-Face's motivation. It does not take long for Chase to fall in love with the mysterious Batman.

Meanwhile, Edward Nygma (Jim Carrey) is a lowly employee at Wayne Enterprises, but also a mad genius. Feeling slighted by Bruce Wayne's dismissal of his brain wave capture invention disguised as a television image enhancer, Nygma is driven insane. He takes on the persona of The Riddler, and teams up with Two-Face to spread his evil device throughout Gotham, sucking power from everyone's brain.

When Two-Face attacks the circus in an attempt to lure Batman, young trapeze artist Dick Grayson (Chris O'Donnell) is the only family member to survive. Wayne takes Grayson under his wing, and gradually Grayson takes on the superhero persona of Robin, but still seeking to kill Two-Face despite Batman's advice that revenge solves nothing. With Chase falling for both Batman and Wayne, Batman grudgingly teams up with Robin as they try to put a stop to the evil reign of Two-Face and The Riddler.

Batman Forever suffers from a severe case of retread. Two-Face is a rehash of The Joker from Batman, all maniacal laughter and no substance. The villain as a physically and emotionally scarred man monster is none too inventive for the series. The Riddler suffers from being an amalgamation of Jim Carrey's other, better characters from other, better movies. And Nicole Kidman follows in the footsteps of blonde sisters Kim Basinger and Michelle Pfeiffer, except that Chase Meridian is not that interesting.

Director Joel Schumacher takes over the reins from Tim Burton, and steers the series into a lighter, more comical direction, stripping the foreboding darkness that worked well in Batman Returns. This time around, Carrey does get to deliver some clever one-liners, but the prevailing lack of seriousness, characterized by The Riddler's machine looking like a goofy juicer, hinders Batman Forever as it tries to latch on to anything beyond obvious set-pieces and stale chases.

Val Kilmer steps into the batsuit and offers little, the Bruce Wayne scenes in particular suffering from a lack of intensity as Kilmer appears generally disinterested. The script offers half-hearted attempts to revisit Wayne's childhood, but the film seems to abandon any notions of character development as too serious for the target tone.

Jones laughs a lot and does little else, while Kidman's Chase limits the scope of her psychological investigation to determining whether Batman or Wayne would make for a better boyfriend. The introduction of Robin into Batman's life becomes the most interesting sub-plot to the movie, Chris O'Donnell finally injecting some emotion and human conflict as he weighs revenge against destiny.

Batman Forever is a sequel looking for a purpose, and finding none it flaps clumsily into the night, labelled easily forgettable.

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Movie Review: Scent Of A Woman (1992)

A combination coming-of-age and life crisis drama that unfolds with spirited zeal, Scent Of A Woman rides the monstrous engine of a bravura Al Pacino performance.

Charlie Simms (Chris O'Donnell) is a low key student at the preppy Baird School for boys in New England. With the Thanksgiving long weekend approaching, Charlie witnesses his friends and fellow students pulling off a prank that destroys the new Jaguar of the school's stiff headmaster, Mr. Trask (James Rebhorn). An inquiry is called for after the weekend, with Charlie likely to be in a lot of trouble if he does not reveal the identify of the pranksters.

Carrying this burden, Charlie takes what he believes to be a simple weekend housesitting job to look after the blind retired Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade (Al Pacino), a loudmouthed, opinionated and bitter man. But Frank has plans for a final hurrah in life: he sweeps Charlie along and they set out to spend a lavish weekend of luxurious eating, drinking and womanizing in New York City. As the weekend progresses, a tentative father-son relationship starts to evolve between the veteran and the student. Charlie slowly starts to realize that he is going to have a key role in Frank's weekend, while Frank learns about Charlie's troubles back at Baird.

Scent Of A Woman is built for the highlight reel, and offers several outstanding moments. The first meeting between Frank and Charlie is a spectacularly unfair collision between an uncertain young man and a grizzled army veteran, the master sizing up the student for an adventure that Charlie does not even know about. The tango sequence, from set-up to denouement, is a genuine all-time classic movie scene, bundling the meaning of life into all of about six minutes, Frank demonstrating what it means to seize the right opportunity, trust true instincts and enjoy the moment.

Also memorable but starting to veer into the melodramatic are the twin climax moments, first Charlie saving Frank from his lowest ebb, paving the way for the "I'm in the dark here!" roar, then Frank returning the favour and standing up for Charlie at the formal school inquiry. That entire ending is overcooked to a carbonated mess, but there is no doubting the power in Pacino's delivery of the seminal "If I were the man I was five years ago, I'd take a FLAMETHROWER to this place!"

For a movie that is essentially a study of two characters, the running time of 157 minutes is quite excessive. Nevertheless, director Martin Brest keeps the drama ticking along nicely, driven by an unapologetically over the top Pacino performance that finally won him the Best Actor Academy Award. Frank is an exaggerated character, and Pacino takes that leeway and runs with it all over New York. Ironically, the best acting happens in the most quiet moments, but it is the bombast that dominates the movie.

Chris O'Donnell holds his own and gradually grows into the role of Charlie. O'Donnell finds the uncertainty of a seventeen year old thrust into an early test of adulthood, and while he stays very much in Pacino's shadow, O'Donnell does rise to the few scenes where he finally has to take the initiative rather than react. The supporting cast includes small roles for Gabrielle Anwar as Pacino's tango partner, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as a fellow student at Baird.

Trading nuance for impact, Scent Of A Woman fills the room with excessive but still rousing human drama.

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