November 21, 2004

Kinsey

I highly recommend Kinsey, the newly-released movie about the famed sex researcher. Kinsey somehow avoids the reverential tone that afflicts most biopics.

Although I have a few quibbles with the film's treatment of Kinsey, the film is buoyed by wonderful performances, and not just the outstanding leading performances by Liam Neeson and Laura Linney. The supporting actors are crucial to the success of the film, especially John Lithgow as Kinsey's unforgiving and ultimately tragic father; Peter Sarsgaard as Kinsey's lead assistant; Oliver Platt, typically sly but uncharacteristically light-footed as the president of Indiana University; and Lynn Redgrave, nearly unrecognizable in a brief but indelible scene as one of Kinsey's informants.