michael dye This is an incredibly boring film.The pretentiousness is unparalleled, as other reviewers have said. There isn't anything insightful here, it's just a mismatch of overly-dramatic monologues that don't make a coherent point either individually or in the aggregate.Before I judge Krasinski (the director) for the writing, I should consult the book from which the film was sourced. But such would be too tiresome. Whatever the original text offered this film discards. It also wore me out on Krasinski. I recommend skipping this one and avoiding his other work in the future. He's just not content with the trite, but funny, Jim from The Office. This is one actor / director who wants to reach deeper and will sacrifice coherence to pretend it.

Austin Layne Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is a movie that is so unafraid to openly criticize the feminist movement and, more importantly, the effects it has had on men. But to call the movie masculist or an example of the Men's Movement would be to contradict the entire point of the movie.John Krasinski makes his debut as writer/director and also does a little bit of acting with this film. Most people know him from his fantastic portrayal of the sarcastic Jim in The Office. On The Office John Krasinski is a smirking young man who always has a witty remark to make. Here he is a tad more than that...Don't get me wrong, the movie has several comedic scenes, which are presented through the film's interesting narrative structure which mostly consists of the titular interviews, such as when one subject states his trouble with sexual relationships is due to his screaming of "Victory for the forces of Democratic freedom." Sure this is funny at first, but over the course of the movie as we keep coming back to this man, we see that the more he talks about it the less he treats it with humor. This is where the movie begins to make its point.In each interview the men begin to speak in a way that is humorous but then becomes less and less comedic as they speak about it. Because they realize the truth of what they are saying. They understand that they shouldn't make a joke out of it because it isn't funny for men to get hurt by women. The movie is essentially several examples of this, aside two vignettes where one man describes how to be an actual "good" lover and another discourses on whether or not he should love or hate his father for being the passive bathroom attendant.Few of the men are hideous, even in a spiritual way and I believe the movie's title refers more to the way the woman who interviews them would like to see them and how easy it is for her to demonize them and call them hideous and think that they aren't human beings. This is the movie's final message, that everyone is a human being and that everyone should be seen as such.The movies ending is one of the few perfect endings I've seen from a movie. It shows John Krasinksi's character tell a story to his ex-girlfriend and conductor of the interviews about the hippie he cheated on her with and how she was once raped, but could see the humanity in her rapist and that in that moment he realized he could never lose her. But she left shortly afterwords. It then shows a flashback to before any of the interviews were conducted and why the interviewer is conducting them. Her college professor friend asks her why. When she begins to answer he says something like "Don't tell me the reasons, tell yourself" Then it ends with nothing else but a quote from David Foster Wallace, the author of the book on which the movie is based. Which is perfect, because to try to extend it beyond the point of desolation that the movie ends on would be an exercise in futility.To cap off this lengthy analysis of the movie, I would like to plead to John Krasinski, who said he probably won't write and direct another movie, to reconsider this position, because you are a fantastic writer/director.

kailualaird 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.

barrosd-1 I have been on IMDb for about 5 years now and have never had the urge to write one of these reviews, until I saw this movie. How this thing has a 6.9 rating on here is beyond me, it's getting a spot in the bottom 20 - the worst movies I've ever seen.Here's the story so you don't have to waste 80 minutes of your life the way I did. A hideous looking red-haired woman (who the other characters inexplicably find attractive) is writing a sort of "paper" on the nature of relationships, specifically looking at how feminism has affected men. To this end, she conducts a series of interviews with a variety of men about their thoughts on women and life in general. Of course, I am taking liberties, because I want my synopsis to make sense, unlike the actual movie.The reality of the movie plays out like a person with MPD that is obsessed with rape and using large words to sound important or intelligent. The movie can't decide if it's about relationships, the dark side of human nature or just monologuing until the end of time. Inside this "gem", you'll find such treasures as a 15 minute diatribe about an African-American man whose father was the server inside a bathroom. There's no rhyme or reason as to why this scene is in there, but the director and writer thought they'd throw it in for kicks.Overall, the real problem I had with this movie (one that anybody with even the slightest bit of sense will also have) is that the director, writer, and actors all think they're SO smart because they can use the word "proclivities" 20 times in the same thought. The climax of the movie's self-indulgence comes at the end, when director Krazinski comes into the movie to deliver a roughly 20 minute monologue about a hippie he meets who tells him an "anecdote" about her experience being raped. I'd like to think I'm an understanding person when it comes to this sort of thing, but I just wanted Gallagher to come from outside the frame and smash Krazinski in the head for all trash that was coming out of his mouth. When a movie ends and you want to yell at the screen for the time lost watching it is when you know that it is a terrible movie.My suggestion? If you're in the market for indie movies, there's about 2,000,000 movies ahead of this stinker.