Wedge Harris The performance Stewart turns in...if it was anyone but him, would have been a performance talked about for years. It is, quite simply, one of the most nuanced performances from an actor I have seen in years. That alone is reason to give this movie a chance. Lillard turns the best performance I have seen from him outside of a turn on Law and Order that stuck with me. The dialogue is excellent. This isn't a movie you want to sit down with a phone in your lap and "sortta" watch. You will want to sit down and revel in it. My only negative critique is that a couple of the scenes did carry on too long, but that may have been the director's way of creating discomfort.

MartinHafer Tobi (Patrick Stewart) is a dance professor at Julliard. Today he's very nervous, however, as he's expecting guests. Who they are, you don't know but he wants everything to be just right and he fusses over the details. Once the couple arrive, you learn that the woman is supposedly working on a dissertation about dance and the husband is just along for the ride. This portion at Tobi's favorite restaurant is VERY hard to take. Tobi is so superficial and flamboyant that he comes off as fake and annoying. I really was tempted to turn off the film...it was THAT bad.Soon the scene changes to Tobi's apartment. While the lady (Carla Gugino) asks Tobi a lot of questions about dance, her husband (Matthew Lillard) begins asking questions--which is strange because he's just supposed to be along for the ride. What's stranger is that his questions are very invasive and he begins asking Tobi about his sex life. What is this all about....as it soon becomes obvious that there is no dissertation and the couple have ulterior motives. What? See the film.I hated the first 20 minutes or so of the film and thought the writing and Stewart were just awful. But I stuck with it...and I am glad I did because through the course of the film, the bravado, the fakeness and the veneer begin to wear away and the movie becomes an interesting character study. In fact, it becomes a wonderful study of all three--and all three are marvelous. It also becomes quieter...more contemplative...and very emotionally charged--so much so that you might just want to have a few Kleenex handy. Rarely has a movie surprised me like this one did...and I am certainly glad I saw it. If you, too, would like to see it, the film is out this week on Netflix.By the way, this is not a film for kids. There is a lot of talk about sexuality and it would probably bore younger viewers as well. But for someone who wants to see marvelous acting you cannot do much better than this.

Red_Identity This is definitely a surprising film. If one knows what's going on beneath the surface, you wouldn't hesitate to try to guess how exactly the plot will turn out. But actually, the screenplay is quite detailed and it plays with its own conventions. Never does the film (aside from the ending) stray into exactly what you would expect. I don't think it's a flawless film, but it's definitely one that stands out in terms of never having seen this sort of movie plot play out like this, exactly. Stewart is absolutely fantastic. I could have definitely seen some awards traction had the film come out just at the end of 2014. Carla Gugino is also really strong actually, and proof that she was always a talent that deserved to make it bigger. Matthew Lillard has some impressive scenes, but he's also not nearly as strong throughout the whole film. Not a bad performance but i think that more could have been done with a better actor. Overall, really well done

jdesando "Not surprisingly, the disclosure of information about unsuspected paternity comes with potentially devastating effects." David L. Katz Match is essentially a three hander with Patrick Stewart as the epicenter of a talky drama that revels in the secrets and lies we all work with. Full disclosure: Stagey films are my nectar, where the spoken word, and never enough of it, is the drama. Although director Steven Belber adapts his play to this film, it receives criticism for being static—all the better, I say, to concentrate on what gives the most life to human interaction: words. Tobi (Patrick Stewart), an aging professor of dance at Julliard, agrees to an interview by a troubled married couple. Lisa and Mike (Carla Gugino and Matthew Lillard), ostensibly for her dissertation on dance history. As in most good drama, all is not as it seems. The ultimate goal is to flesh out Tobi's alleged paternity of Mike sometime in the '60's. Whether or not Tobi is the father (not certain despite cop Mike's devotion to certainty)is less important than the dissection of Tobi's solipsism, the release of Lisa's inhibitions, and Mike's coming to terms with the terms of Tobi's paternity and Lisa's happiness with their marriage. Although Match lacks the robust universality of Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? it stands up well at getting behind the characters' facades and into their hearts. Match is a literate take on the matches we make in life, such as Lisa's apparent mismatch with Mike or Tobi's unwillingness to match himself with his alleged son from his birth. Along the way is a match with a profession, benign with Tobi, not so with Mike, and not so with Lisa on more than one level. As the characters admit their mistakes, writer Belber offers the possibility that life choices may frequently be non-negotiable and for the best. Who knows? We're all just doing our best given life's limitations. This is one heck of a drama, stage or film.