As this decade is coming to an end, I’ve been loading up on tons of movies so I will be able to make an informed best movies of the decade article a few weeks from now in collaboration with Red from Rediculous ideas. The next few reviews are going to be about movies that have gone way under the radar.

Kinsey, directed and written by Bill Condon, is the portrait of Alfred Charles Kinsey (Liam Neeson), a biologist who made his name with his research on human sexuality and who is widely seen as the father of sexology. At a time when sex was an extremely taboo subject, Kinsey published a book called Sexual Behavior of the Human Male after interviewing thousands of people about their sexual habits. He became a highly controversial figure when he published the female counterpart of his first book. He soon lost his funding and university support to continue his work, and soon after, his health began to fail. People came to question the way he collected his data such as filming couples having sex (even members of his staff having adulterous intercourse) and saw him as an immoral and proselytizing man but was he? Condon takes a look at Kinsey’s background: His repressed childhood, his relationship with his authoritarian and puritan father, and his relationship with his wife (Laura Linney) among others are what lead Kinsey to become the controversial but enlightened figure he is known as, according to Condon.

Liam Neeson is as brilliant as he has ever been, portraying a man obsessed with his work and giving him scientific detachment but also possibly some sort of perverted fulfillment of his own sexual desire. His external intensity is nuanced with internal insecurities and clumsiness. Laura Linney is her usual reliable self and gives a solid performance as the loving wife married to a weird (let’s face it!) man with odd views of love and sex. Peter Sarsgaard is quickly becoming one of the very best actor of his generation. He is playing  the bisexual assistant researcher Clyde Martin and let’s just say he gets involved with both Kinsey and Kinsey’s wife intimately seeding trouble among the couple.

Well directed and brilliantly acted bio-pic but not for everyone.

B

Note: R-Rated for obvious reasons