Rating: 
Summary: typical
Review: a beautiful mind is a typical hollywood movie. nothing spectacular about it. they took a good book (in this case biography) about an interesting man, altered it to a ron howard type of film, and then made it and awarded it. there are some good performances, but they only brushed what it could have been. i won't say don't watch it, it is ok, and will pass the time, but it isn't something i would rush out and buy.
Rating: 
Summary: Jackpot!
Review: Well, maybe the oscar dudes have SOME taste left after all. Anyone with a good taste and a brain would've known the moment they laid eyes on the movie that it was destined to end up on a pedestal.Crowe plays John Forbes Nash Jr., a brilliant real-life mathematician and Nobel Prize winner, now in his 70s, who's also a real-life schizophrenic. But when we first meet him as a Princeton graduate student, he's just another eccentric genius, a loner obsessed with finding a truly original idea. (He does; he writes a revolutionary paper on game theory.) Director Ron Howard, working from an inventive script by Akiva Goldsman that makes use in turn of Sylvia Nasar's biography, does a crucial, and crucially understated, job of establishing the physical reality of Nash's world -- the campus, his classmates, his high-spirited roommate (Paul Bettany) -- with such authority that we feel we can taste the chalk dust on the blackboard. (Cinematographer Roger Deakins' work is as integral here as it is to the telling of ''The Man Who Wasn't There.'') This tangibility is ''Beautiful Mind'''s beautiful achievement, the elegant solution to the problem of how to turn the biography of a man's head into an absorbing movie. And especially coming from Howard, a director renowned (and sometimes critically reprimanded) for pumping big gusts of inspirational wind through pictures from ''Cocoon'' to ''Apollo 13,'' this is news. Inspired, perhaps, by the existence of an actual, living Nash as well as by Crowe's superior bull-free talent, director and screenwriter have found a way to convey the sensation of schizophrenia from the inside out, not with a big raving and waving of hands but with a waiving of reality. To say more about how is unwise, but I do want to say that Crowe ages as Nash ages. The academic geek who did so poorly with girls meets the beautiful student who will become his wife (Jennifer Connelly) at about the same time he meets the compelling government agent (Ed Harris) who recruits the professor to break codes. It's only long after Nash's schizophrenic break -- after he has struggled with treatment that dulls his thoughts and deadens his marriage, and after he has struggled to live with his illness on his own terms -- that this ''Mind'' gets foggy with uplift too. Still, by then, the important movie work has been done: ''A Beautiful Mind'' has distinguished itself and enlightened its audience. No final speechifying and shots of Mrs. Nash's tear-glistened eyes can take away the remembered image of Crowe as a young Nash, solving equations on a windowpane, aflame with an inspiration very close to madness
Rating:
Summary: Something extraordinary is possible
Review: So John Forbes Nash is now (almost) a household name. With good reason... the Nobel prize mathematician's story is a good one. It deserves attention... and director Ron Howard did a wonderful job of creating a masterful piece of Hollywood cinema. Based on Nash's experiences at New Jersey's most famed learning establishment, Princeton University, thru the development of his economic theory ("Nash's Equilibrium"), his marriage to Alicia, and his eventual work at MIT. Imagine if Robert Redford directed and Tom Cruise played the part of Nash as it might have been (they both considered it). I can't see this film being much better... however it would be kind of interesting to see another great director's (and the actor's) take on the same script. Russell Crowe takes the challenge of portraying the man with a chip on both soldiers (in this case schizophrenia), Mr. John Nash, right in stride with his previous preformance as Maximus in "Gladiator". I can't imagine anyone else playing this role of Nash as well as Crowe did. Co-stars Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Christopher Plummer, Paul Bettany and Judd Hirsch round out a wonderful supporting cast. Footnote: Alicia (Connelly) was maybe to evenly tempered in this film thru all of Nash's emotional ups & downs... almost too much so (a performance worthy of an Academy Award... I'm still sitting on the fence about it... it was good, but it wasn't brilliant). Beautifully filmed - partly on location (Princeton Univ, NJ). This is how drama should be. "A Beautiful Mind" will make you think - Is he imagining all this? Yes he is... no he isn't, yes, no, not sure, those people in the shed behind their house ARE real, no they aren't... yes - he is delusional. DVD features include commentary by Ron Howard, deleted scenes with Howard's commentary, meeting John Nash, special effects featurette, and more. Oscar winner for best picture, best director for Howard, best supporting actress for Connelly, and best adapted screenplay. Ron Howard's movies just seem to get better and better... sheriff Andy Taylor must be proud of his favorite TV son.
Rating:
Summary: WHAT'S SO BEAUTIFUL ABOUT IT
Review: OK THIS IS ACTUALLY DISTURBING WHAT A FOOL THIS GUY IS IT'S JUST ANOTHER DUMB STORY BY A REALLY STUPID DIRECTOR RON HOWARD BEST PICTER HOW CAN IT WIN BEST PICTER & THE ACTON IS SIMPLY STUPID IT'S NOT WORTH IT DO NOT BUY IT DO NOT WATCH
Rating: 
Summary: glad I saw it.
Review: Really good movie with an always welcome "plot twist" (though many will see it coming). Not as corny as I thought it would be. Jennifer Connely's strong performance here and in "Requiem for a Dream" makes you glad that she has surfaced from whatever black hole she wandered into in the 90's. The DVD had many extras that I could have done without.
Rating:
Summary: Russell Crowe may be a jackass ...
Review: but it's his performance that makes this movie. A Beautiful Mind is an engaging film. Not a great movie, but a very good one. As has become rather expected in movies by the "better" American directors, the ending is pure schmaltz. I presume studio pressure had a lot to do with it--which is an excuse that is unavailable to Mr. Speilberg, who has transformed himself into the king of schmaltzy endings. But, I digress. Part of Crowe's approach to acting is to notice and replicate certain "tics" that become the nucleus around which his performance can spin, react, and coalesce. But, unlike many lesser actors, these "tics" do not devolve into cliches. He uses them as windows into the character's soul. Here, John Nash's fingers do a figure eight on his forehead when the stress around him builds. It's as if he is both shielding himself from the world and also wishing away demons with some arcane incantation. Crowe's portrait of a man transformed by events beyond his control should have earned him an Oscar. This truly was the performance of the year, and not a throwaway like Crowe's performance in the mediocre Gladiator. But, apparently, he was even too rude and boorish for Hollywood (which is saying something when major stars can still win Oscars after attacking people with golf clubs). Jennifer Connolly won an oscar for her role, but I'm not quite sure why. Her performance is adequate, but the role is thin and her range of emotion is merely ordinary. There is one scene where she is driven into a rage of frustration, shattering a mirror in the process, but that is the only shining moment for her. Now if we can only get Mr. Howard to get off the schmaltzy ending train ...
Rating:
Summary: It Coulda Been Nifty
Review: In the year 2001, most film critics fell into one of two categories: those who thought "A Beautiful Mind" was a masterpiece, and those who thought it was Hollywood trash. I fall in between the two (though leaning slightly towards the latter view) in that I think it is a piece of fairly average filmmaking that could have been quite great. The film seems to be trying to emphasize so many elements of its story that it completely loses focus and, instead of really focusing on them, gives us a little bit of everything in hopes to please everyone. "A Beautiful Mind" could have been a great drama, a great romance, and, most of all in my opinion, a really great psychological thriller. But what it is instead is a collection of mediocre scenes from each of these genres. The acting is quite well done, as is most of the direction (though Ron Howard isn't quite suited for this material, which would have done better with some more flamboyant and exciting camerawork and editing.) It is mainly in the screenplay that I find fault. It lacks a sens of direction, as I said before. It tries hard to be a character study, but it lacks the ability to make John Nash seem like a real, live person. It tries to be a romance, but there are very few well-written scenes (and surprisingly few scenes at all) between Crow and Connoly, and the two actors manage to ruin those that are. And as for "A Beautiful Mind" the psychological thriller, it has only one real surprise, which merely distracts from the rest of what the film is trying to be. What would have been a lot more interesting from my point of view would be to have several little surprises leading up to the big one. More things we thought were real that aren't and some things we think are not real that are. This may not have been the deepm thought-provoking drama the film wants to be, but it would still have been a much more interesting, exciting, and profound film. Anyway, that's my two cents worth, Ron. "Lord of the Rings" was the Best Picture I saw this year.
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Film!
Review: Russell Crow delivers his best preformace yet as the mathmatition John Nash in Ron Howards A Beautiful Mind. A Beautiful Mind begins as John Nash is going to school in Princeton where he meets his roomate Charles.Charles and Nash become friends in Princeton.Nash's reason's for being at Princeton is to come up with a truly oringal idea to distingiush
himself from others.He does not attend classes or get published but all other classmates do.He can't even get the placemate he wants into Wheeler Labs.Untill one night at the bar he comes up with this idea. Nash gets his placemate and becomes a worker at Wheeler Labs where he is always being sent to the Pentagon to crack codes sent in from the Russians.One day after work he meets William Parcher,Big Brother played by Ed Harris who tells Nash he is the best codebreaker he has ever seen.Nash becomes pariod trying to crack codes and his wife Alica played by Oscar Winner Jennifer Connely begins to worry.The trouble begins when Alica calls a shrink to help John where John makes a startling discovery about his life. I went into A Beautiful Mind expecting a boring drama film but came out amazed.A Beautiful Mind is one of the greatest movies I have ever seen and will be in that place for a long time.A Beautiful Mind is A Beautiful Film. ENJOY!
Rating:
Summary: Nicely done. Good character exploration. Great soundtrack.
Review:
The cool thing about this movie is the way the paranoid delusions blend so convincingly with reality. It really lets you get into Nash's head and see his sickness from his perspective.
Other than that, Crowe does an incredible job of playing a geeky professor. You'd never guess this was an action hero gladiator. This movie does a good job of keeping you entertained and telling a thorough story, though it leaves a couple loose ends undone. And how did his son turn out? Also, though the madness was well explored, but the relationship with his wife was kind of neglected, and I didn't get a good feel for why she put up with the manic side of him, though there must have been something there.
The scene where he explains the strategy of 'hooking up' with the females coming into the bar was an amazing analysis of something seemingly banal. I wish they had gone into his other theories a little bit more, because all we could rely on was the testimony of his colleagues and peers who all said he was brilliant. I like it better when the movie shows why he's brilliant, not tells us he's brilliant.
All in all, though, it's a pretty good story. Ron Howard has yet to really blow me away, but he consistently puts out thoroughly entertaining flicks.
The soundtrack for this movie is superb, though. Great music for mood or concentration.
-- JJ Timmins
Rating:
Summary: An Incredible and Inspiring Experience
Review: I saw this movie after it won the Oscar for Best Picture and was quite disappointed that it won at that time because I wanted Lord of the Rings to win. That view changed after seeing this. It is extroadinary. Each character is unique and portrayed with real emotion. Even though Russell Crowe's accent does waver and falter throughout the movie, the emotion between him and Jennifer Connelly had me sobbing. This movie is an incredible journey into the believable world of John Nash. I suggest that everyone sees this movie once. It's really confusing the first time through, as the plot takes a turn for the worst that leaves you shaking and trying to figure it out for the next half hour. See it again if it seems confusing, because then you can actually start dissecting it and understand why this movie won Best Picture.
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