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K-PAX

K-PAX

List Price: $12.98
Your Price: $8.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Nothing short of Amazing!
Review: Leaves you wondering and wondering.. A MUST SEE IF YOU LIKED "A BEAUTIFUL MIND!!" Kevin Spacey is an actor beyond the stars in this movie!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: i just don't get why people like this.
Review: "K-Pax" is a stupid movie. I rented it cuz I was bored and thought I'd seen everything else, and (I admit) I actually fell for the "Two thumbs up!" pull-quote on the back of the box. As if that means anything. Of course, neither do my opinions, but I'll tell you why I think it's stupid and maybe that will be worth something.

First of all, this is essentially a TV-movie that somehow acquired a budget. The dialogue is watered-down sitcom all the way - like at one point the shrink character's wife can tell he's not listening to her so she jokingly tells him her head fell off and she sewed it back on with dental floss, you know, to "test" him, and of course he's like "huh, what about dental floss," just to nail home the point that no, he's really not listening. That is like the oldest, most tired, played-out joke you ever heard on "Full House," and even at that point it had already been beaten to death a billion times. If you laughed at that joke, what can I say, you are too dull to talk to me. lol.

And the WHOLE SCRIPT is like that. Dumbed-down, watered-down, played-out, cliched, contrived. Somebody else said it was an unconventional Hollywood movie that keeps you guessing, makes you use your brain, has a neat surprise open ending. I bet that person laughs at the jokes on "Full House." No movie was ever more conventional in execution than "K-Pax." I suppose the basic concept is marginally, possibly, potentially interesting, but all the interesting ideas it raises are toyed with in the most superficial and arbitrary way possible, then quickly obscured in jargon or idiotically-convenient twists or what-have-you. The plot paints itself into a corner, then simply leaves the room, over and over again. The "open" ending is just another example of this. It's NOT "let's make you think," it's "we didn't feel like thinking, so here ya go, this seems mysterious enough." There is a difference, people.

As for the acting, Kevin Spacey is good, of course, and can always make his performance interesting, especially if he's playing some sort of freak, cuz he just has that "quirky" character-actor's face that makes you think he probably IS on a different trip altogether. But so what. He's made stupid movies before, and here's another. The other guy, I forget his name, the shrink, is just generic middle-aged suburban white guy who thinks he knows everything, straight out of the box. So for all the characters.

But a lot of people like this movie. Evidently. Well, no accounting for tastes.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Intriguing!
Review: This is a great movie that manages to intertwine psychological and philosophical aspects. Kevin Spacey as Prot is incredible and Jeff Bridges as a psychiatrist is extremely good too. The story is complex in many ways and at the same time perplexing to the viewer. Is Prot really from the planet K-Pax or is he suffering from some psychological disorder, in this case most likely multiple personality disorder? I am not even sure that the ending provides a reasonable explanation. See this movie, it will make you think!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Look in yourself
Review: The ability to heal is in all of us. It does not matter whether Prot is from K-Pax or earth. What is important is that humanity sometimes alienates individuals who then as a self-fulfilling prophecy alienate themselves. Prot was the alien necessary to re-socialize the alienated.
Personally I think this goes a lot further than mental conditions because a lot of physical conditions are caused by our minds, thus healing these will also lie within our own minds.
If you believe that you can heal, you will heal.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: I Loved This Movie!
Review: K-Pax was, unfortunately, one of those films that just didn't look to compelling when I saw the trailers....so I didn't go. But I bought this DVD the day it came out to give it a try (I don't rent). I knew within the first 5 minutes that this was a special movie.

Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges, neither of which ever let me down, are both wonderful in this mysterious film that keeps you guessing. Claiming to be from another planet, Kevin Spacey confounds Bridges (and scientists in my favorite scene) with knowledge he simply shouldn't have. Is he or isn't he? Treat yourself and but this movie to find out for yourself.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Is he really an alien or a delusional man?
Review: I didn't know what to expect of KPax when we rented it. I'd read reviews saying it was pretty disappointing, and not what people expected, so I was apprehensive when we rented it. Despite the bad reviews, I really liked this movie.

What I liked most about the movie is that nowhere in it do they actually find enough proof to determine whether Prot is truly an alien or if he's just a delusional man. Every time you come to the conclusion he's on or the other, something happens that shakes your conclusion a little. You may think he's an alien, but then he shows an unexplained fear of the sprinkler. Or, you think he's human, but then find out he can see UV light. Even the ending of the movie is not clear whether he's an alien or not, it hints in one direction, but you make your own decision.

The one thing that I really noticed about the film is it's slow. It takes its time to get from beginning to end, which can be tedious if you have a short attention span. Part of the reason the film seems slow is it's more than just a story about a man who many or may not be an alien, it also revolves around the psychiatrist that treats him. As the psychiatrist treats him he begins to become more or less obsessed with finding out where Prot comes from, and debunking the idea he's an alien. Along the way, as he uncovers things, he realizes that there's more to life than being a psychiatrist, and begins to spend more time away from his office, with his wife and kids. This second plot intertwines with the primary storyline, and for those who want a straight foreward alien movie will be disappointed.

Overall I think the film is extremely well done. One thing that struck me as different is that the theme music for Kpax reminded me of the music for Forrest Gump. In a way it's fitting, Prot has a childlike aura around him that shows through from time to time, much like the childlike feeling you get from Forrest Gump. The whole movie has an eretheral quality to it that dazzles you a bit, and let you believe, if only for a moment, that aliens do exist and do visit earth.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Fairy Tale Well Told
Review: K-PAX begins in the real world but ends in the semi-fantasy land previously inhabited by such disparate films as ET and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Director Ian Softley has created a mood that begins with the very first scene in which a stranger saves a woman from muggers and is locked up in a mental ward for his troubles. For much of the film, this mood is one which leads the viewer first to the starkness of daily gritty existence and then back to a magical land where unexplained events occur to confound those who laugh at them. Kevin Spacey plays Prot, a man who insists that he comes from K-Pax, a planet in a far away star system and to which he intends to return, despite the rule of the sanitarium that frowns on the unauthorized comings and goings of its residents. While locked up, Prot finds himself in an environment not unlike the one previously inhabited by McMurphy in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST. Instead of Nurse Ratched, there is the cold-hearted administrator, Dr. Villars, played by the too-attractive Alfre Woodard. Prot is examined by Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges) , a psychiatrist who begins his interviews with Prot as a realist but exits the movie as a believer. As did McMurphy in OFOTCN, Prot riles up the other residents by making them believe that he is truly from another world. As they begin to believe, so does Dr. Powell and so does the viewer. Prot seems to know things that no ordinary person can know. He dispenses common sense advice that helps the residents and Dr.Powell in their private lives. He even goes to an observatory and gives the resident astrophysicists detailed astronomical formulae that suggest his knowledge of the heavens did not come from a star atlas. Director Softley deliberately keeps the viewer in the dark about exactly who this Prot is. Dr.Powell tries to find out the background of the man called Prot, but his findings are no help in unclouding a very muddy issue of who we are and why we do things the way we do. By the end of the film, Prot tells us more about ourselves than he does about himself, and it is this lighthearted journey toward a collective insight into each other that renders K-PAX a charm that promises to endure even after multiple viewings.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: eh... the book was better
Review: although I didn't like this movie or the book, I believe gene brewer's way of describing the whole thing from a psycologist's point of view was much more interesting. In the book, you are led to believe several different things - that KPAX is real, that prot (rhymes with goat) is a schizophrenic/multiple personality type of case, etc. The movie lacks emotion compared to Gene Brewer's description of the slow unravelling of prot's past.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: GOOD PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY........
Review: HERE IS A VERY INTERESTING PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY. IT GIVES AN
OUTSTANDING LOOK INTO DIFFERENT EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS AND ALSO HAS
A SPECIAL TWIST TO GO WITH IT. THE ENDING IS VERY INTERESTING
AND I RECOMMEND IT HIGHLY.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: BETTER THAN THE BOOK
Review: I found this movie to be more absorbing than Gene Brewer's book, there is less of the nerdy technical stuff that folks like me just don't understand, and a lot more heart. For once Hollywood's script doctors having their wicked way with Brewer's original work didn't hurt the overall premise. Kevin Spacey is excellent as usual; though this time around he more than lives up to his name with his performance as Prot (pronounced Prote) a mysterious man who is admitted to a mental institution claiming to be an ET from the planet K-PAX. It is the task of psychologist Jeff Bridges to hear his babblings until he can get to the point where Prot is coaxed back into reality... but Prot is awfully convincing; to the point where he begins weaving the other inpatients under his spell. I must admit I only got halfway though the book until I gave up on it, but the explaination for Prot's situation at the climax of the movie is both sad, frightening and fascinating. You don't have to be a hardcore sci-fi fan to enjoy K-PAX, though it's leisurely pace may turn off some viewers, but overall I recommend this movie. It's not great but it is certainly interesting and thought provoking.


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