Rating: 
Summary: Extraordinary
Review: "A Beautiful Mind" is suspenseful and thought provoking. Russell Crowe is probably the most versatile actor on the screen today. As the mathematician John Nash he's convincingly humble and over confident, paranoid and brilliant. The movie centers on Nash's accomplishments and his schizophrenia. The surreal effects and scenes make "A Beautiful Mind" more dramatic and cohesive than historically accurate, but as a film it succeeds in both informing and entertaining. "A Beautiful Mind" is nearly three hours long, but well worth the time. You'll remember the scenes long after the film is over. It's one to discuss with friends.
Rating: 
Summary: Good film, good DVD
Review: This two disc set is worth the money. Regardless of the stock you put in the decisions of the Academy of Motion Pictures, this film is still quite good and affecting on numerous levels. It seems that almost any film-not just a best picture winner-can get the glossy treatment of a two disc release. I have often wondered who had the brilliant idea to do double disc releases or special editions of pictures that, in my perfect world, would never EVER have been made, much less released on DVD ("Baseketball" anyone? The Adam Sandler catalogue-excepting "The Wedding Singer" of course) In this case, the discs contain a lot of info, but none of it seems terribly compelling, save for Ron Howard's home video footage of Dr. Nash explaining his equilibrium theory. The section on the music of the film for example, seems short and rather dull like so many other DVD's which feature special segments on the soundtrack. James Horner talks about how he tried to harness the moods that he experienced while watching the film. Hardly mind-blowing. I think that's what ALL composers do... There are other extras that seem fine-not bad, not great either. (The standard for DVD was clearly set by the Ultimate Edition of Terminator 2, a film and package that deserves the treatment it received.) The picture quality is quite good, I have not experienced any pixelation yet. I don't know that I would have picked this film for best picture, but I certainly don't hold the view of some who say it should not have even been a contender. What makes the film compelling is that it is loosely based on the life of some real people. There have been ample opportunities for people-including the real Dr. Nash-to bash the film. He and wife Alicia have not. It's hard to imagine how some of the excised portions of the book could be sucessfully worked into the film without it become completely unfocused and disjointed. Howard states as much in his [usually] interesting feature length commentary. Almost all of the deleted scenes are great and-in my opinion-should have been left in the final cut. If his goal was to portray a man's struggle with schizophrenia and his journey through self-discovery and the discovery of love, then he suceeded. Take the film for what it is-a good drama and an inspiring story. To the reviewer who didn't appreciate Howard's treatment of the disease, go watch any number of depressing films dealing with mental illness and tell me we don't need a bit more hope in our worldview of it. Who's saying everyone with Dr. Nash's illness can be so easily 'cured'? When we see Dr. Nash with his old friend-now head of the department at Princeton-his friend asks him if 'they are still there', refering to the three characters that Nash imagines. "Yes" Nash replies. And when the man from the Nobel committee asks Dr. Nash about his delusions, Nash states "I still see things that are not there. I just choose not to acknowledge them. Kind of like a diet of the mind." So clearly, Dr. Nash himself has NOT been cured. [On his commentary, Ron Howard goes to great pains to describe the research that went into the film, the care that was used to ensure that the disease was treated in a proper manner.] He has, however, learned how to COPE with an illness he still struggles with-Isn't this an uplifting view of mental illness? Hello?
Rating:
Summary: A marvelous tale of a troubled genius.
Review: The previews of this movie are very misleading. It is in fact a terrific film about early psychology. I can't say to much or I would give away the movie, but not only is it a great film about Psychology, it also shows how innovative Nash's theory has been. An incredible film from an amazing director with the ultimate cast.
Rating:
Summary: A BEAUTIFUL MIND IS A MASTERPIECE
Review: A BEAUTIFUL MIND IS A MASTERPIECE.RUSSEL CROW IS SIMPLY BRILLANT. ITS AWESOME.RON HOWARD DELIVERS.HIS BEST MOVIE EVER.THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE IN THE WORLD.RUSSEL CROW SHOWS YOU HOW THE REAL JOHN NASH LIFE WAS.WITH A BRILLANT DIRECTOR AND A INCREDABLE CAST YOU GET A MASTERPIECE.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing, but.... realistic???
Review: In this interesting, entertaining film, director Ron Howard has assembled an all star cast to tell the tragic story of Princeton mathematician John Nash. Russell Crowe's Nash is a quirky, mathematical genius, complete with the touchy sense of forlorn pride that comes with doing only one thing extremely well. He sees arcane patterns everwhere, all the time, like a chess grandmaster who has come to inadvertently inhabit his chessboard. His life is an intellectually exciting one... but how much of it is actually real? He cannot tell. Can you? This movie really needs to be seen twice, or more. There's no way you'll appreciate everything the first time around. The character's "journey," for which Ron Howard and Russell Crowe seem to have been shooting, is Nash's growth, both because of and despite his schizophrenia, from an arrogant, cold "genius" to a warmer, less standoffish human being. It is interesting to see his receptivity to the people around him increase, even as his attention to his inner hallucinations decreases. The inverse relationship between these qualities is somehing to behold, and to ponder. I would like to take this opportunity to call your attention to an interesting casting decision. Did you happen to experience a mild sense of deja vu, when watching Nash's lab assistants work together at MIT's Wheeler labs? Or when we first meet them, in the film's opening scenes? If you happened to catch "Dazed and Confused," back in 1993, that explains the feeling. The characters Bender and Sol are played by Anthony Rapp and Adam Goldberg, who played a very similar couple of buddies in "Dazed and Confused." There, they were Tony and Mike, "the smart kids" in their wild Texas high school. Here again, together they portray an unusually intelligent pair, coping with varying success with the mundane world. Just an interesting thing to note.... Other more-or-less background characters look like they had a lot of fun playing their parts, as well, especially Ed Harris and Paul Bettany. A problem I have is the way that "A Beautiful Mind" glosses quickly over some things, to make a person's life into fit material for a 90 minute film. Think about it. The happy times that John Nash enjoyed with his wife Alicia (fantastically played by the brilliant/babe-acious Jennifer Connelly) seem to amount to a few months, tops. It appears that virtually their entire life together, from their early 20s to their late 60s, were almost constantly miserable. Somehow the film makes you fel that there is a grand human triumph in here somewhere, but I'm not sure I agree. Nash's is certainly a fascinating life story, but the film ranks a little too high on the well-known "S.S.I." -- the Schmidt Schmaltz Index. I have nothing but respect for Ron Howard, who is plainly a good man, a good guy, and an EXCELLENT director. Therefore, I imagine that he probably felt it was worth telling this story in a somewhat overly "Hollywood" fashion, in order to draw all the more attention to the important topics dealt with herein. Nevertheless, I just want to note that this movie is pretty simplistic in certain ways, and achieves its emotional punch at a certain cost in terms of its faith to the real story. If you want a more complete version of this story, try Sylvia Nasar's book version, also entitled "A Beautiful Mind." If you don't want to concern yourself too much with reality, but just love this kind of story, I'd like to recommend that you read Daniel Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon."
Rating: 
Summary: *gag*
Review: i didn't like this movie at all. i was willing to give it a try but after the first half hour... i think its a little too sappy how everything turns out all right. and i think they should have included more about the truth of his life. they took out a lot about him thats actually pretty important. ok that and how it took home best adapted screenplay over lord of the rings is completely beyond me. howard totally remade the story while jackson stayed totally true. :( that and it's not very interesting, especially when you don't know what the heck is going on (maybe that's the point but some of us don't like it)
Rating: 
Summary: "Feel good" Oscar bait, but it's pretty decent.
Review: Arrgh, movies like A Beautiful Mind get me riled up. They're films that involve a respectable cast and crew with an inspirational story that's meant to shout to the Academy, "Hand me the Oscar!", and of course, the Academy Awards fell for it. I'm not going to use the "historical inaccuracy" complaints that so many have used to cite as the film's biggest problem. Inaccuracies don't bug me (unless a film makes a point of proclaiming that it's historically accurate) since I would only be a fool to actually expect perfect adherence to fact in a movie. No, what hurts A Beautiful Mind is its occasional cornball script and heavy-handed direction from Ron Howard. Everything is played out in a typical, predictable fashion, with the love story offering little in the way of genuine surprise or even emotion (though Crowe and Connelly do put in great effort). Even the schizophrenia that Nash is afflicted by feels Hollywood. Rather than giving us truly off-the-wall delusions, we get a (spoiler) roommate who gives "good" advice and a silly conspiracy theory. Plus, these delusions feel rather polished, as if though telling us that schizophrenia can be dealt with if you just ignore them. By far the film's most embarrassing moment is the big speech in the finale, thudding us over the head with the film's grand message on how emotion and heart are far more important than intellect. Oh, it's a nice message and a vital truth, but I would have liked it delivered in a more subtle manner. Overall, decent movie, though hardly the best film of 2001. That honor belongs to Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down.
Rating:
Summary: Good Performances, Thin Script
Review: It's hard to fault "A Beautiful Mind" for the performances or, for that matter, the direction. Crowe and Connelly are superb, and believable, as the brain-sick mathemetician and his long-suffering wife. The film does move along with nice pacing and it's not an effort to become emotionally involved in their lives. Frankly, where the film fails are those scenes that depart from their relationship and bring us closer to the film's namesake, the so-called "Beautiful Mind" of John Nash. Frankly, neither John Nash, nor his mind, are in the tiniest sense made "beautiful" by this film. The man, an eccentric genius laid low by paranoid schizophrenia, is sympathetic only in the sense that one might feel sympathy for anyone who is mentally ill. Sure, it's sort of interesting that he eventually won the Nobel Prize Winner for his mathematic theories but when the film tries to explain those theories, the viewer gets only the most rudimentary insight into what must really be a fascinating, somehow mathematically based, theory of economics and human nature. Naturally, the script writers assumed that most viewers wouldn't be interested in anything more than third grade arithmetic, and leave it to Nash to scribble heiroglyphic equations on windows, blackboards, and anything else he gets his hands on to show how "complex" his theories must be without really attempting to explain how they work. The same holds true for his mental disease. Most psychiatrists attribute the development of severe mental illness, such as paranoid schizophrenia, to a combination of genetic (family history) and environmental (infant/childhood trauma) factors. This film discloses nothing about this man's life prior to graduate school. He simply acquires his mental illness without any explanation, whatsoever. The audience is supposed to swoon with sympathy for his plight and, in fact, based on the film's box office (and the Academy), apparently, a lot of folks apparently found Crowe's performance affecting. Indeed, it is to Crowe's everlasting credit that he made the character he played into someone to whom audiences could relate. Once again, though, one is left wanting to know more. Why did Nash create the imaginary characters that populate his diseased mind? One can, given the times (mid 1950's) imagine why an anti-communist operative (played wonderfully by Ed Harris) is one of his spectres, but why the gregarious room-mate, and (especially) why the room-mate's young adoptive daughter? What in Nash's past, if anything, prompt these denizens to constantly plague his life? No clue is given. I suppose the real goals of this film were: (i) show what it really "must be like" to be trapped in a paranoid delusion, and (ii) avoid being to be too much like a documentary on Nash's life. In other words, "entertainment" - not insight - was the operative goal. But haven't we all been down this road at least two dozen times? From the manipulative recent (and decent) "Sixth Sense" all the way back to Boris Karloff, we've all been duped by Hollywood trickery into believing one set of assumptions until a dopey mutt pulls the curtain and reveals the Wizard to be an old putz. It's the same with this film: is he a schizo, or isn't he? Of course, this film is based on a real guy so you have to assume he IS a schizo from scene one. Still, we audiences love getting that curtain pulled. Sad, isn't it, that the Academy, and the American public, still gape over the same recycled bilge. Gosh, now I know what it REALLY must be like to be paranoid. These crazy M.O.'s really BELIEVE their delusions! For a awhile there, even I believed it! Whoah! In other words, this movie is pure HOLLWOOD. Take it for what it is. OK, "A Beatiful Mind" is a beautifully filmed and scored movie, and the performances are truly solid. What fails is the script, which relies on the same, tired Hollywood formula and truly fails to inform us in any meaningful way about John Nash, his theories, or his demons.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning
Review: Russell Crowe goes over and above any performance of his to date. Ron Howard directs what most certainly is his best movie to date. This real-life story of a genius who lived in two worlds, his own, and the real world. This story is very interesting because it throws you for a loop, kind of in the same genre of the sixth-sense. Any more information would really ruin the movie for those who have not seen it. This movie does not dissapoint, and deserves the awards it has already won. In an era of low-rent movie making, this movie stands high in every aspect.
Rating:
Summary: As good as Rainman, but very different.
Review: I was enchanted by this film which I bought for our library. I am Patient's Librarian at a state run mental health institution. I take issue with the idea of going off meds of course, most people don't make it if they do. Mr. Nash had much help and the film glosses over how much trouble it was but the film does a sensative job of presenting how difficult life is ON MEDS or OFF MEDS for schizophrenic patients. I am going to get the book on tape so my (blind)mathematician husband can evaluate the story from that angle.
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