(I saw this as part of IFC's In Theaters pay service)

Adaptation of the David Foster Wallace about a grad student who interviews men as part of her thesis or what ever and comes to learn about men and her self. Its a great cast, with witty lines but its also awfully mannered in the way that so many independent films are. Its not a film of life but an artificial construction that clearly means something to its cast and crew, but for the rest of us is just sort of there. Its not bad, and I made it to the end but my one thought while watching it was "why am I watching this when the Jets game was on". Not a ringing endorsement I know, especially when you consider how bad the Jet offense was during the first half of the game. Anyway I digress. Let me sum up by saying that if you like the stereotypical independent film sort of independent films give it a try. Everyone else should probably watch a sporting event.

The film is a movie adaptation from a play based on a series of short stories based on interviews with people about their intimate beliefs. As such, it is only expected to understand only half of it, enjoy only a part of the opinions of the people in it and maybe even dislike or be bored by it. When a director mixes the scenes and moves them back and forth in time, making obscure connections and playing with the perspective of the viewer, it only gets even more obscure.

That doesn't mean it wasn't well done. I appreciated both the ideas presented in the film and the ingenious mode in which the movie was montaged. The actors played well and the soundtrack completed the scenes perfectly. What I do mean is that I am sure I only got about 10% of what the makers of the movie wanted to express, and that is clearly a failure of communication.

Maybe other people got other 10 percents and so it was meant to be, or maybe I am not sophisticated enough to get it, yet this is my bottom line: a great story is not so much about the things happening in it, but on how it is told so that both author and reader/watcher understand the same thing and enjoy it together.

I watched this on cable initially because of my admiration for David Foster Wallace's work. The movie just plain blew me away. If I'd seen it in a theater I'd probably have been crying at the end of it.

This is a loosely connected series of monologues by men- young, mature, White, Black- who are bound only by the issues of being men in the confusing world we live in. A graduate student is videotaping these men, working on her thesis project about how men navigate the post-feminist world.

The best realized segment is about a man whose father worked six days a week as a men's room attendant. Having a modern consciousness about being a Black man, subject # 42 can't understand how his father degraded himself that way; his father tells us that it is what he could do to keep food on the table and a roof over his family's heads. Worse yet, the man has not seen his father (presumably still alive and in the same job) since 1978.

There's so much unresolved loneliness on view here. This is a fine movie that seems to have gotten just about no release, and that hurts.

Watch this. Learn. Grow.