This movie may make you want to discuss it afterward with whoever you viewed it with but it never did move me emotionally. A woman interviews a series of men for her academic research and, in between interviews, interacts awkwardly with men in her life. I enjoyed the mystery of it, as I'd not read the book, and that mystery was (for me) what the heck is this woman researcher's field and what's her thesis topic? A number of the men she interviews are a bit hideous but many are not. The most common neurotic symptom the men display is projection, and I grew a bit tired of it, feeling that yes, I'd gotten that, and you can pull out a new device now. At different times in the movie I thought perhaps she was interviewing convicted rapists at a prison (and seeing their attitudes spookily reflected in the men in her quotidian life), or men who had answered an ad regarding sexual dysfunction, or men culled from a dating service or ... well, I wasn't sure, and it was a vaguely pleasant experience puzzling about it. The answer to that mystery is disappointing and bland, by the way, so my musings probably could serve as something of a Rorschach test for me...but as a technique driving the movie (in lieu of narrative drive) it didn't work very well because the payoff was absent.I appreciate a movie that is thoughtful and isn't yet another stupid Hollywood film about crap blowing up and running gun battles, and I'll give it some stars for trying...but in the end, I found it sterile and without significant effect. In a week, I strongly suspect I'll have forgotten it. But thank you, filmmakers, for making something aimed at thinking adults rather than the adolescent/sociopath who loves watching crap blow up for the zillionth time.

Couldn't finish watching this film. It used the contrivance of men being interviewed to create an exposition on male / female relations.I found it choppy (quick cuts between scenes and interviews and even within interviews). It pontificated and had the stilted quality of a stage play. The interviews were uninteresting and stereotypical monologues and the men were mostly caricatures. While it tried to be deep, it was deep in the way an undergraduate is deep (meta criticism within the film itself) - a fist full of knowledge, poorly digested and portentously revealed.The lead actress was a passive doll throughout most of what I saw with whom I neither empathized or cared. I didn't care about any of the characters, and the construct of people talking to the camera outside the interviews was too self conscious.It was a film school, self-conscious mess with no heart and too much head, uninterestingly directed.

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is a movie that is so unafraid to openly criticize the feminist movement and, more importantly, the effects it has had on men. But to call the movie masculist or an example of the Men's Movement would be to contradict the entire point of the movie.John Krasinski makes his debut as writer/director and also does a little bit of acting with this film. Most people know him from his fantastic portrayal of the sarcastic Jim in The Office. On The Office John Krasinski is a smirking young man who always has a witty remark to make. Here he is a tad more than that...Don't get me wrong, the movie has several comedic scenes, which are presented through the film's interesting narrative structure which mostly consists of the titular interviews, such as when one subject states his trouble with sexual relationships is due to his screaming of "Victory for the forces of Democratic freedom." Sure this is funny at first, but over the course of the movie as we keep coming back to this man, we see that the more he talks about it the less he treats it with humor. This is where the movie begins to make its point.In each interview the men begin to speak in a way that is humorous but then becomes less and less comedic as they speak about it. Because they realize the truth of what they are saying. They understand that they shouldn't make a joke out of it because it isn't funny for men to get hurt by women. The movie is essentially several examples of this, aside two vignettes where one man describes how to be an actual "good" lover and another discourses on whether or not he should love or hate his father for being the passive bathroom attendant.Few of the men are hideous, even in a spiritual way and I believe the movie's title refers more to the way the woman who interviews them would like to see them and how easy it is for her to demonize them and call them hideous and think that they aren't human beings. This is the movie's final message, that everyone is a human being and that everyone should be seen as such.The movies ending is one of the few perfect endings I've seen from a movie. It shows John Krasinksi's character tell a story to his ex-girlfriend and conductor of the interviews about the hippie he cheated on her with and how she was once raped, but could see the humanity in her rapist and that in that moment he realized he could never lose her. But she left shortly afterwords. It then shows a flashback to before any of the interviews were conducted and why the interviewer is conducting them. Her college professor friend asks her why. When she begins to answer he says something like "Don't tell me the reasons, tell yourself" Then it ends with nothing else but a quote from David Foster Wallace, the author of the book on which the movie is based. Which is perfect, because to try to extend it beyond the point of desolation that the movie ends on would be an exercise in futility.To cap off this lengthy analysis of the movie, I would like to plead to John Krasinski, who said he probably won't write and direct another movie, to reconsider this position, because you are a fantastic writer/director.

Caveat: I have read nearly everything David Foster Wallace has written, including his treatise on the mathematics of infinity (twice).I've spent the last ten minutes sitting here wondering how to format all the thoughts I have about this movie. As a translation, it was superb. The ultimate book/movie translation, in my very limited memory, is No Country For Old Men. Sure, sure, Messers Miller and Rodriguez did an outstanding job with Sin City (and the only reason I may give more weight to No Country may be that I am older, and it is nearer in my mind), but the Coen brothers made me feel like I did as I read Cormac McCarthy's words.John Krasinski did the same with Brief Interviews, and in some ways I think his challenge was the greater. I just finished watching this less than an hour ago. I will definitely be watching it again, and recommending to others.