Brief Interviews With Hideous Men

Directed by John Krasinski

(Not Rated)

***

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An adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s 1999 short-story collection

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is a “quiet revelation,” said Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic. Actor John Krasinski, best known as Jim Halpert from NBC’s The Office, makes his directorial debut with this absorbing adaptation of a short-story collection by the late David Foster Wallace. Through a series of interviews, confessions, and overheard conversations—all experienced by a female graduate student (Julianne Nicholson)—the provocative film explores the dark corners of the male psyche in the post-feminist era. Adapting Wallace’s raw, wild style of writing was a “daunting prospect,” said Claudia Puig in USA Today. Krasinski deserves credit for “tackling something this risky,” even if his film seems somewhat unsure about how to handle the book’s “grim, caustic, and darkly humorous” proclamations about what men really want. The film is far more “cerebral than emotional,” said James Greenberg in The Hollywood Reporter. But Krasinski shows promise as a director. His unconventional narrative is “ingeniously structured,” and his actors, from Timothy Hutton to Dominic Cooper, “all work at a high level.” Even if the film comes off as a bit clinical, it’s “never less than compelling.”