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Review: K-PAX
There is at least one new twist at least in this tattered story line. Spacey's Prot, a visitor from the planet K-PAX, is a healing alien. Picked up by the police after a mugging in New York City, Spacey is - of course - not believed when he says he's from outer space and is tossed into a psychiatric hospital for a month. He tells the skeptical Bridges (Dr. Mark Powers) that he's from another planet. He has no mission, he's just traveling, curious about the odd and destructive behavior of humans and the high quality of their produce.
Powers doesn't believe him at first -- all of his fellow patients instantly believe naturally -- but then becomes curious as Prot proves impervious to even the most powerful anti-psychotic drugs, astonishes astrophysicists with his knowledge of far away solar systems, and begins healing deranged patients who've been confined for years.
Powers brings Prot to his house, with curious results that set the shrink off on a not very believable mission to New Mexico that he hopes will tell him who Prot really is. Along the way, the doc has the battle the usual assortment of impatient, cost-conscious and cynical bureaucrats.
Prot isn't worried about what any human thinks. He blithely insists to his captors that he's soon to head home on a beam of light to a planet where family is both unknown and unnecessary, and that he will take one person -- probably a fellow patient -- with him. This has particular resonance for Dr. Powers, who seems not to notice his gorgeous wife or adorable kids. But Prot's utter, unrelenting cool leaves us detached from the movie as well as him.
Spacey is so ironic and low-key it seems he might well be from another solar system. He has played this kind of ironic character a bit too often, and Prot doesn't come close to the blow-out portrayal of Lester Burnham's suburban bust-up in American Beauty.But tension does build as we get curious about whether he is really an alien or not, and whether or not he will go back to K-PAX. (Also whether Powers will notice his wife and what's-really-important-in-life.)
The ending turns out to be the most inventive part of the movie. It's actually quite ingenuous, leaving people wondering about what they really saw and ought to conclude from it. This is one of those very rare endings that a dozen people can see and draw completely different conclusions from.
And K-PAX is a particularly relevant movie this week, since one of its themes is that we ought to appreciate life while we can. It's pleasant and soothing.
I dont' want to give it away, but his body remains while the other person's doesn't. What's the deal?
This is one of those very rare endings that a dozen people can see and draw completely different conclusions from.
holy crap, i agree with Katz for once?!? no way. regardless i liked the movie.
,
faeryman
A couple different ways you can reason it...
He's not an Alien... She just decided to leave and escaped
He "possesed" Rober Porters body and used him as a means of healing Dr Marko, making him realize the importance of family... and The other's body was part of Betty's escense and left with her
I think it's main purpose was to just make you think a little.
I wonder if the books have a different ending, anyone read them?
The movie is a cute flick, but it is heavy on the dreamy musical scenes and light on a real story.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I'm not buying it; he's the Starman!.
Then again, this is the same director that brought us Angelina Jolie as a l33th4x0r.
I saw this movie last night and absolutely loved it. The imagery was so visually intoxicating that I couldn't peal my eyes from the screne. My take on the ending: Prot used Robert's body to actually walk and talk, etc. IE. the form of the soap bubble. Since Prot could sense UV light and had way too much information about the solar system, he could not have just been a super-savant.
In the end when all the mental patients said that the person on gurney was not Prot was a bit confusing, and the fact that Bess did disapear is interesting.
However, Robert could have just gone crazy. Robert as a child could have spent countless hours staring into a clear new mexico sky observing and calculating etc. The eye test could have been a mistake or after the near drowning, his eyes could have become very sensative to light, although I doubt sensative to UV.
All in all - very interesting. I won't lie tho, I just love Kevin Spacy.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
I thought K-PAX was a great movie. Compared to the crap I saw this summer, I left thoroughly impressed. What this review leaves out is how funny this movie is. I was laughing all throughout the movie and so was the audience.
One comment I had to make was on this quote:
"Spacey's Prot, a visitor from the planet K-PAX, is a healing alien".
Well not really, he can just see what human treatment leaves out. He never intended to end up in some psychiatric board to help the patients out. He doesn't have some special designation that he is a healing alien. He can just see things differently.
The rest of the article is pretty accurate. K-PAX has been getting different reviews, many good, some bad. But go see it your self. I highly suggest seeing the movie, you won't regret it.
I found the secret of life! But forgot to write it down...
I like how in the preview he says that K-Pax is X of *your* light years away. As if light years was some peculiarly human measurement.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I disagree about the ending. It seemed like a ham-handed way to make people think it's ambiguous, but by that point in the movie, I didn't really care any more.
<SPOILER>
I thought this was going to turn into a cool story about a person so traumatized by events in his family that he fantasized about a planet without families.
I thought we had been given clues to this: for instance, if he has to leave at a certain time because of the scheduling of interstellar travel, then why is he leaving exactly five earth years after he arrived? Does everyone in the universe schedule their travel based on earth time?
However, instead of turning and facing this head-on, they took the easy road and left it ambiguous.
They could have used the ambiguity in Spacey's character as a way to explore various themes about human nature; but instead, that ambiguity itself is pretty much all there is to this movie.
Incidentally, Spacey's performance was great. During the hypnosis, he has to portray a wide variety of characters, and he does it very convincingly.
</SPOILER>
In short, K-PAX is nothing but a premise: is he an alien or not? I don't need to sit in a theatre for two hours to grasp that premise.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Now I will get flamed for this.
-The ending turns out to be the most inventive part of the movie. It's actually quite ingenuous, leaving people wondering about what they really saw and ought to conclude from it. This is one of those very rare endings that a dozen people can see and draw completely different conclusions from. -
I can't agree that this type of ending is rare. In fact it is rare in American cinema (compared to the mass of movies the country produces, I'm not saying there aren't any) but loads of european, asian, south american and even a few african movies display such a type of ending. Because the majority in North America just want to hear THX sound and see big guns and endings which you can guess at the beginning of the movie, doesn't mean that it's the same everywhere.
Just my opinion though.
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
What about healing himself? That was one of the major themes. Prot at on point mentions this.
I thought that the story progressed in a normal manner for a movie with a more relaxed tone. It's over 2 hours long and i didn't get bored. Ever scene added to the story. If you thought this was light on story, you must be really bored in most films.
I also thought that the "dreamy musical scenes" were very well done and the cinematography was brilliant.
I found the secret of life! But forgot to write it down...
not a troll, but there are certainly better reviews out there. Check out salon for an honest review that goes beyond plot summary. As always, rotten tomatoes has a plethora of opinions. Remember, there's more than Katz out there (thank god)
...there's already a good review of this on Slashdot here.
A good number of people must use AC because of the awful moderators. That said. . .
Thanks for the review. But why always popular film? It's like reviewing N-Sync every week.
Why not:
L.I.E.
Amores Perres
Waking Life
Just a few examples. Much more substance, much more to talk about. I never understood why the educated tech community just falls down walking to the arts.
What a great review.
Hail to the king, baby!
How did people interpret the scene where there faces are "merge" in the window when Dr Mark sees Prot for the first time?
Why not have RMS starring? But on the other hand, he is not by any means at all a sane person.
During the credits the theater turned up the lights, so I couldn't read them very well. Nor could I really tell what happened after the credits ended and they showed about 15 more seconds of someone (Bridges?) doing something.
What was it?
(The theater claimed it was a MD state law that they had to turn on the lights when people start leaving. I don't know how long they have been doing it, I hadn't seen new movies in MD for a while...and I may decide never to again!)
k-pax was a cross between bicentennial man, patch adams, girl interrupted,and every retarded robin williams film since good morning vietnam.
it was entirely way too over dramatized and hollywood-like for me.
--
|-_-| . o O ( bEef!)
Ok, did anyone notice if Prot was wondering around with a towel at all?
(Sorry, hopeing for a Hitchhikers Guide reference in the movie.)
Just like Katz.
Seriously, I predicted the ending about 25% of the way through the film. It was a decent movie, but not anything unique.
I saw the 13 ghosts instead of kpax.. and boy was i rewarded.. I saw a nipple..
The only thing I'm wondering about this movie, after seeing the commercials with Spacey reading an animals mind, is whether or not this is another stupid 'extraordinary human/alien does corny magic tricks for audience' movie. When's the last time a movie with any mention of aliens, portrayed them in any sort of psychological way? If I were to believe hollywood, I would say that most alien lifeforms are pretentious freaks who should be immediately enslaved and forced to serve as interpreters to more interesting species; such as dolphins. What movie bothers to explain how or why most alien life has been given the powers of superman? Or how their superior minds somehow overcame the violent tendencies they charge us with; instincts that would've initially been necessary for the survival of their species (evolution is a dangerous road). Anyway, enough rambling. A good alien movie would be 90% exploration of life and culture on an alien planet, with the final 10% showing the arrival of freakish humans in a roving '4-wheeler'.
Although there is a good deal of ambiguitity some things are quite set.
- Prot can see ultraviolet light. Humans cannot see ultraviolet light. Thus, Prot is not human. While Prot inhabited the body of Robert, he had access to special abilities. These abilties didn't stay with Robert once Prot left.
- Prot had astronomical knowledge that would have been impossible without him being from K-PAX. The suggestions given in the movie were that he looked it up (it hadn't been published), he was a savant (he didn't have access to the necessary equipment), or even that he was a missing astrophysicist (he would have been recognized by his colleagues).
So it is nearly certain than an alien (Prot) was present in Robert's body until he left for K-PAX. It is extremely unlikely that Prot actually was Robert since near the end Prot spoke as if he was not Robert and he showed no signs of ever lying throughout the movie.
So while his motivations for coming in the first place or returning can be debated, it does seem to be a fact that Prot was alien.
carbonite
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
Spoilage NOTE not warning, since presumably
you try not to reveal too much.
I was looking around on amazon.com and noticed that Gene Brewer, who wrote the K-PAX novel, already has written a sequel named On a Beam of Light . There's an excerpt there also, but if you havent seen or read K-PAX yet, stay away, since it will spoil the ending.
A buddhist walks up to a hot dog stand and says ``Make me one with everything.''
This was an absolutely horrible movie with exactly one moment of inventiveness (see below). There was absolutely nothing that wasn't predictable, cliche, simplistic, and saccharine. Every person who came on screen with more than a few lines had their problems magically solved by prot in the most inane way possible. Work too much? Guess what, you'll come to appreciate your family! Have an estranged son mentioned in all of two scenes? I wonder if he'll be estranged by the end of the movie? Have OCD? Magic Jesus-analogue Kevin Spacey will make it all better.
I truly can't believe anyone actually enjoyed this movie.
As for the one inventive moment, it came at the end of the movie, as Jeff Bridges runs in slow motion to beat a digital countdown. The reason I consider this inventive is that the creators of K-PAX managed to throw in a completely unexpected movie cliche into a movie built entirely on other cliches. Note that I didn't put spoiler space around this because it was in the trailer.
My full review will appear sometime early in the week at Revolution SF. It will be more coherent than the above, which was written out of sheer shock in seeing someone think that there was actually something original about K-PAX.
Where the hell does that movie say that normal people are more fucked up then crazy people?
You don't want to give it away, but... YOU JUST DID. Moron.
I hate to beat up a Katz review...(well, no, not really.), but I have to wonder what qualifies him as a movie reviewer? Bad grammar, inaccuracies, and the like seem to say "Hey, don't take this seriously."
...and begins healing deranged patients who've been confined for years.
:)
Spacey's Prot, a visitor from the planet K-PAX, is a healing alien.
No, he's not. He even states that every being in the universe is capable of healing itself.
Picked up by the police after a mugging in New York City
...a mugging in which he did not participate...
He tells the skeptical Bridges (Dr. Mark Powers)
This is probably over-analyzing semantics, but prot doesn't tell Bridges jack shit. The actor's real name belongs in the parenthesis, while the character's name - in this case, Dr. Mark Powell is the person with whom prot is conversing.
Again, he doesn't heal them. He merely shows them the path to heal themselves.
Powers brings Prot to his house, with curious results that set the shrink off on a not very believable mission to New Mexico that he hopes will tell him who Prot really is.
I'm not entirely sure what this is supposed to mean.
This is one of those very rare endings that a dozen people can see and draw completely different conclusions from.
That just proves that the Katz writing style is sophomoric at best.
Anyway, K-PAX is a great movie. prot (Kevin Spacey) is taken to a Psychiatric institute after having told New York police officers how bright the light is on Earth. Early in the movie, prot is introduced to Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges) who takes an immediate interest in his case. Eventually, prot has Powell, the staff of the institute, fellow patients, and top astrologers totally puzzled as to his true identity.
K-PAX is said to lie about a thousand light-years from Earth (within the constellation Lira), and is where prot calls home. This story is obviously met with a certain amount of skepticism from the people of Earth, and the point of the movie is to work through that skepticism. By the end, the audience will draw vastly different conclusions regarding the story's ending, and it is these conclusions that give insight into each person's individuality.
(Oh, and "prot" isn't supposed to be capitalized. That's how it works on K-PAX.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
It makes sense to me why he would have to leave x number of years to the day and minute. Perhaps his beam of light has to wait until the Earth is realigned with whatever light-path he took? So it must take 5 revolutions around the sun for his lightpath to reconnect to K-Pax. Just a thought :-)
>>Does everyone in the universe schedule their travel based on earth time?
Hey I though they were working on a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. I don't know if it's still in the works or not since Douglas Adams died :-(
Did the reviewer stay for the end of the movie? The ending was damned disturbing. If you're looking for pleasant and soothing, see something else, or skip the ending.
Fisher-king + Starman = K-PAX
The speed of light is a constant. A "year" isn't - it's the time it takes our planet to go once around the Sun.
About the whole UV thing. Even if an alien did inhabit a human body, he would still only have access to *human* photoreceptors while using this human body. Human photoreceptors cannot detect UV light, no matter who's looking through them. But this brings the whole idea of "inhabiting someone else's body" into question, and spoiling all the fun. Whatever.
i haven't seen the movie and i don't think i will till i go see and iron monkey and troll the movies to full fill the 8.50 i had to pay to get in. wee. i read the book i think this movie was based of about five years ago.. the book was based of a psychology case study about a person that saw the world to alien to him. like the movie he though he was an alien. but the kicker is that in his world having sex was very painfull, the parents kick out the kids at a young age from the home. on the planet of k-pax i think, there is no property no one owns any thing. it was intresting book and it was short. you can read it in one sitting. the ending is sad he tells every one that he is going home on a certain day. on that day the docters can't find him in the psych building they find him in the basement naked in the fetal postion and half dead. my memory isn't that good so most of this post could be a construction of my own mind.
Me and lunchbox here are going to kick your ass.
where the normal people zapped the crazy people's brains.
You might want to look up lightyear on that link you just posted. It says that a lightyear is the distance light travels in a year. A year is a human construct based on the time it takes our planet to go around our sun. Beings from another planet wouldn't use the lightyear since it's only relevant to our planet. Like another posted said, Uranian lightyears would be a measurement of a vastly different amount of distance since Uranus takes so long to go around our sun.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Prot can see ultraviolet light. Humans cannot see ultraviolet light. Thus, Prot is not human.
Actually, it's my understanding that humans can see ultraviolet if they've had their lenses removed, for instance if they've had cataract surgery. The trick is that the lens has a slight yellowish cast to it that filters UV.
It's said that during WWII, OSS parachute drops were made to targets laid out with UV beacons, using post-cataract-surgery spotters.
As far as K-Pax goes, this is another nail in the idea that an alien could take over a human and see in UV; the requisite wavelengths wouldn't even reach the retina.
In the wrong hands, sanity is a dangerous weapon.
i wrote it down but was too drunk to write it legibly-
http://www.blackant.net/other/images/page4.php
So the bottom line of the movie is alien visits from outer space. Alien behaves in a funny way so we all laugh. Something spectacular happens at the end when the alien leaves. The movie has Jeff Bridges in it. Oh my god! K-PAX is a rerelease of Starman!!!!
I know Kevin Spacey and Robin Williams play different types of personalities, but does Jeff Bridges' character come to the same sort of realizations as he did in The Fisher King.
"I see. The fact that you . . . can't explain . . . explains everything."
did nobody notice the data impression that prot constantly did?
it was brilliant.
i liked the movie - didn't expect too much, so i enjoyed myself.
~A
Linux, Vai, Satch and Guitars.. that is the life ICQ# 7357858
Kpax? What's that? Some sort of Anthrax antibiotic?
The contrived Mental Health industry has no business being in business. Not when, on public tv - PBS- yet, a celebrated mental health professional said that the current state of the art mental health technology has no apparent medical benefit. This opinion is echoed by many prominent and qualified medical professionals. The current body of mental health treatments and laws concerning "mental health" are the greatest threat to our country and our freedoms.
Actually, human blue photoreceptors can detect into the ultra-violet. The human lens is U.V. opaque (and slowly clouds up over a lifetime of absorbing ionising U.V. radiation). If you replace the human lens with a U.V. transparent artificial one, you can see into the U.V. range.
No, this doesn't explain the U.V. abilities of Prot, but it's interesting anyway.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Along the movie, people in the theater were hoping for "dressing down" of traditional human practices more specifically related to the concept of experts who know better. The expectations were met until the New Mexico connection developed, a sympathetic disappointment settled in - the messiah is a false one with no magic tricks. Except for the one where he is going to ride the light home. There too it isn't clear if did or did not ride the light.
People like things that either confirm to their existing models of perception of reality - serial killer/pscychotic/maniac etc. or plausible new ones with reasonable risk - ET/Encounter of Third Kind/ anything that doesn't fall within this range is conveniently moved under WTF. And that's what the movie is about. Suspend your conceived notions and apperance of reality. There's more to it than meets the eye. And ofcourse another thing, with the instant gratification mindset, people want things chewed and digested.
how is it possible to misinterpret the ending? prot left and didn't need to borrow robert porter's body anymore, and he took the other patient with him. remember when the doctor asked about robert porter, and prot said that when he saw him to make sure to take care of him? he knew he was going to be leaving the body behind, and only inhabited it when porter needed help.
THERE IS NO HONOR IN JOURNALISM!
Stop posting shit on slashdot. Who the fuck do you think you are KATZ? You doing this for a damn noble price? Just be like Nelson Mandela and talk shit and you'll win, but don't do it on slashdot! I repeat:
katzshitpost!=slashdotworthy
katzpost = /dev/spooge
This is lame. come on are you telling me tha the esteemed Taco uses the services of a Mistress?????
I doubt it. he's a big bad stud. he is the dominating one in any and all sexual realtionships.
"The idea that lunatics in asylums are the only really sane people in this crazy world has become a staple of American movies, from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to Girl Interrupted to K-PAX , a surreal, at-times-charming and curiously detached psychological drama starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges about the complex relationship between a self-proclaimed alien and an alienated psychiatrist."
The idea that the above is a major run on sentence, in which absurd claims are made to support what Katz seems to think is a clever idea, when in fact the idea is ludicrous at best, might tend to go overlooked because one is so busy trying to figure out if this guy ever saw a single film or play in which he didn't see correlations between things that clearly have none, not to mention his tendency to see everything in terms of Technology and Nerds
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You don't want to give it away, of course. Sigh.
----------
"They misunderestimated me." --George W Bush, Nov. 6, 2000
aye! We got 'em !
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.
The planet is called "K-PAX" and his own name is "prot". K-PAX II is out in bookshops now, and K-PAX III is out next year, apparently.
May contain traces of nut.
The whole alien story was patched together from newsclippings and memos pinned to the corkboard behind Jeff Bridge's desk.
K-PAX was some company's name on the coffee cup!
If this movie sounds good to you, go see (or rent) Man Facing Southeast [imdb.com]. One of the best films ever made.
"12 Monkeys" had the whole "guy in the asylum saying stuff but nobody believing him" angle.
he could see ultra violet, remember? That's pretty unambiguous evidence that he's from K-PAX (or at least SOME other planet). There was the stuff about him being immune to the drugs and disappearing for 3 days to go up north too. But just the ultra violet part should be enough to take any ambiguity out of the movie, right?
Let's not forget 12 Monkeys, another great movie that involves an asylum and its inhabitants. It's a counterexample to the sane-people-thought-crazy notion, with Brad Pitt playing a character who is clearly off his nut, but is the first to be released (of course, along with the influence of his father). Hmm... is that a giraffe I see on the expressway?
Why hasn't anyone noticed that K-PAX is a representation of what a modern-day appearance of Jesus would be like?
I think the whole movie could also be interpretted as kevin spacy being on ACID. thagts why his eyes were also dilated, and he was able to understand human psychoilogy so well and cure the patients (if you had ever take acid then you would know wha ti am talking about. also in 60s a lot of psychiatrists used LSD for understanding their patients better)
A perfect example of production companies producing similar films, and then the distributors competitive nature.
The distributors, if they have a comparable film competing for the same niche as another distribution company, will either release them together to share the same market simulteneously. Or if one film is getting positive criticism, they will stagnate the release of the second film to play off the popularity of the first (such as Don't Say a Word before this.
go see Waking Life instead!
The ending can make sense if put in the following light.
Prot leaves K-Pax (whole self), arrives on earth, entering human body (robert pourson), and when he leaves, he also leaves the human body, and returns to his K-Pax one -- the important distinction is he moved, he didn't transform. When he and bess leave, bess's whole body is missing, and she'll be put in a K-Paxian body on K-Pax, while Prot doesn't need to because he's normally one.
As for the hypnosis, that's a way to get past the superficial alien vissage, and get down to the person that's inside. Also, strong experiences (the water bit) can bring this out too. It could also be argued that perhaps that prot's personality is overrided in certain parts by his host. (explaining the vegetarian bit, or perhaps that was just from his love of life in the universe -- although he didn't seem to be annoyed at the talk of the balance of organisms eating each other on Earth)
Why didn't the government or SETI get involved?
Why didn't the in-law scientist ask any more questions at the July 4th thing?
How come hypnotism worked on the human host part of him, but the KPAKean wasn't aware of it?
Why was he so keen to talk about everything (except lightwave travel) and many other KPACeans are on earth, but we assume that none of the other aliens reveal themselves?
That's what I thought when I read the synopsis of K-PAX: Man Facing Southeast. It's a delightful Argentinian film. See it if you get a chance. I always thought it was as close to Philip K. Dick (his quirky philosophical schizophrenic novels, not Bladerunner or Total Recall) without being based on an actual Dick story.
The ending turns out to be the most inventive part of the movie. It's actually quite ingenuous, leaving people wondering about what they really saw and ought to conclude from it.
No, that's not supposed to be a u.
If all you wanna write is fucking crummy movie reviews why dont you get a job at People Magazine or some fuckheaded place like that?
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Yeah, maybe. Whatever.
While his essays and general observations are not up to the standards of hardcore journalism, I nonetheless enjoy his passion and the general leaning of his biases, which are often close to my own.
And I like his film reviews as well. I don't often agree with him, but then I don't often agree with any reviewer. It's fun to read people's opinions nonetheless.
This whole site has an attitude and quality which I think his hack-style fits with very well. If you want plastic-people news, there's plenty of other sites you can go to.
Slashdot rocks, it's reliable and constantly updating, and it wouldn't be the same without Katz.
Just my opinion.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be hunting for a warez site to snag a copy of K-Pax.
-Fantastic Lad -I swear! I'll not give another dime to Hollywood until I feel properly compensated for all the crap they've tricked me into paying over-inflated ticket prices to watch!
Has anyone seen this movie. It was made in Argentina back in the 80s and was about some alien guy named Rantes and the pyschiatrist who tried to treat him. Can anyone who has seen both movies tell me if the plot lines are similar?
"Or how their superior minds somehow overcame the violent tendencies they charge us with; instincts that would've initially been necessary for the survival of their species (evolution is a dangerous road)."
So one wonders how a plant species would turn out? I never saw a tree mug anyone.
Anyone care to compare & contrast this to the movie "powder"?
One thing no seems to be mentioning is that K-Pax is the bad remake of a wonderful 1986 Argentinian film "Hombre mirando al sudeste" (Man Facing Southeast).
The orginal was quite subtle. It really sounds like this remake has been substantially dumbed down. Surprise surprise. Thanks again Hollywood.
Jesus, Poag, that was pretty pathetic.
K - P+A+X = K-31 = 11-31 = 311!!
Explain how 11-31 = 311? Dipshit.
For those of you having trouble understanding
the ending, it means you don't watch enough
Star Trek and other science fiction. Prot
gave it away at the very beginning when he
explains to the doctor that a soap bubble
assumes the shape it does because it
is the "most energy efficient configuration."
Assume being the key word there. The body
served as a fine host for the alien while
Prot moved about the planet; and was left
behind after he returned to K-Pax.
in a long time. Accipiter, not Katz, should be writing movie reviews for /.
This isn't really about K-Pax, but about the lead in on the review:
"idea that lunatics in asylums are the only really sane people in this crazy world has become a staple of American movies"
This is a very old theatrical convention in Western storytelling, at least 500 years (the fool in "King Lear") or 2500 years old (the various travelling companions in Aristophanes' "Clouds", "Frogs", "Birds", etc.), and even the ancient Greek theater was drawing on older traditions.
Standard plot: the sane people do bad things to each other, but the rules of social convention prevent them from recognizing the depth of the stupidity, deception, evil, etc. The only person who really knows what's going on and can really see the world for what it is gets regarded as a fool, insane, etc., and is either locked up or disregarded. Usually, but not always, the rational world ends up being so unfair, unpleasant, or harmful, that the protagonist is forced to realize that the irrational viewpoint is the clearer one, the saner one. At that point, he will either become an overt outcast, or a covert convert.
God bless that liberal arts education.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Trees - and other flora - often engage in some rather vicious chemical warfare. And "strangling vines" aren't called that without reason. See also "venus flytraps". The time scale is long, often much longer, but plants can be every bit as lethal as animals.
K-PAX sucked. He should have just disappeared, the whole catatonic thing SUCKED. Not to mention Kevin Spacey looked like he was on amphetamines the entire movie.
Dr. Mark Powell, not Dr. Mark Powers. I knew I wasn't crazy when I heard that he has the same last name as my grandparents. http://imdb.com even agrees with me.
I still have not seen K-Pax but the more I hear the more similar they sound.
Hombre mirando al sudeste (1986) is a link to the imdb page. The plot summary is:
A new patient mysteriously appears in a psychiatric ward. He claims to come from another planet to study humans and their behavior. The alien is gentle but criticizes humans for their harsh treatment of each other. The assigned psychiatrist is himself unhappy, and affected by the patient's insight. But he is ordered to treat the patient according to institutional procedure.
K-PAX was an exceptionally mellow movie. It was about (for me) the wonder of the world and sitting back and appreciating the here and now, and not stressing out so much. I walked out of the movie in a very pleasant and tranquil mood.
Ultimately it was a good movie, the fact that everything was not answered and it was also not a excrutiating Hollywood ending where it was overly sappy. I give it a very favorable rating.
Do you have any information or references to the bit about the parachute drops using cataract-surgery spotters? That's *cool*.
X is the 14th letter in the alphabet?
11 - 31 = 311?
Get your math right. K-PAX would equal the difference of K and the product of P, A and X.
Therefore, K-PAX = 11-16124 = 11 - 384 = -373.
373 is a palindromic prime. It is the only palindromic prime with all substrings prime. It is the sum of the squares of five consecutive primes: 3,5,7,11, and 13.
An interesting number indeed. I'm sure they made it negative just to hide all these interesting facts from casual seekers. Where the Nazi bit comes in, I don't know.
K-PAX much like "The Usual Suspects" http://us.imdb.com/Title?0114814 completely depends on Spacey's ability to act straight faced and not give a thing away, I'm pretty sure that this wouldn't have worked with any other actor. Very good movie, but a little disturbing at the end, with recent events I was hoping for more of a comedy or sci-fi mystery.
This is nothing new. I remember a full decade ago when F-Prot (distant relative perhaps? perhaps the one facing southwest?) helped my computer to see what was making it ill.
Of course F-Prot was from Sweden and rode the phone lines at a remarkably slow 14,400 bits/second.
But then, several years later, F-Prot left, and I've never heard from it again.
The science of astronomy is practiced by "astronomers". The superstition of astrology is practiced by "astrologers".
Sorry, one of my pet peeves.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Yes, interesting. At first I was going to write an angry reply saying that still doesn't explain his abilities, but then I read the end. Yes, interesting.