K-PAX (2001)

Mind blowing and perfect. I became a Kevin spacey fan with in the first five minutes of the movie. keep you engaged from the beginning to the end. I think this is the only movie that used Kevin spacey's potentials. I think Kevin spacey deserved Oscars for this. Best story telling and unbelievable character absorption

Every once in awhile, movie fans need to watch a great "what if?" movie to really get them thinking about extraordinary possibilities. "K-Pax" is exactly that type of movie.For a basic plot summary, "K-Pax" sees Prot (Kevin Spacey) suddenly appear in a train station with seemingly no explanation of how or why. According to Prot himself, he is an extraterrestrial from the planet K-Pax hear to "observe and report" on Earth culture. Predictably, Prot is placed in a mental institution where Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges) begins to unravel the mystery behind the strange (yet oddly inspiring) Prot.This is a great mystery/drama that will keep you engaged from beginning to end. Director Iain Softley gives the film great pacing and fills it with equal parts human drama, mystery, science fiction, and humor. If you have a single curious bone in your body, you'll quickly get sucked into the quirky Prot character and just how the heck we might be!A quick fair warning though: this is not necessarily the type of movie where all the "answers" are wrapped up in a nice bow for you at the end. It requires a lot of thought and introspection to truly figure out for yourself what you feel the "answer" truly is. I usually dislike those kind of conclusions, but here the subject matter becomes so compelling and fantastic that it makes sense of different interpretations of the preceding events to creep in.Overall, "K-Pax" is a great film for the intellectually curious or those who just love a great human drama mystery. Only those with a very limited imagination will completely dismiss it.

A derelict man is lifted by the police after an incident in a train station. He subsequently insists his name is Prot and he is from a planet called K-PAX, so he is taken to a mental hospital to be analysed, while there he helps everyone he encounters see the light.This is a clear example of a movie that uses its sci-fi premise to tell us things about ourselves. It's a bit of a clichéd idea and in this case it is done in an excessively syrupy and patronising manner. Kevin Spacey is possibly the most annoying alien to ever have visited Earth; he manages to navigate the entire running time of the movie with a smug, self-satisfied, look on his face. Predictably, he turns out to be an extra-terrestrial who knows humans better than humans, while the inmates of the asylum know more about what's really going on than the doctors, etc etc etc. It's all very tedious and trite. So much so that I was sort of hoping the doctors would re-introduce electro-shock therapy for Prot and his fellow inmates. Additionally, this is a movie with a relentlessly delicate piano-driven soundtrack that started to grate on me after a bit on account of its overbearing worthiness.K-PAX is certainly watchable and has a premise that is pretty decent but it is executed in a manner that undermines its potential effectiveness. It also stars Jeff Bridges as a psychiatrist who needs an alien make him aware that he should spend more time with his son.

As time goes by this movie proves/reproves itself as a a pinnacle of life's hard earned wisdom. While i loved this move 10+ yrs ago, i decided to re- watch with my other daughters... and wow i found that i had not even come close to really understanding the full message, and i'm not sure that i ever will entirely. "Every being in the universe knows right from wrong" is the line in this movie that makes me question government, religion and pretty much everything. It's extremely rare movies like this that i go to in order to having a remote chance at understanding the real nature of why were here. I have to give this a 10 because it just continues to stick with me in way that is different from most.