Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Wuchak "Big Sur" (2013), based on the 1962 book by the enigmatic Jack Kerouac, details the author's three retreats to a friend's cabin in the magnificent eponymous location a hundred miles south of San Francisco. Sometimes he's alone and sometimes he's with friends. Kerouac can't handle his fame and success as the leader of the beatniks and so descends into the darkness of alcohol addiction. While this is a well-made artsy film featuring narrations from the author himself throughout, it's done in by its subject. At least with 1991's "The Doors," which chronicled Jim Morrison's downward spiral, we got great music, entertaining concert footage and colorful characters. "Big Sur," by contrast, only has Kerouac's stream-of-consciousness verbiage (i.e. "interior monologue") and the beautiful cinematography of Big Sur. Yes, it's professionally made with a quality cast and it kept my interest for the first 45-50 minutes, but then it just drones on to the bitter end. I hate seeing people waste their talents, especially by their own foolish addictions. Of course this is the only way the story COULD end since it's based on real life. Jack was dead at 47. Despite my criticisms, "Big Sur" is worthwhile if the topic interests you and the film's obviously a must for Kerouac fans; it will leave most everyone else bored or depressed.Interestingly, it was 1957's "On the Road" that propelled Jack to beatnik stardom, but he later confessed it "was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found him." Too bad his revelation didn't help him out with his increasing substance abuse. The film runs a mere 81 minutes and was shot in Big Sur and San Francisco. GRADE: C

SnoopyStyle Jack Kerouac (Jean-Marc Barr) is almost 40, bored and jaded after his tremendously successful novel 'On the Road'. He leaves the overwhelming media attention for the isolation of Big Sur, California to regain his sanity. There is no booze, no drugs, and generally no people. After only 3 weeks, his boredom drove him mad and hitchhiking out of the cabin back to San Francisco where he spends his time drinking with friends. His friend Neal Cassady (Josh Lucas) has his wife Carolyn (Radha Mitchell), 3 kids, and mistress Billie (Kate Bosworth). When he goes back to the cabin, he is surrounded by a group of friends. After he goes back with Neal, he develops a relationship with Billie.It is cinematic representation of the literary aimless midlife crisis of Big Sur. It has the overwhelming and constant stream of consciousness Kerouac narration. There is no story that is anything close to a traditional movie. This imparts more of a mood rather than an actual story. Jean-Marc Barr is a relative unknown away from Europe. It allows the Kerouac character to exist in a tired and empty state. If a bigger star played him, I think the audience could slip into wondering about the acting prowess of the star. Kerouac almost exists as a hole exerting no force on this movie, but Barr can turn it on if it's required.

LawnBoy-4 As a longtime fan of Kerouac and reader of many of his works, I'm accustomed to his spontaneous, stream-of- consciousness writing. As such, I enjoyed the manner in which the narration was executed as it represented an accurate portrayal of his style."Big Sur" was written at a point in Jack's life during which his demons were beginning to take hold, replacing the wonder and excitement depicted in his earlier works with dread, self- loathing and ultimate despair. The bottle was no longer a means with which to enhance new experiences, rather, it had become a dark and lonely place in which to hide. This is not a feel- good story.Overall, I felt the film provided an accurate portrayal of Jack at this point in his life and it mostly depicted the various characters as I would have expected, given their descriptions in the book. Neal was a likable wild man who also seemed larger than life and I felt that his persona and magnetic traits were well portrayed. The only issue I had with the film was somewhat superficial and it concerns the modern hairstyles of Billie and Lenora - especially the latter, woodenly played by Stana Katic, who seemed to be a poor casting choice, in general. In fact, the period-incorrect styling choices of these two characters somewhat detracted from the feel of the scenes in which they were involved, which I found to be a rather disappointing oversight on the part of the director. The period style issues aside, this is an enjoyable film for those who are fans of Jack's life and writing style. To the casual viewer, it will likely come across as heavy, meandering and a bit depressing.

Tad Pole Squeezed between the Heroic "Greatest Generation," who conquered the Great Depression, won WWII, and produced seven American Presidents, and the Baby Boomers, who've churned out three U.S. Presidents so far, as well as a million celebrities too numerous to itemize here, was The Beatnik Generation (also known as the Beaten Down Folks) of this movie, BIG SUR. This group, born from 1928 through 1945, produced NO American Presidents (unless you count Puppetmaster Dick Cheney), and has managed little else but a bisexual circle of personalities largely unknown to normal Americans, but obsessed with having movies made about their alleged "heyday" (HOWL, ON THE ROAD, KILL YOUR DARLINGS, and BIG SUR are only four of the most recent). When the surviving "Beats" serve as "technical consultants," their booze and drug-addled brains apparently are not lucid enough to get the main characters--all of whom hung around together--into the same flick. In addition to "notables" featured in BIG SUR--Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Michael McClure--there was a handful of others, such as Allen Ginsberg, homophobic killer Lucian Carr, Ken Kesey, Tom Wolfe, and Hunter S. Thompson (the latter of whom both George McGovern and Jimmy Carter credit for their Democratic presidential nominations in GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON). BIG SUR drops most of the pseudonyms utilized by Kerouac for these people in his actual books (as only university English majors hell-bent in staying out of the "real world" the rest of their lives have even heard of the fake names) in favor of their real names, except it calls Diane and Curtis Hansen "Billie and her son Elliott," in an attempt to further "smooth over" the bigamy of the circle's one Alpha Male, Neal Cassady. If I haven't said enough already for you to decide whether or not to see BIG SUR, let me conclude by saying there was ONE other person at my showing in the theater, and he WALKED OUT (never to come back) after 40 minutes of this mercifully brief 81-minute effort to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear of a generation (but the scenery is absolutely stunning!).