GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Tanner McCoon Like multiple critic reviews of this film, I had a very hard time feeling anything for Joseph K. Mostly, in my opinion, because I felt like even he was in on parts of the plot that I wasn't privy to. The story was always bouncing from one character to the next and the dialogue was so abstract that I had a very hard time even understanding what was going on up even to the ending.One thing that i was struck by, was the atmosphere. The film was surreal without being too over-the-top. I felt like I was watching a horrible dream unfold where no one was sure whether or not what was happening was actually real.Bottom line, I'd recommend this film to people who aren't into the Hollywood blockbusters, but rather like watching a film for the underlying themes. There is simply so little in this film that holds your attention (besides random sensual scenes), that most people including myself really won't find the film worth watching.One last thing, don't get too excited about Anthony Hopkins in this film. He has a great performance for about 10 minutes near the end of the movie and that's it.

Robert J. Maxwell It's not easy to transpose Kafka to the screen. And he was, unexpectedly, a damned hard read in German class too. I dare anyone to make a movie about a man being refused entrance through a gate that was built solely for him to enter. What I mean is, much of what goes on depends on trivial, humdrum matters that are slightly cockeyed. Okay, a man turns into a giant dung beetle. What do I do now, Ma? In this very good adaptation of "The Trial" -- better than Orson Welles' and Anthony Perkins' -- that note of things being off kilter is effectively captured. The production has an oneiristic quality in which we are Kyle MacLachlen, the only person who plays it straight, indignant at being arrested by a couple of clowns who won't identify themselves or tell him what the charge against him is. But instead of taking MacLachlan to "the Depot", they let him spend the day working at his job in the bank, then return to his apartment at night.He asks his landlady, Juliet Stevenson in a peerless performance, to be his "advisor" since he needs someone to help him face whatever trouble he's supposed to be in. She smiles coyly, looks away from him, and acts thoroughly distracted -- exactly as figures do in a dream when you're trying to get their attention. It's not that easy to paint everyday interaction that preposterous without going overboard. Luis Bunuel managed it in one dream sequence in "Los Olvidados" when a mother turns to her child with a great big grin and offers him a slab of raw, dripping meat. And a production team seemed to fall into it almost by accident in the cheap horror movie, "Carnival of Souls." Portentous things happen. Strangers want to take you away for no reason. People in other rooms are listening to you. The air reeks with paranoia. The very air you breathe is ominous. If Kafka were alive today, he could write the same novel, slipping only the clothes and furnishings out of Prague in the 1920s.Nobody can claim the movie sticks closely to Kafka's novel. It's all chopped up into inchoate bits and pieces, like MacLachlan at the finish. Beautiful, buxom women keep throwing themselves at MacLachlan's feet and begging him, "Kiss me. Make love to me." This happens to me all the time but I don't recall its happening to Joseph K.A bit of gratuitous nudity might have helped because in its second act the movie runs headlong into a problem often encountered by absurd stories. If anything can happen, how can you build a dramatic structure out of it? What carries the viewer along? Certainly it's not Joseph K's character. He's no wimp, so it's hard to feel he's being humiliated. He's defiant, demanding, and insulting, not an inconvenient dung beetle. The movie begins with his arrest and ends with his pointless execution. I can't remember his ever asking what he's being charged with. He talks to several people along the way but they respond with gibberish.That doesn't detract from the performances, which are just fine on everyone's part. Two cameos stand out. Jason Robards is a frail but sprightly lawyer. Anthony Hopkins appears in one scene as the prison chaplain who relates the parable of the man waiting forever before the gate of "the law." Hopkins is simply magnetic. Nobody else could have told that simple, paradoxical tale so grippingly.

stanman8686 Very dull.To anyone that has taken time to read it or any small part of it, Kafka's body of work does not readily lend itself to film adaptation. His fiction is savagely personal, and so the vast majority plays out in the minds of the central characters rather than through action or dialogue. And when there is dialogue, it is subtly understated, absurdly simplistic, powerful and surreal. His novels were his nightmares, and in writing they became our nightmares, imagining his quiet and steady suffocation and contemplating our own. Committing true horror to film is difficult by any standards, and this film fails outright.It lacks the brutal eeriness that Kafka relates. It lacks the finesse of Kafka's words. It lacks the expressive thought that is instrumental in deciphering his protagonist. It lacks all but Kafka's story (and his name), and this story is really too simple. The nuances of the language never emerge and any lingering boldness is soon lost in boredom. To translate Kafka into English requires passion and true understanding; to translate Kafka to another medium requires nothing less than inspiration, and this director and his cast lack it entirely.If you want a well-realized, true-to-Kafka film, find American animator Caroline Leaf's "The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa" or Orson Welles' adaptation of this same novel, or even Rudolph Noelte's 1971 version of "The Castle."

TomParr This film was OK. The plot went along happily enough, but I thought things were a bit vague as to K's state of mind during the film and the ending seemed anticlimatical. I have not read the book and perhaps this is how it was supposed to be. The silliest thing I noticed about this film is that Anthony Hopkins took up the whole of my DVD cover and then only appeared for around 10 minutes of the about 2 hour film. I find this rather odd and amusing. Otherwise, I thought the film was well acted and had a lovely setting. 6/10