Calling the shots for the first time since 1998's acclaimed "Gods and Monsters" (for which he took home a best adapted screenplay Oscar), writer and director Bill Condon pays glowing tribute to Alfred Kinsey, the biologist-turned-sexologist whose groundbreaking 1948 publication, "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male," generated seismic ripples of controversy throughout post-War America and beyond. "Kinsey" boasts exceptional lead performances (by a never-better Liam Neeson and Laura Linney) and lovely writing by Condon, who also received an Oscar nomination for his "Chicago" screenplay. More unexpected is the picture's playfully exuberant tone, which, given Kinsey's clinically obsessive reputation for collecting data, might have resulted in a more austere portrait.

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