Really Surprised!

Please don't spend money on this.

Amateur movie with Big budget

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This has been a great year for alternate realities at the movies. Films like The Matrix, Sixth Sense, Blair Witch Project, Thirteenth Floor, and Run, Lola, Run have all, in different ways, played with the line that separates past from present, reality from simulation, and truth from fiction. Being John Malkovich can be added to this list of innovative films that a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly described as the first films of the 21st century.There is little in this film that is formula. John Cusack plays a gifted puppeteer who aspires to be one of the world's great puppeteers. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of job openings for puppeteers so he is reduced to street theater where he is clearly underappreciated. An almost unrecognizable Cameron Diaz plays Cusack's wife, a pet lover who is just a little quirky. When Cusack decides to take a job as a file clerk on floor 7.5 of an office building, life becomes even weirder. Cusack discovers an opening behind a file cabinet, a little door that leads into a tunnel. Like the characters in C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, (or Alice Through the Looking Glass), Cusack jumps in and finds himself in an alternative universe. Instead of Narnia or Wonderland, Cusack finds himself on a 15-minute ride inside actor John Malkovich (played quite capably by . . . John Malkovich).Cusack joins forces with a co-worker to create a business. For $200 people can spend 15 minutes inside of John Malkovich's head, seeing the world through his eyes. Since this is even better than Real World or a WebCam show, people come in droves. Eventually, Malkovich himself discovers what's going on and jumps the line to go inside of his own mind. This leads to what has to be one of the more unique scenes in the history of film. The story takes on an even more interesting twist when Cusack finds a unique way to fulfill his lifelong dream of being the world's greatest puppeteer.This is one weird film--and I've left out some of the weird. This is also one of the most creative films I have seen, and the film raises interesting questions about consciousness, identity, love and meaning. There are great performances here by Cusack, Diaz, Malkovich, and Catherine Keener (Cusack's co-worker and eventual love interest). The real star of the show, however, is the story itself. First-time screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has crafted an interesting and innovative story. First-time director Spike Jonze handles the material extremely well. This is clearly not a film for all tastes, and the language and sexual scenes may well offend. This is, however, something that is very rare, in Hollywood--innovative, creative, and thought provoking. Watch for this film during the Oscar nominations. If this doesn't get nominated for screenplay--at least--I will hang up my trophy.

Where to start? The coolest conceptual story to come around in decades. Kaufman is a sheer genius, tying in philosophical quandaries with dark caustic humor and fanatical elements like no other. Spike Jonze brings this script to life, formulating a perfect storm of imagery and powerful performances. It speaks to everyone, as you will identify with at least one of these tortured characters. Casting Cameron and Cusack as these frumpy fops is brilliant as well, and they both give the best performances of their careers, playing against type in a magnificent display of grotesque beauty. And who would have thought the ending could be so poignant, tragic, and satisfying at the same time. What a damn roller coaster ride of imagination. Also, nice nod to surrealist Alfred Jarry, with the "half a floor" joke (he famously made his apartment like this for some baffling reason. LOVE THIS FILM.

Charlie Kaufman (script) and Spike Jonze (director) burst on the scene together with their collaboration on this crazy masterpiece. 'Being John Malkovich' pushes the limits of storytelling; this wildly imaginative film shows that even the most surreal storyline can still be made entertaining if a filmmaker doesn't care about conventions and knows just what the medium is capable of. Perhaps the most original release in a year that had several very original releases ('Fight Club' and 'The Matrix' were both also released in '99), the film's playful creative energy had an effect on screenwriters, directors, actors and producers that can hardly be overstated. There had simply never been anything like it - and one only has to look at a contemporary TV show like 'Legion' to see what a mark this film left. Groundbreaking and simply inspired. 9 stars out of 10.Favorite films: IMDb.com/list/mkjOKvqlSBs/Lesser-Known Masterpieces: imdb.com/list/ls070242495/

Since every human being is constantly tethered to their bodies and their perception of the world through that body, the curiosity of what life is like from another person's perspective is intrinsic to human nature. So what if the person whose body you could inhabit was critically acclaimed actor John Malkovich? And what if the portal to his mind was in an office with a low ceiling because it was in between two floors of a skyscraper? "Being John Malkovich" answers both of these questions and many more with a surprising amount of insight and depth.Craig Schwartz is a struggling puppeteer performing on the streets of New York to an audience who doesn't want him. He has a wife, Lotte, but they are clearly somewhat distant from each other, and she is often at work or trying to convince him to get a job. Finally, he obliges when money runs low, and he ends up filing cabinets at the odd floor 7 1/2. It's telling that his boss thinks that he has a speech impediment because his assistant has trouble hearing and often misinterprets his words: the only window into how he is perceived by others is filtered through the imperfect perceptions of those around him. In this office he sees Maxine Lund and slowly becomes desperate for her, even acting out a romantic encounter with her with his puppets while proclaiming it's the chance to feel what someone else feels that draws him to puppeteering. Soon after he stumbles upon a window into a man's brain, and while John Malkovich may have seemed like a random choice by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, I don't think it's an accident that the man they begin to live through is an actor himself, constantly trying to immerse himself in many different roles and different lives. As Craig and Lotte soon find out, completely changing their role and appearance in life helps them to further discover who they are and what they want. By discovering that her true self is not the gender or appearance or age that their assigned, Lotte realizes she feels more comfortable as a man. Of course, they do begin to exploit this sudden discovery as most human beings would do. Maxine does it for control, and Craig does it for Maxine's adoration, but it is only a matter of time until Malkovich himself finds this portal.Malkovich inevitably entering this portal himself could've been handled in a plethora of ways, but how it is handled is brilliant, funny, thought provoking, and it deepens the themes of the film. It shows how our mind ultimately compares everyone around us to ourselves because it is all that we have to compare to, and it also shows how many different versions of oneself exist within one's own mind, each revealing themselves at different times. And this isn't even the last big surprise of the movie. The climax exists entirely in Malkovich's subconscious. Although even through all of the film's heady ideas and absurdism it remains a very fundamentally human film. As Craig gets a hold of controlling Malkovich, they toy with the idea that one's position in life and preexisting image often dictates their success, but the surprisingly tragic ending reveals that what is at the core of who Craig is, regardless of the body he inhabits, is who he desires, and this is ultimately what dictates his actions, and it isn't hard to see that this desire is what dictates every other character as well, especially when the person one desires is just out of reach.