This item is currently not available. If you have this item,
Join and post it to share with others.
While too many movies suffer the fate of creative bankruptcy,Being John Malkovich is a refreshing study in contrast, so bracingly original that you'll want to send director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman a thank-you note for restoring your faith in the enchantment of film. Even if it ultimately serves little purpose beyond the thrill of comedic invention, this demented romance is gloriously entertaining, spilling over with ideas that tickle the brain and even touch the heart. That's to be expected in a movie that dares to ponder the existential dilemma of a forlorn puppeteer (John Cusack) who discovers a metaphysical portal into the brain of actor John Malkovich.
The puppeteer's working as a file clerk on the seventh-and-a-half floor of a Manhattan office building; this idea alone might serve as the comedic basis for an entire film, but Jonze and Kaufman are just getting started. Add a devious coworker (Catherine Keener), Cusack's dowdy wife (a barely recognizable Cameron Diaz), and a business scheme to capitalize on the thrill of being John Malkovich, and you've got a movie that just gets crazier as it plays by its own outrageous rules. Malkovich himself is the film's pièce de résistance, riffing on his own persona with obvious delight and--when he enters his own brain via the portal--appearing with multiple versions of himself in a tour-de-force use of digital trickery. Does it add up to much? Not really. But for 112 liberating minutes,Being John Malkovich is a wild place to visit.--Jeff Shannon
if you love surrealism.... I love surrealism so I liked this movie. It's freaky, it's wierd, people don't look like themselves and there are unexplained pieces all over it. Puzzling bits. Unanswered pieces. Even the puppets add weirdness.
Craig (Cusack) is a brilliant, unrecognised puppeteer, who lives with his animal collecting wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz). I have to say right off that her hair was *hideous* and gave her character a waif-like incompetent look. She urges Craig to get a job after he gets hit by an offended dad while he's performing on the street in front of her shop. He goes to work as a file clerk, inexplicably in offices that take up only 1/2 floor, populated by employees who are just, well, odd- some are lechers, some think the whole world has a speech impediment and others are just wierd.
Craig discovers a "tunnel" and follows it into John Malkovich's brain and he and his freaky co-worker Maxine (Keener) decide this provides a fantastic opportunity to make extra cash. Like the good puppeteer he is, he needs to go further than just visiting Malkovich. Lotte, OTOH, finds the experience overpowering and overwhelming, with some interesting side effects in her relationship with the freaky Maxine.
I was uncomfortable with the scenes when Craig put Lotte in the cage- other people who are appalled by domestic violence will find that unamusing as well. Of course, people appalled by same sex couples will have issues with the evolution of Maxine and Lotte's relationship.
As and actor, John Malkovich has always fascinated me. Some other reviewers- who didn't like the movie- wondered why he would "lower" himself to the level of this movie. I, OTOH, would see it as a wonderful opportunity. How many actors get the opportunity to play themselves, yet, not really themselves? To be in a scene where every single character is *themself*? eeek! Hard to imagine what that would be like!
The whole entering-through-the-portal-and-living-forever aspect was left largely unexplored- or unexplained. We, the mere viewers, will just have to wonder about all those people who went into the tube and congregated together- for how long? and how many people were in each of *them*? *shudder*
The puppetry is amazing. Anyone interested in puppets needs to see this movie- they need to *buy* it to support the art of puppetry.
The interview with Spike Jonze is priceless but raises more questions than it answers. ***evil laugh***
A review from the author of YEARS OF RAGE
BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (1999) has been touted as a masterpiece, but it's difficult to see why: 1.) The narrative is absolutely preposterous---not to mention obviously "media-critical" (everyday losers disappear into the head of a celebrity and see the world through his eyes); 2.) The film is very poorly lit---and please don't tell me that this is "deliberate." It's simply poorly lit, whether "deliberately" or not. 3.) The film is poorly directed by an MTV video jockey who has been dubbed as "mysterious" for reasons that are mysterious to me. (Who cares if he is "mysterious"? On the basis of this film, the man's no artist.) Almost every shot is static and lifeless and conventionally set up. 4.) The film is EXTREMELY pretentious, much like other psuedo-counter-mainstream mainstream American films from the same period (REQUIEM FOR A DREAM and THE RULES OF ATTRACTION). 5.) The film is simply dour. Not emotionally powerful. Not disheartening. Just saggy and soggy and dour.
Apparently, I am one of the few who think that this is a terrible film, and I don't expect anyone else to agree with me.
Joseph Suglia, the author of YEARS OF RAGE, the novel inspired by the Columbine High Massacre
Invasion of the Body Snatcher(s) Stop laughing and step back a minute---"Being John Malkovich" isn't funny, it's a horror movie. Alright---it's funny, *and* it's a horror movie.
Somewhere, somehow, sometime, someplace (possibly Providence, Rhode Island) Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft got together. Genes were spliced. The warped and twisted biological result was Spike Jonze, one of modern cinema's most insidious, surreptious, diabolically gifted and wickedly talented filmmakers and the most Terrible of the Enfants Terribles stalking the American academy of Arts and Letters today.
Having helmed the infamous Beastie Boys "Sabotage" video, Jonze and partner-in-crime Charlie Kaufman were ready to cobble together a Trojan Horse and aim it at the dark heart of Fortress Hollywood.
They succeeded massively with the darkly subversive "Being John Malkovich", the story of a disaffected puppeteer (played by John Cusack) who discovers a secret aperture into the mind of actor John Malkovich.
Some wrong-headedly think this is a surreal comedy. Poor, naive, childish innocents, I say! I'm here to contend that for all its comedic trappings, "Being John Malkovich" is a horror movie that H.P. Lovecraft himself would appreciate. Yes, I know, the title itself is risible, the notion of a portal into John Malkovich's consciousness makes one giddy, and you can't possibly have a proper cosmos-ripping horror movie with Cameron Diaz, John Cusack, John Malkovich, and Charlie Sheen. I know all the standard objections.
But first: if you haven't seen "Being John Malkovich", stop reading this silly review and go buy the thing. You'll be utterly delighted and glad you listened to my advice.
Alright, for those of you who have seen this wicked little gem of sheer cinematic subversion---listen up: "Being John Malkovich" is a horror movie, not a comedy, a long-toothed snarling wolf dolled up in comedic sheep's clothing. Think not? Fine: let's leave the idea of John Malkovich having his body snatched out of it. If the idea of a blameless, innocent, blithe little girl being invaded by a small platoon of slobbering geriatrics isn't horror, then nothing is horrible.
Still skeptical? That's fine, but be warned: everything in in Jonze and Kaufman's little tour de force here is expertly stage-managed and distilled to a single purpose, and that is fooling the innocent, naive viewer to the movie's singularly malign purpose: body-snatching is front and center here. If you think this is a comedy, dear friend, then you're being duped with fine food and good wine, just the tools the wicked immortal Dr. Lester (a fine turn by the great Orson Bean, with nods to Lovecraft's "Terrible Old Man") used, as the evil Captain Merten had used before him.
Think about it this way: what happened to Malkovich once Craig and Maxine's little entrepreneurial scheme took on a life of its own? Still feel like a good horse laugh? I'm thinking a stiff Scotch is more in order.
The direction and cinematography here are spot on, and every scene tells. The acting is also superb, from Cusack's dangerously desperate puppeteer, to veteran actors Bean and the late Byrne Piven (Captain Merten, who pities dwarves), to Catherine Keener, who plays the wicked, devious, Machiavellian shrew Maxine. I despised her every second she was on screen---good job, Miss Keener!
The real plaudits go to Cameron Diaz. I had never really considered Diaz an actress of substance, but her wildly schizophrenic romp as the crazed animal-lover Lotte showed the woman has some finely honed acting chops. Charlie Sheen sinks his fangs into his tiny but tasty role, and Malkovich purrs through the movie like a kitten.
Surreal, quirky, brilliantly paced, constantly resourceful, occasionally creepy, with a haunting, pining score by Carter Burwell and Bjork that calls to mind Philip Glass's composition for "Mishimia", "Being John Malkovich" is a clever, wicked, blackly funny work of genius, but it is very much a horror film. Having returned from a jaunt through his own tortured subconscious, Malkovich roars "I have seen things no man should have to see." Truer words couldn't have frothed from the lips of one of Lovecraft's tentacle-tormented heroes.
Still not convinced? Look at "Malkovich's" ample horror trappings: a skewed, twisted crawlspace of an office, forcing its denizens to walk in a crouch and situated between the floors of the building; a Terrible Old Man, confounded by an illusory speech impediment, who has chronicled the life of his unwitting host in a back-room; Dwarf Love;---and of course, bodysnatching.
To say nothing of this prospect: imagine the sensation of a horde of hungry, greedy, ancient eyes crawling across your body, a mulifaceted invasion force perched just behind the two innocuous irises of your dinner-mate.
Does that give you the giggles? It gives me the crawls.
