Rating: 
Summary: one of the best you'll ever hope to see!
Review: Kudos to the writer, director and cast for coming up with this brilliant film! John Cusack plays a bankrupt puppeteer who takes a depressing job as a file clerk on the 7 1/2 floor of a NYC building -- the ceilings are abnormally low so everyone has to stoop. His wife Lotte is a bigtime animal-lover played by a frumpy dumpy Cameron Diaz (did anyone ever think that was even possible?) Craig and a co-worker Maxine (Catherine Keener) discover a portal behind the file cabinet which allows whomever enters it to be inside the head of John Malkovich for 15 minutes before spitting them out on the side of the NJ Turnpike. They devise a scheme to charge [X] a person for this 15 minutes and start to make a fortune. All of this is done without Malkovich's permission. Things come to a head (ha ha) when Malkovich finds out, and both Craig and Lotte fall for Maxine. You will not guess what happens next and how it will end -- you have to watch it! And for years to come, you will see that it is the only film in ages that doesn't follow a formula.
Rating:
Summary: Is it entertainment or intellectualism?
Review: I'm not a Cusack fine, but here's the perfect role for him: an outcast misfit who can't quite get it right at home, finds a path to make his dreams in someone else's body. Take what you know about reality, invert it, and your mind will bend handling the rest. Fantastic!
Rating:
Summary: Best film of 1999
Review: This is the kind of film that can restore your faith in American cinema. That it was even produced is a miracle, let alone received Oscar nominations. Unjustly deprived of the award for Best Original Screenplay (losing to "American Beauty"), Charlie Kaufman's magnificently absurd story works on so many levels: as surrealist fantasy, as a critique of our fascination with fame, as an acid inquiry into gender, power games and sexual manipulation, and, more simply, as just one hell of a funny trip. What's particularly impressive is that despite his story being relentlessly and increasingly ludicrous, Kaufman manages to tie-up all the loose ends and deliver an ending which is as heartbreaking as it is hilarious. He also gives us some of the funniest lines ever spoken on screen, to wit: 'Behind the stubble, the too prominent brow, and male pattern baldness, I sensed you feminine longing.' Spike Jonze extracts near-perfect performances from his high-calibre cast, with Cameron Diaz and Catherine Keener cleverly playing against type, and John Cusack showing his incredible versatility. Three cheers for originality and having the courage to follow it through.
Rating: 
Summary: Uncomfortable, unpleasant experience
Review: I'm a fan of John Malkovich and when I heard that he was going to be in the movie that bore his name I had to see it. Aside from a couple of parts where Malkovich is actually on screen ("Malkovich, Malkovich" and the Charlie Sheen cameo), this movie is dreary, unsettling, and for the most part pure trash. Not creative trash, mind you, gratutious "let's push the envelope and impose our own sick fantasies on the public" trash. This movie has nothing much to say aside from wasting our time showing how a pack of not-so-nice low life people sink even lower while engaging in sick sexual fantasies and backstabbing each other. It wasn't entertaining nor thought-provoking, just provoking; a dismal and self-involved effort that wastes a couple of hours of your life when you could be doing something much better than fill your mind with this trash. I didn't even watch it to the end. Two-thirds of the way through was all I could stomach.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Wierd
Review: You have to wonder how this one got by an industry that seems to release movies based on marketing surveys and the whatever the current political climate is. For this is a movie unlike any other. It takes big chances, and hits a home run, which gets it the five stars. How to describe this movie without giving away too much plot is tough here. Take a look at the box, and see the larger picture. You see a big head with a door leading into it. First, guess who's head it is. Next, notice that there are three people inside of it. That should give you enough clues to pique your interest, without giving away too many details. But "Being John Malkovich" is not the only weird thing going on here. John Cusack plays an unemployed puppeteer (yes, he plays with puppets) who is more or less pushed into an office job by his roommate Cameron Diaz in order to contribute just a wee bit to the finances of the relationship. Once again I'll try not to give away too much, but a day's work here involves using an elevator in a very special way, walking funny all day, and being prepared to have your co-workers seen to not here a word you say are all part of it. It is in this environment that the title action takes place. Then, believe it or not, it gets weirder. We see the adventures of the three that take on the title action, in different combinations. We then get a special treat at the title character also takes place, and how it's handled is very creative. Strangely enough, everything is explained, believe it or not very clearly, although just as wierd. The last scenes are a bit confusing, but are open to a lot of creative interpretation. Which is only fitting, as this is one very creative, very strange, very entertaining movie.
Rating:
Summary: Spike Jonze is amazing
Review: This movie has had its mixed reviews, those that enjoyed it pointing it to its quirkiness and to standout performances like Cusack's, those that hated it pointing to its pacing and what they call its pointlessness, but I think even if you look past all of those major ideas, you can find something valuable here. If your taste doesn't match mine, you may not find it a 5 star movie, but it doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. I'm a Spike Jonze fan and a Cusack fan (and now a fan of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman), so I checked it out, but had it not been for these preferences, I might have grabbed it anyway. At times, finding something a little out of the ordinary is the key. You want something that doesn't require you being completely braindead to enjoy, but you don't want something that's overly sappy or is basically a rewrite of thousands of other movies just like it. Without speaking to some interesting concepts throughout the film or to specific techniques employed by Jonze/Kaufman, I find it easy to recommend this movie. Ignore the reviews (including this one?) and just pick up a movie that challenges the typical Hollywood release.
Rating:
Summary: highly original sideways view of celebrity
Review: What a great movie this is, and a more insane story you could not ask for.
Malkovich is amazing and some of the sequences with him are trippy and surreal but deeply funny.
Its difficult to know where to start in runnning through the good points, but theres certainly no bad points, and in such an ambitious project that says a lot about the strength of direction.
Cusacks best performance, its a shme he doesnt do less mainstream stories more often, as here he displays a very different side to his acting.
The cameos are exccelent, and Charlie Sheen is hilarious in his tongue in cheek portrail of himself. The whole sideways look at fame and celebrity is excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of Time and Money
Review: This movie was really messed up and hard to follow. Don't waste your time watching it.
Rating:
Summary: Have you ever wanted to be someone else?
Review: I don't know if this movie really means something but it worth to watch it just to see one of the strangest stories I have ever known. It's so absurd that makes you laugh without being entirely a comedy. The characters are: A frustrated puppeteer who doesn't earn enough money; his wife, a woman obsessed with animals and have many of them living in their home; his boss, who lives thinking that he, has a speech defect because the deaf secretary always misunderstands everything; an arrogant and manipulative woman; and John Malkovich, played by himself, he is not the main character but is the center of the story. In the seven and a half floor of a building, there is a small door that takes you straight to John Malkovich's head, letting you see what he sees, hear what he hears, and feel what he feels for 15 minutes. When this portal is discovered, it starts a lot of weird and hilarious situations. Maybe the main topic is the right of privacy in times where we can see cameras in every place, watching every step we take, and even in TV shows like Big Brother. If you want to see something different but great, then get this movie.
Rating:
Summary: Unusual but Inescapable
Review: This dazzling portrayal of identity and exploitation can only be described as a contrasted work. Ideas and concepts are so conflicted, the world it portrays seems at times both upside down and the right way up. It is an effect nothing short of sensational success. To call this film clever wouldn't even touch on the whirlpool of fascinating themes it concocts. To call this film original is not even granting it the tiniest fraction of the laudation that its immensely talented writer's endless imagination deserves. It is both dreamlike and truthful. It is both scathingly funny and undeniably beautiful. And it is at all times utterly and unrelentingly magnetic. We see scenes in which a tortured artist, a puppeteer no less who can only find an audience performing on street corners - a venture that often leaves him battered by offended onlookers, casually discussing babies with his dowdy, pet loving wife. It is so profoundly honest about the world that these not-so-ordinary folk inhabit and yet so aware of the audiences apprehension to relate to these characters. And that's precisely what this film wants, it throws this world ever so slightly off balance with some devilish sleight of hand only cinema can achieve, and then suddenly tips everything on its head, throwing the audience into a torrent of unreality and relentless wit. We see a thrilling chase through a literal myriad of the private memories of a well known actor. We glimpse the painful childhood of a mentally unsound monkey named Elijah. We watch as third rate actors tell us how and why a secret floor of miniature proportions in a well known office block was built. And of course a scene that is already engraved in movie history, what exactly happens when a man enters his own mind. And yet as we witness this, there is something that is always maintained, no matter how wild and untamed the story grows, and that is the undying humanity of these characters, the incredibly poignant truth that is undoubtedly the core of this movie. This film is a remarkable landmark in both screenwriting and direction, something that will not be matched for many years to come.
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