Rating: 
Summary: Malkovich and Self-Reference - beautiful combo
Review: As a concept, this movie floored me. I think the concept of a marketable portal into someone's mind needs to be explored further. As a student of self-reference (see Douglas Hofstadter's works for more info), I belly-laughed at the concept of Malkovich entering his own portal. The result was fabulous. A silly movie, but one I will watch repeatedly.
Rating:
Summary: "The puppet is weeping but you yourself are not"
Review: Despite quite a few stinkers, 1999 turned out to be a great year for variety at the movies. Think back on some of the unconventional films you wouldn't have expected to see in a cineplex 10 years ago: "Dogma," "Magnolia," "The Blair Witch Project," "Three Kings," "Boys Don't Cry"...While I'm not a fan of all those films, they at least tried something new, and "Being John Malkovich" stood head and shoulders above the crowd as the weirdest, most original film of the year. And, to these eyes, the best.Entire cans of alphabet soup have been spilled trying to describe and praise the movie. Let me just praise the DVD. First of all, it contains the movie. Always a good thing. It has the trailer, which hooked many of us the moment we saw it: "This looks completely twisted. I have to see it." It has the complete video documentary of the career of John Horatio Malkovich, Genius Puppeteer. It has a strange interview with Spike Jonze and an even stranger visit with one of the movie's extras. It even has a segment on the real-life puppeteer who did all the puppeteering for Cusack in the film. It also has the complete video documentary on the history of the 7 1/2 floor. What more could you want? If you saw and loved the movie, you need to buy this DVD even if you don't have a DVD player, just so you can take it out once in a while and look at it and say "I have this on DVD." If you do have a DVD player and you saw and loved the movie, but you haven't bought the DVD yet, you're just being mean to yourself.
Rating:
Summary: Being John Malkovich
Review: I really liked this movie. Very unique and funny.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely Original and Entertaining; Decent Extras
Review: This movie is very funny, and as importantly, very original. Spike Jonze's directorial humor is perfectly aligned with the script, and he pulls off even the most challenging scenes successfully. Likewise, the actors are also up to the task of being believable or sympathetic in the midst of all the absurdity. As almost everyone knows, this movie is about a character finding a portal into John Malkovich's brain, and it takes a lot of skill on the part of everyone involved in the film to make the movie as good as its premise. John Cusack is great as the down-on-his-luck puppeteer who goes to work for a bureaucratic company whose most distinguishing characteristic is its location on the half-height "seventh-and-a-half" floor, where everyone has to stoop over. Catherine Keener is also excellent as Cusack's foil, a hard-nosed opportunist who tempts Cusack away from his wife (an unrecognizable Cameron Diaz) and stops at nothing to realize her own fantasies. The film is filled with metaphor, but is rarely heavy-handed. The chief metaphor involves Cusack's roll as a puppeteer, whether with marionettes, or the body of Malkovich. It turns out that almost every character wants to manipulate another character to achieve his or her own goals. Director Jonze does a nice job of intertwining the visually fantastic (the portal to Malkovich, the 7 1/2 floor, etc) with the utterly real (the New Jersey Turnpike, Cusack's street corner puppet box), so you never get too far removed from the reality of the characters' relationships with each other. In other words, Jonze creates a fantastic world but keeps you connected to the people who live in it. Jonze's best moments come near the end of the film, which I'll try not to spoil -- one involves a flash back sequence of an animal, and the other involves two characters travelling through a third character's memories. As far as I know, nothing like it has ever been done on film before, and both are done with a sense of humor that belies their genius. This movie is one of three or four in 1999 that I think will be remembered for changing the direction of film away from all the "Pulp Fiction" knock-offs that dominated the late nineties. The success of movies like this, hopefully, will encourage film makers to have a bit more confidence in their audiences. The disc has several extras, though it lacks a commentary track (which would have been the icing on the cake). Two of the extras are extended segments of programs that appeared on television within the film. (In other words, a TV in the movie was showing something. These extras are full-sized, full length versions of what the TV was showing...A similar thing is done on the Criterion Silence of the Lambs DVD). Another extra is a 20-minute or so exploration of the puppeteer "pulling the strings" behind the scenes of the film. It serves as a good introduction to a field of entertainment you probably haven't given a lot of thought to lately. Another extra is a brief, parodic interview with the director while he's driving his car. It's a good for a laugh or two, though he (purposely) doesn't offer much insight into the film. One other extra feature is footage of an extra who had to drive her car in the background of a shot on the NJ Turnpike, along with a couple of dozen other extras. It's shot with a shaky camcorder by, and is entertaining because the girl is really funny, although, again, it doesn't really tell you much about how this movie (or any other movie) is made. Finally, there is a brief segment of a guy with a camcorder (the same guy who did the other two extras) interviewing "aspiring puppeteers" about the movie at it's premiere in LA. Very brief, and will make you laugh once. The sound and video quality are fine. The movie does not have a particularly demanding soundtrack. All in all, this is a great movie, one which will probably be considered somewhat significant a few years from now, and the extras on the DVD are good, though not great.
Rating: 
Summary: Is it worth the hype?
Review: Didn't everyone get so excited when this was released at the movies? - what a unique film, so different from all the other guff out there, one that makes you think and sends its director's profile into the stratosphere. It's probably worthwhile now to give it a second look and see if it does stand up - wait for it - it's not bad but hardly the classic it has been made out to be. Warning - Spike Jonze is not the saviour of American cinema on the evidence of this film. I know this won't endear me to those people who love the film and have been waiting for this second coming (those same people who lauded a certain Mr Tarantino until he came out with his segment of "Four Rooms") but while it does have some nice touches it does have many drawbacks. So let's get the bad stuff out of the way - it's way too long and the sub-plot with the wrinklies doesn't work - a bid to add some excitement to the film. I'm sorry but Cameron Diaz in that fright wig doesn't work either. I am a huge fan of Ms Diaz's work but this isn't her best. The streak of misogny doesn't help the film either, and this isn't just being politically correct. While Ms Diaz does deserve to be told off for that wig, locking her in a cage goes way overboard. Finally John Cusack just really gets on your nerves - I just wanted to give him a slap. Now for the good - and despite what I have said there is still some - John Malkovitch for example. He sends himself up superbly and anyone that has an image of him as a surly actor will surely have their opinion changed. The scene where he enters his own head is inspired and this gives me hope that Mr Jonze does have a future. Malkovitch surely deserved a nod at the Oscars but the Academy probably got confused - nominate a man for playing himself, for goodness sake? However Catherine Keener did get a nomination and I just hope more of the movie-going public discover this wonderful actress. So there you have it - a film that has been hyped to the gills, does contain a few excellent touches in what one hopes is a successful career for Mr Jonze. But the greatest film of the last year.....I think not!
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully inventive
Review: While too many movies suffer the fate of creative bankruptcy, Being John Malkovich is a refreshing study in contrast, so bracing 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. I was naked when I viewed this movie.
Rating: 
Summary: An Acquired Tastelessness
Review: So this doesn't appeal to everyone. Has there ever been a modern ego as big as Mr. Malkovich's - or one so little justified? This is a joke - no, I don't mean it's a bad film, I mean the film is one big joke - so if you like this sort of surreal, oh-so-terribly-clever if you're of the yuppy generation and think YOU'RE so terribly clever, exponent of meaningless and purposeless film making, you'll be in heaven. I was not. Inexplicably nominated for direction and screenplay - proving once again there is a great contingent of artless voters in the Academy's roster - however, one does have to doff the hat at two performances, the rightfully Oscar nominated supporting work of Catherine Keener, and the unjustly Oscar-neglected work of Cameron Diaz. They are both quite fine and the only reasons to see this bizarre little film.
Rating:
Summary: 112 Original Minutes
Review: 112 minutes without an intended cliche--must be a world record.
Rating: 
Summary: innovative film
Review: `Being John Malkovich' certainly ranks among the most brilliantly conceived and executed films of the past several years. Overflowing with imagination and creativity, it manages to breathe new life into that trickiest of cinematic genres - the surrealist satire. Like all films that dare to take risks, `Being John Malkovich' sometimes stumbles in the paths it chooses to take, but at least its course is always an innovative and fascinating one. John Cusack stars as Craig Schwartz, a soft-spoken nebbish leading a life less of quiet desperation than of overwhelming blandness. Unable to support himself as a puppeteer, he finally succumbs to his wife's pressure to seek out a job, landing a position as file clerk in a bizarre company located on the 7 ½ th floor of a Manhattan office building. One of the triumphs of the film is that it portrays the surreal in such an understated and quiet way. This floor has ceilings so low that the people who work on it must continually crouch as they move about their business, yet they all accept that fact with an uncomplaining and unquestioning good humor. Even when Schwartz discovers a strange portal hidden behind some cabinets leading directly into John Malkovich's brain, all those to whom Craig reveals his secret take very little convincing both to believe him and to experiment with it themselves. Thus, by creating a world that already appears slightly askew in its reality - Craig's wife, in addition, runs a pet shop and therefore fills their house with a menagerie of exotic animals -the film makes it possible for us to go along with the characters' otherwise inexplicably blasé reactions. Writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze hit upon a number of fascinating themes in the course of their bizarre musings. Craig, for instance, learns that there exists a certain safety in the tediousness of everyday life, for the moment he allows the extraordinary to enter his ordered world he unleashes passions - that have been long dormant both in himself and his wife - which he finds himself unable to control. His wife, in particular, whom he has mistakenly pigeonholed as a woman concerned only with the humdrum domesticities associated with married life, provides him with a rude awakening as she begins to surpass him in her burgeoning obsession with experiencing the excitements of sexual liberation. Craig also discovers the terrifying truth about himself, that, beneath the façade of a meek, mild-mannered artist there lurks the soul of a repressed despot, as he comes more and more to relish the ability to move into Malkovich's mind and control his thoughts and actions - much as with his beloved puppets, but now on a much more grand, much more malevolent scale. The film generates much of its comic tension through the complex sexual interplay that develops among Craig, his wife, Lotte, and his alluring but enigmatic co-worker, Maxine, in whom both husband and wife develop a more than passing sexual interest. With tinges of `No Exit,' the three characters find themselves caught in a frustrating world of overlapping and therefore clashing sexual desires and passions. The film demonstrates a real stroke of genius in its casting. John Cusack, with his look of understated bewilderment, perfectly conveys the soul of a man too long accustomed to expecting little in the way of surprise out of life. Catherine Keener brilliantly captures the detached cynicism and taunting coolness that makes her such an enthralling sexual temptation to both Craig and Lotte. And whose audacious decision was it to cast Cameron Diaz as the near-dowdy second fiddle to Kenner, to make her the NON-sex object in the film? As for Mr. Malkovich himself, he seems to be having the self-deprecating time of his life as he allows himself and even his lack of general public name recognition to become targets for gentle ribbing. `Being John Malkovich' is not a perfect movie. It occasionally sags in places and suffers from some repetition and, like many utterly original and audacious works, it sometimes alienates its audience through its quality of often-cold calculation. At moments in which the iconoclasm seems to become an end in itself, one may be tempted to see the film in emperor's-new-clothes terms, wondering if what one is seeing is really as brilliant as it appears or just an intellectual scam being played on a self-congratulatory elite audience. For the most part, however, `Being John Malkovich' is fertile enough in its invention and varied enough in its imaginativeness to rate as a film well worth seeing and cherishing. There should definitely be more like it!
Rating:
Summary: Doubtlessly, the best movie of the year
Review: It's impossible to express how ingeniously clever, imaginative, and hysterically funny BEING JOHN MALKOVICH is without seeing it. It is my definite choice for best film of the year, and believe me, I've seen enough of them (65) this year to know. The plot simply takes one brilliant turn after the other to our delight and surprise. The details (the 7 and a halfth floor, for example) are perfectly weird and the whole film possesses a kind of Twilight Zone feel. The ending is head scratching but once you make sense of it you'll hit your head, say "Oooohhhhh!" and love the movie all the more. All of the acting is brilliant and the characters are wonderfully quirky and exaggerated, but Catherine Keener steals the show as a shamelessly manipulative sex goddess who has the ability to seduce everyone she comes in contact with. One of my favorite details of the film that no one mentions is Mary Kay Place as a nutty secretary with a hilarious speech impediment. It's the perfect touch and though she has a very small bit role in the film it is nothing short of funny as she mangles everything everyone else says and accuses them of "mumbling." I cannot express the delight of seeing BEING JOHN MALKOVICH for yourself. I was almost intimidated to watch it after hearing it was so good--I almost thought it couldn't live up to what everyone had said. Needless to say, it did, and I was given the best experience I have had watching a film this year.
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