Rating: 
Summary: Amazing, Interesting, Entertaining
Review: Being John Malkovich is one of the most creative and amusing, yet deep and dramatic movie I have ever seen! It can be described well in one word: Amazing. The acting is oscar-worthy, the script is creative, the cinematography is beautiful. This movie presented its audience with loads of humorous science fiction, but deep inside, the heart-chilling message leaves a thought-provoking scar. Definately one of the best movies of the year! (and most original) Everyone must see it.
Rating:
Summary: Enigmatic Masterpiece.
Review: As Spike Jonze's feature film debut, I was expecting something completely original and off the wall before I even step foot in the theatre, famous for his videos and commercials, and now MTV's "jackass," I was far from dissapointed. The movie takes a very slow pace, but adds in enough detail to keep it interesting the whole way. The big name stars in this movie, Cusack and Diaz, are directed in such a way that you don't recognize them as themselves, so the only real focus on celebrity is Malkovich himself. After finding a portal that allows one to possess John Malkovich for a time, Cusack sets up a psuedo business selling trips into him. Using his experience as a puppeteer, Cusack finally decides to possess Malkovich and stay there, having learned how to physically control him. There are many other elements to the story, of course, but they are best discovered by the viewer. Not a movie for all tastes, but an original masterpiece none the less. Fans of Terry Gilliam will probably like this film.
Rating:
Summary: "Inventive" and "Original" do not begin to describe....
Review: Charlie Kaufman has the distinction of writing the two most deranged screenplays I know of with "Adaptation" and it's predecessor, "Being John Malkovich". Here it became clear that a mind of unsurpassed creativeness had been loosed among the movie-making crowd.Four fantastic performances are given by John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener and Malkovich himself, and they are guided by Spike Jonze' direction and Mr. Kaufman's screenplay. Cusack is a gifted, tortured, starving artist, and not just any artist, but a puppeteer - working with marionettes. The film opens with a marionette performance so poignant it seems neary human - the performance reminds me of the opening of "White Nights" in which Baryshnikov dances "Le Jeune Homme Et La Mort". In White Nights it takes a moment before you recognize that you are watching a performance of a ballet, and in this film the marionette is so life-like it doesn't require much suspension of disbelief to think the puppet alive. In another similarity between the two films later on a human-sized marionette is made to "dance" the lead role in "Swan Lake" surrounded by human ballerinas. The rest of this film is SO startlingly original that it's easy to overlook the fact that the movie has some REALLY skilled puppeteering in it. But I digress. Puppeteering doesn't pay Cusack well, so there are money arguments between John and wife Cameron Diaz, who looks like a cross between a street person and a washer-woman here. She works in a pet store and keeps a collection of animals including a dog, ferret, bird and chimpanzee - all apparently with some form of veterinary post-traumatic stress disorder. Diaz' Lotte is the kind of person who forms close emotional ties with animals but has more difficulty being intimate with other humans. Desperate for a paying job, Cusack thinks his nimble puppeteering fingers make him ideal for a company that specializes in filing, so he gets a job in an old New York building on the 7 1/2th floor - the kind of quirky little thing added in just for "flavor" in this film. At his new job Cusack discovers Maxine - an attractive but sarcastic New York woman who has had it with most men, and Cusack's Craig Schwartz certainly seems like most men to her. Craig also discovers something he wasn't expecting behind a filing cabinet: a portal that leads to 15 minutes inside the head of John Malkovich before dumping you on the side of a New Jersey highway. If it seems like I've given away the whole story - I haven't. These are all plot setups that lead to the development of a narrative that doesn't just have a "twist". THIS story "twists" every five minutes. On my second viewing of the movie my greatest regard is for John Malkovich himself, who not only allows himself to be spoofed, but participates in the spoofing with great gusto. On the first trip "into Malkovich" we track him as he's getting ready to go out. He goes down to the street where a cab is hailed for him. The driver looks back and instantly recognizes him. "Hey.... you're that actor, aren't you?"
"Yes", Malkovich replies.
"I loved you in that movie where you played the jewel thief".
"I never played a jewel thief". (Although a few years later John Malkovich actually does play a jewel thief in Johnny English.) A few other times other characters bring up his performance in the jewel thief movie - a great running gag demonstrating how easy human nature makes it to spread urban legends and other incorrect information. John Malkovich has been in a large number of my very favorite films: The Killing Fields, Dangerous Liaisons, Places in the Heart, Shadow of the Vampire, In the Line of Fire and Of Mice and Men. (Fans of "Sex and the City" will enjoy the moment when Willie Garson walks by Malkovich in a restaurant and compliments him on his performance in the movie where he played "that retard".) Now one of my favorite John Malkovich movies is the one that bears his name.
Rating: 
Summary: Ugh!!
Review: I adore John Malkovich. I havent missed any of his movies. Intelligent, super suave, extraordinarily attractive, a true gentleman (or so he seems), superior actor. How could he allow even his name to appear in this so-called movie? How could he allow to be represented in such a manner? Was he really in such a need of money that he accepted this shameful parody of himself? I could not believe my eyes when I watched this...., I do not know what to call it: it is not a movie, it is a farce and an insult to the intelligence of any living person. Ugh, and ugh and ugh!!! Pure trash.
Rating: 
Summary: For me, it was a really good movie
Review: This is a very good movie, but not for the faint of heart. This is a film that is not typical but still entertaining. I think it was made even better when I saw it in the theater next to a woman who HATED this film. She kept talking and complaining. I asked her to be quiet and still she was talking. She then got up and left. How does this relate you ask? Simple, it made this odd movie even more real and interactive for me. That doesn't happen very often. If you are looking for a normal movie with a simple plot, this isn't it. If you want to see a quirky movie that is entertaining, this is your movie.
Rating:
Summary: I think; I feel; I suffer; I like this movie
Review: Being John Malkovich is one of the most thematically ambitious films of the 1990's. It delves figuratively and literally into the weaknesses and complexities of the human psyche through the self-revealing and often comical actions of the main characters. Through bizarre situations, a subtle but emotional soundtrack, and a tiny portal on the 7 1/2 floor of an office building, Malkovich investigates the multi-faceted aspects of human beings, and the troubles they face in trying to find themselves.
Each character in this film is aware, sometimes painfully aware, of his or her identity, and the extremes that they reach in trying to change, control, and manipulate their identities suggest that consciousness is perhaps more trouble than it's worth. Craig Schwartz, played by John Cusack, is a talented puppeteer, and therefore a master at adopting multiple personalities, but until he finds a real person to imitate, he remains in his workshop, alone and unsatisfied with his life. That is, until he meets the magnetic Maxine, who's confidence and boldness enchants Craig for the entirety of the movie.
It seems logical to assume that if Craig is unhappy with his identity, then he could be happier if he wasn't aware of himself at all. As Craig says, "Consciousness is a terrible curse - I think; I feel; I suffer." Once Craig discovers the Malkovich portal in his office, people start lining up, literally, to partake in the life-altering experience; everyone, that is, except Maxine. Not once does she reveal the slightest interest in going through the portal. Maxine is comfortable in her own skin - a quality which Craig, and pretty much everyone who meets her, greatly admires - but it is not a comfort that comes from being ignorant of her own identity. Maxine is very aware of the power of self-assurance, a power which she uses to influence Craig, his wife Lotte, and Malkovich himself. While Craig proves that consciousness coupled with insecurity result in depression and desperation, Maxine exists at the opposite end of the spectrum, mixing consciousness with greed, and resulting in manipulation and callousness.
John Malkovich further reinforces the idea the consciousness kills; that "ignorance is bliss." Before he discovers Maxine's true intentions, he is blissful and carefree, with a strong acting career and a hot new girlfriend. But once he finds out, he becomes paranoid, frantic, and untrusting. When he consults his friend Charlie Sheen for advice, Charlie says, perhaps more revealingly than intended, "The truth is for suckers, Johnny boy." Indeed, it is Malkovich's conscience that steals his happiness.
If you've ever wanted to be someone else, or at least wondered what it would be like, then Being John Malkovich is a must see. A wry comedy that makes you think; an intellectual adventure that makes you laugh -- Being John Malkovich is a non-oppressive, insightful, and captivating glance into the deepest of human desires and insecurities.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible
Review: The movie had enough to get me to the end, but that isn't saying much. The characters were uninspiring, and you could truly care less what happened to them. The story wanted so badly to be cool, but comes off as a bad film produced by stoned college students.
The story didn't suck you in, the acting was average, and you were glad when it was over. The lighting was horrendous. In many scenes I could see the lighting go from dark to light, and vice versa. I imagine that was part of their "in-your-face-artsy-fartsy" gig. It was like watching a "poet" on stage yell random obscenities, all the while we are called fools for not liking it. And a comedy? Maybe if you're ingesting drugs. I didn't come close to laughing once.
Pure trash. Move on to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You will find acting, and characters you like.
Rating:
Summary: Dire
Review: Sometimes a movie comes along which everyone cracks up as a masterpiece, nominates for Oscars and all that, when actually it's terrible. "Being There" was one of those. This is another. It's pointless and silly without being funny. Actually, it's rather painful. You sit watching it wondering what idiocy is coming next. It's slow, and really rather boring. There is absolutely, totally, utterly no point in having half the film set in an office with a shoulder-high ceiling. I was willing to laugh, or even smile, but after about ten minutes I couldn't. Contrast this mess with "The Purple Rose of Cairo", a genuinely witty, touching and ingenious film, although founded on a similarly wacky premise. Oh dear Oh dear Oh dear. What might Woody Allen have made of this basic material?
Rating:
Summary: Invasion of the Body Snatcher(s)
Review: 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 demon-haunted heroes.
But instead of getting an exorcist, Malkovich goes looking for a lawyer, dooming himself to a mediocre career of performance art puppetry and damnation. Choose---but choose wisely.
Rating:
Summary: Being John Malkovich
Review: This might be the weirdest movie I've ever seen. BJM is about Craig Schwartz, who is a puppeteer who works on the 7 1/2 floor of a building in New York. One day, he finds a door in his office that lets him be John Makovich for 15 minutes and it ditches him on the New Jersey Turnpike. He lets other people try it for $200 and he begins a little something called "J.M.INC". Mr. Malkovich finds out about it and he wants to find out what's going on. Craig explains that it's a "business", and that entices him to go into the portal himself.......
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