Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

quinimdb 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.

Peter Welch This movie has a truly bizarre premise. Let's just get that out of the way off the bat. Before I started watching, I was already excited to see how such a bizarre idea could function on screen. But, a lot of movies don't live up to their premise, and this is one of them.It isn't just the premise that is bizarre: the characters are even more wacky. In a strange and unfamiliar world, I expect a movie to have a strong protagonist with whom I can identify. This movie had no such thing. The protagonist is so strange and illogical that the viewer feels like an outsider looking in for the entirety of the film. When everyone on screen is a weirdo, I'm not too invested in their interpersonal drama."Weird" and "deep" are not one in the same. Jonze puts a cast of weird characters on screen but he gives them no depth. Catherine Keener's character is the supreme example of this: she is supposed to be confident, sexy, and complex, but she comes off as random, illogical, and weird. She doesn't act like a real person, she acts like a poorly written character in a film that's trying too hard to be artsy.Nonetheless, the movie packs some laughs. Appearances from celebrities playing themselves is always good for a smile from the audience, and this film does it in an amusing way. There are also two short mockumentaries within the film that are pretty much gold.If you are drawn to the premise like I was, or you like Jonze's other work, you're probably going to watch this movie. I still can't recommend it.

eagandersongil Spike Jonze has in his hands a complicated script by Charlie Kaufman, and it's amazing how it transforms this complex script, different, silly and seemingly almost infilmável in a complete audio visual work (in narrative terms), but somehow the work not me handle, it is not the fault of the film, all Spike Jonzen movies are great, but none captivates me emotionally, and this is no different, as I said before, it seems something silly, which turns into a beautiful romance (outside the traditional ), but I can not untie that premise "Boba" with the rest of the film, maybe Spike should use more sound resource, since this film is missing a soundtrack at times, although the sound mixing is impeccable, photography, the characters and even the extras in the scene are emblematic, some characters have only one speaks in history, but realize their great personalities, and amazing scenery, remember the Schwartz couple's home or surrealistic company that Craig (John Cusack) works, the film also has a philosophy to present, we are stuck in our bodies, our lives are miserable, we are ambition of slaves (yes, remember Fight Club), which we would not give to be someone else even for fifteen minutes? Our lives are so bad that? I do not know, or Spike will know, because it only displays the question and does not delve into it. "Being John Malkovich" It's a good movie, do not expect nothing amazing, but I believe faithfully that depending on the person, her anger find "Being John Malkovich" your favorite movie because he has something to say, but it depends on the person understand and sympathize with him.Sorry for my English translator google.

Brendan Michaels A film like this has some great ideas in its head. What if you could go inside the head of one of the most underrated actors of all time, John Malkovich? That's a question that you've probably never thought of but wish you did after seeing one of the best films of the 20th century, Being John Malkovich. Easily a movie that could only be written by the one and only genius madman himself Charlie Kaufman and directed by the other genius madman Spike Jonze. The genius of this film is the subtext surrounding itself. Being John Malkovich is a film about identity, longing, the complexities of the mind and what we really want out of life.The film starts with Craig Schwartz, played by John Cusack, using a marionette puppet destroying his property around him. The puppet looks strikingly like Schwartz and in that one scene we see the complexities and possessiveness of Cusack's character in just one scene. Being John Malkovich is about said puppeteer, Craig Schwartz, who gets work at office 7 ½ discovers a doorway in his office that when entering inside of it allows you to be in the mind of John Malkovich. But as the film progresses Schwartz is finding out more and more about the people he loves as he delves in more into the psyche of Malkovich. The wonderfully original script by Charlie Kaufman who has written some of my favorite movies, Adaptation, Anomalisa, and my personal favorite of his Synecdoche, New York. It's funny how I have just found the time to watch what has now just become, in the matter of a few hours, one of my favorite films of all time. It's mix of drama and comedy makes this a standout of any film that will ever exist. Being John Malkovich is a triumph to the world in saying that crazy can make the world a better more brighter place for film.Spike Jonze has impressed me ever since I saw his marvelous romance film, Her, and by seeing his directorial debut it shows me that Jonze has never lost that spark of creativity or brilliance that was shown to the world in 1999. It's shocking to realize that this was his first feature film and has topped many people's favorite films of all time. I can see a bit of what Kaufman and Jonze would bring to the world in the next decade. In a way Jonze and Kaufman is making us the audience Craig Schwartz. By letting us infer on what they want to show us and what the characters in their movie are trying to express but can't with the possessiveness of Schwartz. It's truly fantastic that a movie can let us feel what we want to feel rather than how we feel. I haven't gotten into this as much but Being John Malkovich is one of the funniest dark comedies I have ever seen in my life. It has a great mesh of it and isn't always hilariously goofy or always grimly dark but a good mixture of the two that will never be replicated. Much like the performances in this that will never be replicated.This movie is filled with career bests for everyone in the cast. John Cusack, Catherine Keener, Cameron Diaz, and the one and only John Malkovich give mind boggling prowess to their roles. As mentioned previously Cusack can easily bring a complexity to a character that you should hate but you don't because of his empatheticness and possessiveness. He bends the ways of how the audience sees him to try to paint a false idol of what he wants to be but isn't. Sadly he explores the part in us humans that we can never escape from, not getting what we think we deserve. Schwartz goes crazy mad when he spills his heart and guts for a woman that couldn't care less about him. Diaz has the best performance of her career in this film. She brings the side of humanity of trying to find out who we are and are we actually being honest to ourselves or are we just trying to change ourselves so that we can be the best for other and not what's best for us. But the standout of this is the titular actor/character himself, John Malkovich. Malkovich brings the side of humanity that is quite fascinating to me. Are our thoughts actually our thought? Are we thinking what we want to think or is an outside source just making us think the things they want us to think. I'm honestly surprised that I have written this much about only 3 characters in this film. But isn't that what shows the beauty of this film? That I can dissect it and think about it at this level of depth and still be mesmerized by it and want to go back and rewatch it as soon as possible! I think so.Being John Malkovich is the greatest gift the 1990s ever left on us and shows that we don't need to follow the same norms that the Hollywood industry has put on us as audience members and we can see actual bright ideas that don't follow the normalcy of what we put up with throughout the year. A grandeur of the surreal and a favorite of mine that I want to rewatch over and over and over. Being John Malkovich is that times a thousand.