Word: john
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...wrestlers in this film, ostensibly, are Craig and Lotte Schwartz (Cameron Diaz and John Cusack). You'd scarcely know that it was either of these actors just from looking at the images; the photogenic stars have been outfitted for the film with the scraggliest wigs, worst make-up, and dowdiest clothes in greater New York City. They look awful, and it looks fantastic. You can practically savor Diaz's joy at proving that she's a "real" actress and not just another pretty face. Craig and Lotte are an absurd, sexless married couple - pet store junkie and street puppeteer - fighting...
...greatest toy the movie has to play with is the participation of real-life actor John Malkovich, playing himself with perversity and panache. The film brings him into the plot with characteristic audacity; Cusack discovers a secret door at work that leads directly into the inside of Malkovich's brain. He becomes famous Malkovich for fifteen minutes (get it?), and is then spit out onto the side of the New Jersey Turnpike. It is to the film's credit that this bizarre, supernatural turn of events doesn't jar the logical tone of the movie at all. Getting inside Malkovich...
...Still, it must be said, John Horatio Malkovich quickly becomes the heart of the film. We see the world through his eyes, and feel a little bit of the charge the characters get from experiencing real life in Malkovich's brain. The camera-eye gimmick goes on just long enough that we don't think that we'll really get to see John Malkovich himself, until all of a sudden he enters as another insane player in this mad roundelay. He all but overwhelms the movie with the question mark of his celebrity and the eerie charisma...
...Simply put, Malkovich is no agreeable Tom Cruise heartthrob. John Malkovich is, fundamentally, creepy. (This isn't just my opinion; I have taken a poll of eight people, and seven agree. The eighth has a crush on him.) John Malkovich doesn't have any of the usual qualities of Hollywood stardom - the symmetrical, chiseled looks, the measured voice, the stolid evenness. Malkovich is bizarre by comparison, with beady eyes at inappropriate moments and a sneer of a voice which sounds more like somebody choking than talking. You can imagine this movie being born out of a stoned conversation about...
...effect is fantastic, and frightening. Watching Being John Malkovich feels a bit like being a frog in a pan of slowly warmed water - after a while the water is boiling, but you can hardly tell the difference. Little by little, things change, until you're somewhere you never intended...