Being John Malkovich

Director: Spike Jonze

1999 / 113min / 35mm

The auspicious feature film debut of both visionary music-video director Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is a frazzled fantasy gut-buster, set into motion when puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) lands a corporate job at the mysterious “LesterCorp” and stumbles across a portal that leads to the mind of John Malkovich (John Malkovich, naturally), allowing him—and wife Cameron Diaz, and co-worker crush Catherine Keener—to hijack the increasingly disconcerted actor for 15 minutes at a time. “Has ideas enough for half a dozen films, but Jonze and his cast handle them so surely that we never feel hard-pressed; we’re enchanted by one development after the next.”—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times