8:07 PM, 3rd May, 2000
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Already voted as one of the "films of the year" by David Stratton, Roger Ebert and others, Being John Malkovich is an absolute gem of a film. It is a strange exploration into the cult of celebrity and the notion of personal identity. John Cusack stars as an unemployed puppeteer who takes a job as a filing clerk on the seventh and a half floor of an office building. Alone one day in his tiny cramped office he stumbles across a portal into the brain of actor John Malkovich. When you enter the portal you see and feel everything as John Malkovich for 15 minutes, before being thrown out of the portal on to the side of the Jersey turnpike. In typical American entrepreneurial fashion Cusack and fellow clerk Katherine Keenan start up a business, offering the Malkovich experience to all - for a price. Include Cusack's warped animal obsessed wife Lottie (played by an unrecognisable Cameron Diaz), cameos by various Hollywood residents, and a stellar performance of John Malkovich as a version of himself, and BJM becomes a strange ride indeed. The first film of director Spike Jonz (aka Adam Speigal aka ) a video clip director and actor ('Praise You' - Fat Boy Slim, and Three Kings), BJM is a wonderful debut.
Jan Thurling