Popular reviews

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  Review by coffee ★★★★★

  very relatable that Kaufman’s immediate response to Being John Malkovich’s success was a healthy dose of suicidal self-reflexive wallowing, if only mine resulted in screenplays like this

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  Review by Lucy ★★★★½ 4

  @ charlie kaufman: are u ok dude

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  Review by Matthew Christman ★★★★½ 11

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  I remember the exact moment in Adaptation when it went from being a great movie to one of the my all time favorites: the low speed car chase between the Kaufmans and Susan Orlean. This was the moment I realized that, after two acts spent carefully creating rich, interesting characters and struggling with the difficulties of creating truthful art, writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze were going to intentionally set fire to the whole construction with an empty Hollywood-style action ending. It's a ballsy move, and it pays off handsomely: not only does it cut the Gordian knot of the how to deal with the tough subject matter, but it's also a point blank indictment of narrative cinema's inherent limitations. Combine that with Nicholas Cage's last known unironically good performance, and you've got the makings of a post-modern triumph that manages to express real emotion while also undermining the Robert McKee screenwriting model.

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  Review by Karsten ★★★★★ 4

  Whoever told me to add this to the 100 Summer Movies list, thank you. I think I just fell in love with film all over again.

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  Review by DirkH ★★★★★ 4

  A movie about a book to screenplay adaptation of the movie you're watching ........ sheer genius!

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  Review by Evan ★★★★★ 31

  I’m a failure. I never even finished school. I think about death too much. My brain is a prison. I’m getting fatter. My hair is too ginger in the sun. The 9-5 job I work is mindless. I’m estranged from my family. I’ve had addiction issues for ten years. They’re becoming a part of me. Just when I start to get clean, something sends me into relapse. I’m twenty-four but fifty seems imminent. I have spells of manic depression. Sometimes I get lonely. I wish I had a better life. I get chest pains and migraines, I need glasses because of an astigmatism which makes my left eye abnormally misshaped compared to the right. I write scripts but never finish,…

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  Review by Jay ★★★★ 5

  girlfriend didnt realise both brothers were the same actor for 40 minutes

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  Review by ksenija ★★★★ 2

  meryl streep and chris cooper humming a dial tone together over the phone is a huge quarantine mood

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  Review by Sean Fennessey ★★★★½ 3

  No one makes the quiet stuff loud quite like Kaufman. This time, I was struck by how hard but clearly it works to animate the experience of falling into and out of a good book, how certain passages, pages, chapters can dissolve in your hands, while others stop you dead, and off into a daydream. The anxiety of writing—or not writing—is the loud here, but the reading—of Orlean, Laroche, Darwin, McKee, Kaufman's own words—feels most perceptive. I wish Spike could adapt him forever.

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  Review by Thomas Flight ★★★★ 10

  Ironically this starts brilliantly but once Kaufman starts applying the McKee formula I honestly just kinda get bored. Maybe that's the point?

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  Review by Jitender ★★★★★ 1

  Being Charlie Kaufman

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  Review by Evan ★★★★★ 2

  5% structural perfection. 10% satire. 15% Hollywood criticism. 20% Nicolas Cage. 20% Nicolas Cage. 15% existentialism. 10% loneliness. 5% fantastical masturbation. Being John Malkovich is indeed as great as they say, but Being Charlie Kaufman is in a whole other league. I won’t see a film that’ll rock me like this for a long, long time.

  “Neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance the world lives? But it does.”