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Movie Review
"Dreaming of Joseph Lees"
Samantha Morton, the best actress to emerge in the last decade, finds a film deserving of her talents.
By Charles Taylor
[10/29/99]

Music Review
Sharps & Flats
Willie Nelson's 20-year-old masterpiece of classic songs, "Stardust," is re-released.
By Seth Mnookin
[10/29/99]

Movies
Night of the Living DVD
Another classic gets killed by its own "anniversary edition."
By Daniel Kraus
[10/28/99]

Column
"I want a dream when I go to a film"
David Lynch, the human tuning fork, talks about his most unusual movie -- a G-rated adventure about a man, a lawnmower and an emotional journey.
By Michael Sragow
[10/28/99]

Music Review
Sharps & Flats
Arto Lindsay graduated from horrible noise to gently beautiful music. It only took 20 years.
By Seth Mnookin
[10/28/99]

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Director Spike Jonze, best known for his music videos (and his fine acting job as the comic-relief redneck Vig in "Three Kings") has the good sense to contain this outrageousness with a low-key, naturalistic style. Except for the memorable scene when the character John Malkovich himself goes inside the head of the famous actor John Malkovich and encounters some kind of endless Malkovichian feedback loop, Jonze's debut feature sticks to a grimy, present-tense mode you might call kitchen-sink surrealism. Certainly the stringy-haired, unshaven and chronically unemployed puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) doesn't seem a likely candidate to uncover a portal into, um, wherever it is you go when you enter someone else's mind. Craig lives in a dreary New York basement apartment with his mousy wife, Lotte (yes, it's Cameron Diaz, wearing her hair in an unruly mop), and any number of her animals, including an abrasive parrot named Orrin Hatch and a chimp named Elijah.

Being John Malkovich Directed by Spike Jonze Starring John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, Orson Bean, Mary Kay Place and John Malkovich

One of the best things about "Being John Malkovich," to my mind, is that Jonze and Kaufman don't waste time making fun of these ordinary, unhappy people, who would certainly make easy targets. Craig is lazy and something of a loser (his erotic street puppetry sometimes gets him beaten up by irate parents), but his belief that he is an undiscovered genius is not treated as ridiculous -- in fact, what we see of his work with puppets is quite affecting. Lotte supports them both and obviously loves Craig, and suggests only in the gentlest, most considerate tones that he get a straight job until the marionette thing really takes off. But it's clear that the passion has slowly drained out of their marriage; by the time Craig answers a peculiar classified ad seeking a man with fast hands, Elijah seems to be the only member of the Schwartz household who's really enjoying life.

Things are not quite normal at LesterCorp, the shadowy "filing company" that becomes Craig's new employer. For starters, its offices are on the "seven-and-a-halfth floor" of a nondescript Manhattan commercial building -- a 5-foot-high crawlspace you can only reach by stopping the elevator between the seventh and eighth floors and prying the doors open with a crowbar. Why does this place exist? Craig watches a hilarious and deadly accurate '70s training film, featuring the washed-out colors and sweater-vest wardrobes of the era, which explains that the seven-and-a-halfth floor was created by an Irish sea captain so that leprechaun-sized office workers could have a space of their own.

Next page | It takes guts to cast Cameron Diaz as a dorky wife