
Each week we’re recommending a movie from film lover’s favorite home video company, Criterion. The Criterion Collection is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest technical quality with supplemental features that enhance the appreciation of the art of film. This week, Being John Malkovich.
Have you ever wanted to be someone else? Or, more specifically, have you ever wanted to crawl through a portal hidden in an anonymous office building and thereby enter the cerebral cortex of John Malkovich for fifteen minutes, before being spat out on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike? Then director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman have the movie for you. Melancholy marionettes, office drudgery, a frizzy-haired Cameron Diaz—but that’s not all! Surrealism, possession, John Cusack, a domesticated primate, Freud, Catherine Keener, non sequiturs, and absolutely no romance! But wait: get your Being John Malkovich now and we’ll throw in emasculation, slapstick, Abelard and Heloise, and extra Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich!
Special Features
- New, restored digital transfer, supervised by director Spike Jonze, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New selected-scene audio commentary featuring Jonze’s friend and competitor the filmmaker Michel Gondry
- New behind-the-scenes documentary by filmmaker Lance Bangs
- New conversation between actor John Malkovich and humorist John Hodgman
- New interview with Jonze in which he discusses his on-set photos
- Two films within the film: 7½ Floor Orientation and “American Arts & Culture” Presents John Horatio Malkovich: “Dance of Despair and Disillusionment”
- An Intimate Portrait of the Art of Puppeteering, a documentary by Bangs
- Trailer and TV spots
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
1999
113 minutes
Color
1.85:1
English
Spine #611