Recent Reviews for Adaptation
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MCT:September 29, 2008ADAPTATION. (2002)
directed by Spike Jonze
starring Nicolas Cage, Chris Cooper, Meryl Streep«Okay. But, I'm saying, it's like, I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car chases, you know... or characters, you know, learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end, you know. I mean... The book isn't like that, and life isn't like that. You know, it just isn't. And... I feel very strongly about this.»
With Adaptation., Charlie Kauffman wrote one of the most complex and layered screenplay ever. The film is so much more than what it seems. Amazing performances by Cage, Streep but especially Cooper. Spike Jonze handle and understand what he is dealing with, always using the right tone. wether its satire or simple drama. Its clever, funny, entertaining and definately one of the most original films of the decade. -
MCT:September 24, 2008Very original, very well acted, but very weird. Not really a film that you enjoy watching, but I give it big props for being different and interesting
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MCT:September 16, 2008Amazing cast+ brilliant screenplay= An Incredible movie. You will fall in love with this film specially if you are an aspiring writer. It will entice your creativity. Even if you are not how can you pass a Meryl Streep + Nicolas Cage film?
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MCT:September 16, 2008
Excellent Charlie Kaufman mindfuck blends reality and fiction, comedy and drama to create a very original film. Nicolas Cage is great in it. The whole cast is, actually.
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MCT:September 16, 2008Nicolas Cage plays two parts, him and his twin. They are both screen writers except that one is successful and the other isn't. one decides to write a screenplay on a book written about orchids, but little does he know that thier are dark secrets behind the arthur and this book.
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MCT:September 11, 2008Although the movie has received very good ratings, it simply didn't get to me. I liked the fact that Nicolas Cage played his own twin brother, who is exactly the opposite of him. And I liked the premise of the movie.. But I didn't much like the movie. It was hard for me to not turn it off, and I made myself watch it until the end, where things got rather.. unexpectedly fictional. I can understand why people might love this movie, but it simply wasn't for me.
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MCT:September 9, 2008
1 oscar and 3 noms
great job by cage who i usually dont like.
love it or leave it movie, no sitting on the fence -
MCT:September 5, 2008
My god, this Charlie Kaufman dude is a genius! Nicolas Cage's only good movie since Face/Off (Grindhouse don't count) and what a fine movie it is.
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MCT:September 5, 2008
A cleverly original film with a superb cast and great performances by Nicolas Cage (why can't he do more movies like this), Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper.
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MCT:September 4, 2008
I have to go right home. I know how to finish the script now. It ends with Kaufman driving home after his lunch with Amelia, thinking he knows how to finish the script. Shit, that's voice-over. McKee would not approve. How else can I show his thoughts? I don't know. Oh, who cares what McKee says? It feels right. Conclusive. I wonder who's gonna play me. Someone not too fat. I liked that Gerard Depardieu, but can he not do the accent? Anyway, it's done. And that's something. So: "Kaufman drives off from his encounter with Amelia, filled for the first time with hope." I like this. This is good.
Directed by: Spike Jonze
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Tilda Swinton, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Jay Tavare
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Running time: 114 minutes
My review:
Nicolas Cage deserved his Oscar nomination as Charlie/Donald Kaufman. It is really clever how they get the same man playing two different people in the same scene. The film is very well written and the way it is told about the history of different sorts of flowers and also of how much flowers and plants have changed the world ever since 4 billion years ago when the world started. Chris Cooper deserved his Oscar for his role as John Larouche who lost his mother and uncle is a car crash, in the car that he was driving and his wife divorced him after she got out of her coma after the crash. That is what brought him and Susan together because her life was a mess with her husband who didnt really love her as his wife and her work life is going down the drain. It is also a heartbreaking love story aswell because Charlie has always loved Susan but he loves another woman he has been dating. He thought of Susan as his hero (or heroin). I think she was his hero because she was the one who can help bring his life together. It is a film that every man, woman and child has to watch. -
MCT:August 9, 2008
An excellent film! Very strange and off beat, but as time goes on and the more you watch it, you'll appreciate it. To be honest, I hated all of Nicholas Cage's scenes, but loved Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep's scenes. This film has some of the best acting I have ever seen. Chris Cooper won a well deserved Oscar as swamp rat John Laroche. Meryl Streep or Juliannne Moore should have won for Supporting Actress that year, not Catherine Zeta-Jones.
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MCT:August 8, 2008
Donald Kaufman: Charles, you'll be glad. I have a plan to get me out of your house, pronto.
Charlie Kaufman: A job is a plan. Is your plan a job?
Donald Kaufman: Drum roll, please. I'm gonna be a screenwriter. Like you!
This second collaboration between director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman proves to be just as interesting and original as 'Malkovich'.
This time the story revolves around the character of Kaufman himself, played as a neurotic, balding, and overweight character, and played wonderfully by Nic Cage.
Charlie Kaufman: I've written myself into my screenplay.
Donald Kaufman: That's kind of weird, huh?
Kaufman is given the chance to adapt a book titled the Orchard Thief into a film due to the recent success of his Being John Malkovich screenplay. The problem is that the book is essentially about nothing and Kaufman develops writer's block while trying to adapt it.
Meanwhile, Charlie's twin brother Donald, also played by Cage, who is much smoother in terms of his personality, looks up to his brother and wants to be a screenwriter too. He attempts to take screenwriting classes to do so, and the two somewhat bicker about Donald's cliched ideas and Charlie's desire to be original and out of the mold, which eventually leads to him writing himself into the screenplay.
John Laroche: Who's gonna play me?
Susan Orlean: Well, I've gotta write the book first, John. Then, you know, they get somebody to write the screenplay.
John Laroche: Hey, I think I should play me.
Within the movie as well are flashbacks to the author of the Orchard Thief, Susan Orlean played by Maryl Streep, developing her story about an eccentric florida man, Laroche played by Chris Cooper. As the movie progresses we also see what these characters are about.
The story is based on the actual difficulty Kaufman had on turning the same book into a movie, with obvious story creations. What makes it truly wonderful is the way the story plays with the screenplay standards and references film adaptation and functioning of a screenwriter.
What also helps is the uniform solid performances from the three leads. Cage is amazing, playing two completely different characters and managing to be both funny and endearing. Streep is interesting playing a character who goes against type for her. And Cooper is wonderful as the very strange Laroche.
Jonze's direction is again a wonderful mix of inventive visual work and successful attempts at making these ideas work on screen.
Its a very smart, funny, interesting work, that goes on to benefit from repeated viewings due to the investment of layers in its story and attention to character. Wonderful movie.
[at a seminar, Charlie Kaufman has asked McKee for advice on his new screenplay in which 'nothing much happens']
Robert McKee: Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life. And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it. I don't have any bloody use for it.
Charlie Kaufman: Okay, thanks. -
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MCT:July 28, 2008Spike Jonze does a tout and pretensious as anything Nick Cage movie (yes he's yet another Coppola), where he imagines himself as a twin brotgher muse, helping his writer's block while he tries to adapt a book about growing orchids. Meryl Streep struggles through her very, very bad script. You can tell it just hurts. This movie was anxiety-forming, nauseatingly bad on every level, and since seeing it and other Cage movies, his worst performance, as himself, ever. If you can't even play yourself, that's bad. Ad no, orchid are not like opium. You can't just make them into drugs. You freaking spazasaurs!
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MCT:July 26, 2008
Cage's best. Kaufman is amazing. And Spike Jonze has a great sense of direction as always. About as good as Being John Malkovich, maybe better. Have to watch it again.
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MCT:July 18, 2008
Soo good. I love the performances in it, and the Kauffman's screenplay is top notch asusual. Spike Jonze really needs to make more movies!
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MCT:July 10, 2008
I SIMPLY COULD NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THE HELL THIS MOVIE WAS ABOUT . WELL PERHAPS I PUSHED IT OFF AS A BAD MEMORY EITHER WAY IT SUCKED!
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MCT:July 9, 2008
Meryl Streep like nothing you've seen her before... Cooper's nutty good, Cage is surprisingly good too. Kauffman's screenplay is almost scarily realistic when it comes to depicting writer's block.
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MCT:June 23, 2008
Not quite a Being John Malkovich, but certainly better than 99% of the rest of the films being made. Kaufman loosely writes a screenplay with himself as the main character. He is on another planet of originality.
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MCT:June 16, 2008
A lovelorn screenwriter turns to his less talented twin brother for help when his efforts to adapt a non-fiction book.
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MCT:June 14, 2008
Very creative and interesting. Great plot twists, and I love the way things come together at the end.
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MCT:June 13, 2008
This was one of these films that I sat down to watch and was just totally, totally blown away by it...its definitely one of the best films ever made.
Maybe its a kind of a personal thing to say this, but i could relate to a lot of what I saw in this films, thus making it well...very relate-able for me, it?s a truly wonderful film. -
MCT:June 11, 2008
Wonderful movie and book. I love the play on a book adaptation and how plants adapt. The depiction of how insects have evolved together with plants is beautiful.
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MCT:June 9, 2008
I had this movie for over a year before I finally got round to watching it and when I did it was because I was having a clear-out of DVDs and I was really really expecting to not like this and put it straight in the "to go" pile afterwards. Didn't happen. I was actually really surprised at how good it was - why did I leave it so long?? Meant to tidy my room while I watched it - that never happened either - I was hooked from the first scene it was that good. Really interesting story and the acting was amazing - have to agree - one of Nicholas Cage's best performances here. Pleasantly surprised at this film - it was veery enjoyable to watch - just try and explain the story to someone else though when you're explaining how good it is - now that's a nightmare!! lol :D
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MCT:June 7, 2008
Chris Cooper (John LaRoche), who captured the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Adaptation, easily stole this film. Nic Cage gives one of his 'best ever performances' as Charlie/Donald Kaufman. The film itself is a strange mixture of factual people set in fictional events. Quite odd and unique, plus one of the 'factual people' isn't really factual, yet he received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Confused yet? If Adaptation doesn't leave you scratching your head and wondering whether you just watched either the worst movie ever or the most brilliant film ever, you really didn't get this film. Still confused? Me, too.....
