To kick off my tenure here at Spout I'm going to review my favorite film of all time...
Adaptation, starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Katherine Keeler, with a cameo of Maggie Gyllenhaal. And with that list I'll have to add that the cast was excellent. It's a very diverse group of very experienced and talented artists. The sum was greater then its parts, truely. Prior to this movie I was weary of Nick Cage, he had been in a lot of stuff that I wasn't a fan of. Looking back at his career now I see that he has played very diverse rolls in diverse genres. In this movie he plays a pair of twins, Charlie and Donald Kaufman, Charlie Kaufman being the screenwriter of the movie and Donald being his ficticious brother. While people like Eddie Murphy take on multi-character rolls, Nicolas Cage doesn't. I have to commend his acting both brother's are played so well you completely forget it's only our boy Nick. Meryl Streep is also out of her norm and soes a stellar job. She plays Susan Orlean, author of the book
The Orchid Thief which was also the book the screenplay was "adapted" from. Susan Orlean is lost in her life. Her New York jet set life style has bleached her of substance and she fings an outlet in John Laroche ( played by Chris Cooper), an orchid propagatror working out of the everglades. These two, Streep and Cooper, are quite the pair. Chris Cooper, unfortunatly, a B actor with A list credentials and his character compliments the film as well as Susan Orlean so will. It's almost like watching your grandparents share a long passionate kiss. You're hoping they have the chemistry but don't want to see it. The plot itself is very twisted and the context of the movie boggles the mind, Charlie Kaufman at his best. here's the premis in a nut shell, Charlie Kaufman is adapting a book,
The Orchid Thief, into a screenplay. He's having great difficulty due to the fact that the book is lacking in substance. After blowing his deadline he decides to take his brother's advice and go to a workshop for screenwriters and get advice from"Robert Mckee", played by Brian Cox. He then decides to enlist his brother's help in writing in some dramatics and thing get pretty whiley from then on. I'll leave the rest for you to discover on your own. On another note, director Spike Jones really adds his touch to the piece with his ditached and sometime psilocybic cinamatography. I was and am a big fan of his music videos. The movie while tamed down for his music video stylings still captures the way that Charlie Kaufman writes. Over all this a movie that has an amazing definition of gestalt and I suggest you rent it tonight and look forward to being delightfully confused. 00<