Being John Malkovich

A frustrated puppeteer (John Cusack) discovers a tunnel that permits him to enter the brain of actor John Malkovich—a patently nutty concept, and just one of several fresh and inventive aspects of this dazzling and surprisingly rich little film. The initial situation leads to multiple love triangles (involving Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keeler and Malkovich himself) and to a cockeyed version of an “inside look” at the life of a celebrity actor, but the film’s wry and overpowering charm comes even more from the boxes-within-boxes storytelling of Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay and director Spike Jonze’s wackily stylized rendition of a lunatic world that seems vaguely but persistently familiar. And it’s both haunting and very funny.