The best and most original film of 1999 by a wide margin. Charlie Kaufman's insane script is utterly unpredictable, and consistently amazing. Jonze gets great performances from Catherine Keener, John Malkovich and Cameron Diaz, and very solid work from John Cusack. Cusack plays puppeteer Craig Schwarz, and his home life with wife Lotte (Diaz), a veterinarian who keeps assorted wildlife in their apartment, sets the movie's genially surreal tone, the pace of which accelerates when he puts his nimble fingers to work in a filing job where he meets the smokily seductive Maxine (Keener). Eventually he discovers a portal that leads literally into the head of John Malkovich, and things get yet weirder and funnier. Entirely new plot twists open up like trapdoors and are always worth the fall. Seeking for something to fault the movie for, some critics have argued that its ingenuity masks the lack of any underlying metaphorical significance. But all of Being John Malkovich's wacky narrative riffs--from the hilarious puppetry stuff to Lotte's caged monkey and the contested terrain of Malkovich's head--return to the questions of free will and identity, and the unstinting originality of the movie is heartening testimony on these issues.