Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Awesome Movie

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This film was strangely intriguing and had my full attention all the time. The dialogue is at times extraordinarily witty and it's a mix of sadness (emphasized by the music scores from both Clockwork Orange and 2001, as well as melancholy tones from Bryan Adams "I'm not the man I seem to be, but I'm the man for you..") and comedy depicting the double nature of the conman Conway. Malkowich slippery and at times very painful acting is one of a kind. It's amazing how his character bounces up again and again, he can't stop himself. Of course, as a social commentary this film is a hard judgment on the willingness for people to believe and get benefits from anybody who appears to be in a position of power. bengt alvång http://www.fokus.nu

"Color Me Kubrick" will remind you a bit of Steven Spielberg's "Catch Me if You Can," in which Leonardo Di Caprio played a world-class con artist who duped people into believing he was a myriad of Very Important People whom he was really not. In "Colour Me Kubrick," the imposter is a man named Alan Conway who goes about London telling people he is the famed (and famously reclusive) director, Stanley Kubrick, in order to bum rides, free drinks and even sexual favors off of them. I guess it's appropriate that I just happened to catch this film on April 1st of all days.Written by Andrew Frewin and directed by Brian W. Cook, "Color Me Kubrick" is clearly a godsend for its star, John Malkovich, who seems to be having the time of his movie-acting life doing this role. Malkovich tailors his demeanor and accent to fit the audience to whom he is playing, running the gamut from Capote-esquire fey for his gay "clients" (Conway is himself gay) to regular-guy macho for his straight targets. Yet, Malkovich never resorts to mere playacting to create his effect; by fully inhabiting the character, he keeps Conway from descending into a merely clownish figure and allows him to register as a fully fleshed-out human being.Unfortunately, although the screenplay is frequently witty and even downright hilarious at times, the movie itself is never quite as good as Malkovich is in it. Despite its overall originality, there's an innate one-note quality to the setup that the movie cannot completely shake, so that, even at a mere eighty-six minutes, the conceit tends to wear a bit thin after awhile. The filmmakers somewhat make up for that weakness by also showing us the means by which Conway is eventually unmasked for all the world to see. There are also a number of surprisingly poignant moments in the film in which we are shown just how sad, lonely and pathetic an individual Conway really is. The most touching sequence comes when a movie-savvy young man in a bar uncovers Conway's ruse by trapping him with a trick Stanley Kramer question. As Conway slinks away from the scene humiliated and crestfallen, we can clearly see why Malkovich is one of the finest actors of his generation.Beyond the Conway character, the film provides a gently satirical jab at our culture's overwhelming obsession with celebrity and our willingness to suspend critical judgment on a person or a scheme if we can discern a benefit for ourselves by doing so. For, indeed, virtually everyone who allows himself to be duped by this impersonator has starry-eyed dreams of one day making it big in either the entertainment business or the world of corporate financing. Conway has merely come up with a clever way of exploiting that obsession for his own personal benefit.There's also something wryly humorous in the fact that, although Kubrick is universally recognized as being one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema, his face was so unfamiliar to both the general populace and even people in the movie industry that Conway was able to pull this ruse off for so long without getting caught. Can anyone imagine an individual trying that same stunt with Spielberg, Tarantino, Scorsese, etc.? This is a slight but endearing comedy that is a must-see for John Malkovich fans.

Much of this story is fictionalized and over-stated. Alan Conway was a real person who did impersonate Stanley Kubrick during the 1990s. However, the real Conway ran a travel agency and had a son, who lived with him for a while.Conway definitely left his wife and pursued gay relationships, but the way this film portrayed him was as a continually lying and compulsive character, who lived off the gullibility of others. The real Conway seemed to have paid at least some of his own way.Conway did attend a rehab clinic run by the Priory group, but he attended one of 200 centres in Britain, not a boutique clinic for up and outers, as portrayed in the film. According to an article on him by The Guardian, the treatment was successful and he joined AA afterwards.The film contains much that Kubrick lovers can enjoy - the music, a signature of all of Kubrick's films, appears during ironic and amusing episodes. Around the corner of Conway's house is a sex shop called "The Blue Danube" - a reference to the music played during the spaceship / space station dance in 2001; When Conway is assaulted by friends who discover his true identity, the tunes from "Clockwork Orange" play; The music at the clinic evokes memories of the Overlook Hotel, as does the interior design of the clinic.John Malkovich is the star of the film. His Conway/Kubrick changes accents and mannerisms all the time according to who he is with. He is American in one scene, Cockney in another, even South African at one stage (the real Conway lived in South Africa for a while).There's also a "Malkovich" moment in the film when Conway (played by John Malkovich and impersonating Stanley Kubrick) tells friends at his dinner table that he is casting "John Malkovich" for a role in his new film. "Who's he?" asks one of his guests.But for me the film fell flat. It ended too abruptly for my taste. I wanted to see how Conway lived the rest of his life. I wanted to see a scene in which the "real" Stanley Kubrick is informed of the imposter (Peter Jackson would have been great playing Stanley Kubrick). I wanted to see him on television (the real Conway did appear on TV).I also wanted to see bit actors from Kubrick films make an appearance. Warren Clark, Dalziel from "Dalziel & Pascoe", played Dim in "Clockwork Orange". Couldn't the producers have invited him in for a scene? What about letting Lia Beldam appear briefly nude as she did in "The Shining"? The film yearned for in-jokes like these to be played for Kubrick fans, but they avoided them.One last thing - for some reason I had believed that Conway actually made it onto the set of "Eyes Wide Shut" and had confused some of those involved in it. This was definitely not the case either in real life or in the film.And spare a thought for Joe Longthorne, the real British singer who fell for Conway's tricks and who was given another name in the film. Poor bloke. Must be terribly embarrassed.

Malkovich gives a performance that carries the picture. But the picture goes nowhere! I wasn't offended by all the gay stuff in it. but I might have been were I gay. It's a bit much.While there are a lot of references to Kubrick movies, there are few, if any, attempts to include any of his cinematic signatures; i.e. the tracking shot, the bathroom scene, the sullen stare into the camera. There are repetitive inclusions of music associated with this movies, Zarathustra, Thieving Magpie, Sarabande, snippets from Wendy Carlos' Clockwork Orange score. These become tiresome.The movies fails, because the Alan Conway character is never explored in any way. This is Brian Cook's fault, not Malkovich's. Here's and example: The high point of this long-running con occurs in a restaurant, where Conway takes in super sharp Frank Rich of the New York Times. Now, regardless of Conway's background or motivation, this should have been a great moment for him. Was he scared? Was he challenged? Was he so into the con that it was inconsequential to him? He did go to the trouble of verifying Rich with the maitre'd. The script thought it was important. But the scene tells us nothing.It's worth seeing, I suppose, for Kubrick fans like myself. But it adds nothing to the canon. The screenplay is fine, probably hits the right notes, but the direction is fatal.