Adaptation (2002, U.S.A.)

Director Spike Jonze delivers a stunningly original comedy that seamlessly blends fictional characters and situations with the lives of real people: obsessive orchid hunter John Laroche (Cooper), New Yorker journalist Susan Orlean (Streep), Hollywood screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Cage), and his twin brother, Donald (also Cage). As Charlie struggles to adapt Orlean’s best-selling book “The Orchid Thief,” he writes himself into his own movie. The various stories crash into one another exploding into a wildly imaginative film. ADAPTATION, the year’s most talked about movie, is at once a hilarious drama and a moving comedy.