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From left: John Malkovich in *Beingness John Malkovich*, Nicolas Cage in *The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent* and Maggie Cheung in *Irma Vep*. Photo Courtesy: Usa Films/Everett Drove; Katalin Vermes/Lionsgate/Everett Drove; Everett Drove

It's probably the top of obviousness to say that movies are pure illusion, but information technology tin can be hard to see that sometimes. For all the superhero movies existence released these days, there are countless other films — recent Oscar nominee Male monarch Richard, is a good example — that attempt to tell biographical stories in ways that are true to life. Even so, the foreign act of watching a person on screen pretending to be a dissimilar person is at the centre of watching movies. That's probably why it's even more weird when we get a hazard to experience those rare and special films in which actors play themselves.

The new moving picture The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is ane of these films. In information technology, Nicolas Cage plays, well, Nicolas Muzzle. Specifically, he plays a cash-strapped version of himself in which he agrees to attend the birthday party of a superfan (Pedro Pascal) for money and ends up going undercover with the CIA. In honor of the release of this film, what follows is a pick of some of the best and most interesting movies in which actors play themselves.

I'yard not talking nearly documentaries. I'm not fifty-fifty talking about cameos — David Bowie'due south moment equally a rail walk-off judge in Zoolander, for example — where an player shows upwardly as himself for a single scene. I'll give honorable mentions to Bill Murray in Zombieland, Neil Patrick Harris in the Harold and Kumar movies, and Keanu Reeves in Always Be My Maybe, simply here I'm talking well-nigh movies that are congenital around performances in which actors play themselves. They ask us to think nearly the truly strange — and probably true! — possibility that at least some of what we do as we become about our lives might properly be considered a kind of acting too.

The Whole Bandage in This Is the Terminate (2013)

Foreground from left: Seth Rogen, Jonah Loma, Emma Watson and Aziz Ansari in *This Is the Cease*. Photo Courtesy: Suzanne Hanover/Sony Pictures/Everett Collection

This Is the End, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's 2013 apocalypse comedy, is the unique movie where the entire cast is playing themselves. It's a clever idea — if you lot're going to imagine what would happen during the fiery ending of life on Earth, you might likewise heart the story around a agglomeration of young Hollywood actors at a political party.

We tend to call back — or at least I practise — of movie stars every bit being separate from the residue of u.s.. For the almost part, that perception is probably truthful. That feeling of distance makes it exciting to spend so much time with a bunch of them in the context of this movie. You can't help only feel a little jolt of excitement watching them in the context of the finish of the world — an consequence then inherently humbling that you lot start thinking, "You know what? Possibly they are just like usa!"

David Strathairn and Paul Giamatti in *Common cold Souls*. Photo Courtesy: Samuel Goldwyn Films/Everett Collection

This film from managing director Sophie Barthes uses a sci-fi premise to explore the pros and cons of having a soul. Paul Giamatti plays a version of himself as an role player so securely invested in the characters he plays that he can't let get of them subsequently he's washed performing. Hilariously, he reads an article about "Soul Storage" in The New Yorker, and we're off from in that location on a journey that includes a soul trafficking crime ring in Russia.

I love movies — Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Listen is some other one — where something incredibly wild, similar the decoupling of the soul from the trunk, is going on at what is otherwise a pretty normal medico'southward office. Placing sci-fi elements in a real-world setting only doubles downward on the strangeness of thinking nearly things like the soul in the kickoff place. Having Giamatti play himself is another layer on top of all of this.

Jean-Claude van Damme in JCVD (2008)

Jean-Claude van Damme in *JCVD*. Photo Courtesy: Peace Arch Amusement Grouping/Everett Collection

If, like me, you are a career-long fan of the work of Jean-Claude van Damme, yous volition dearest this emotional meta-take on the strangeness of beingness an activeness pic star. In a performance that was praised by Nicolas Cage himself, van Damme plays himself as an role player fallen on hard times. He'south bankrupt, he can't get decent roles, and his family life is falling apart as he loses a custody battle for his daughter, who rejects him.

Back in his hometown in Belgium, he is running an errand to the post office to pick up a wire transfer of funds and ends up beingness office of a group of hostages when a robbery ensues. The bare bones of what happens are a little predictable — van Damme's dual roles of regular guy and action hero get all jumbled up and dislocated — simply the execution by director Mabrouk el Mechri is totally wild. The crowning moment is a six-minute fourth wall-breaking monologue nearly van Damme's drug use, his career, and his struggles. It'southward incredibly emotional, which you can't e'er say about a van Damme motion picture.

John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich (1999)

Catherine Keener and John Malkovich in *Beingness John Malkovich*. Photo Courtesy: USA Films/Everett Collection

Spike Jonze's 1999 picture show, Beingness John Malkovich, is an absolute heed-warp. The basic premise — which is so bizarre information technology near entirely defies synopsis — is that a puppeteer (John Cusack) making ends meet as a file clerk finds a cloak-and-dagger portal in the office where he works. That portal leads into the mind of famous actor John Malkovich, who, of grade, is played by John Malkovich. At the end of each trip into the mind of Malkovich, the inhabitant is ejected and lands in a ditch on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike.

What Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman do with that premise is even more wild than anything the previous paragraph implies. Cusack's puppeteer finds himself able to pull Malkovich'south strings in terrifying ways, merely he learns that he's ultimately a puppet likewise. In the end, it's a film about love, desire, and, peradventure most of all, about time, as the decisions the characters make brainstorm to take implications that go across the length of even a single human lifespan.

Maggie Cheung in Irma Vep (1997)

Jean-Pierre Léaud and Maggie Cheung in *Irma Vep*. Photo Courtesy: Zeitgeist Films/Everett Collection

Irma Vep (an anagram for "vampire") is a French film by manager Olivier Assayas that centers effectually a French manager named René Vidal (Jean-Pierre Léaud) trying to remake the classic serial French criminal offence movie Les Vampires. The bully Hong Kong extra Maggie Cheung gets hired to play Irma Vep, a burglar who spends the picture prowling around in a black latex catsuit.

They're making a movie about vampires, and the way everyone around Cheung starts to desire her as the picture show progresses starts to feel pretty vampiric, too. She's the irresistible center of the movie, simply she feels sort of unknowable, and we learn almost the other characters mostly through how they respond to her. We follow Cheung through her experience equally an outsider in France, and as Vidal loses control of his pic, Cheung ends upwardly in the strange position of defending Vidal's choices to the French press and to her fellow bandage and crew-members.

Assayas is in the process of remaking Irma Vep as a series for HBO Max featuring Alicia Vikander in the title role. It hasn't been given a release date yet, but Vikander's recent comment that "Information technology'south and so meta, information technology's eating itself" makes it clear that the show will likely be playing with similar themes to the movie in actually exciting ways.