11Adaptation (2002)

Charlie Kaufman shared screenplay credit with his imaginary identical twin brother: Have we mentioned that Adaptation is a painfully funny illustration of writer’s block? In the script, the fake Kaufman brother pitches a serial killer script, while the “real” Kaufman is self-lampooned as a tortured artist spiraling over the problem of adapting Susan Orlean’s non-fiction book The Orchid Thief. Praising the sheer amount of ideas in the film, A.O. Scott of The New York Times called Adaptation “a movie about its own nonexistence—a narrative that confronts both the impossibility and the desperate necessity of storytelling.”