“My thinking is silly. My memories are preposterous. My ideas are laughable. I am a pompous clown. I can, on occasion, become aware of this. There are moments of clarity that I find all the more humiliating because I can see myself as others likely do, but I cannot control any of it. The pathetic, comical thought process continues, almost as if a script is playing out. Almost as if I myself am a puppet, defined by some external force, written to be the foil in some strange cosmic entertainment witnessed by someone somewhere. But who or what? And why? […]

Adapted from Iain Reid’s 2016 novel, Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things returns to familiar preoccupations—solipsistic men and idealized girlfriends, already subjective memory’s decay, aging and death, ambitious futility. From the book Kaufman retains the text of page one (an interior monologue from the unnamed female narrator), some dialogue from the subsequent first chapter and the course of events up to about page 150 (out of 210). Otherwise, the dialogue’s almost entirely been junked before a final act of Kaufman’s own conception, which are both excellent substitutions: the novel has a manifestly underwhelming twist ending and isn’t exactly packed with scintillating exchanges […]

A long, progressively disorienting drive across a snow-battered landscape leads to a relationship milestone — meeting the parents — in the latest from writer/director Charlie Kaufman. For Jessie Buckley’s unnamed girlfriend character, Jake (Jesse Plemmons) is someone promising even as the film’s serenely despondent title functions as her mantra-like internal dialogue. Awaiting in a house that seems unmoored by time are Jake’s mom and dad, played by Toni Collette and David Thewlis. Said Kaufman to Entertainment Weekly, “The house represents the imagined interaction between someone you bring home to your parents — that panic that is twoheaded at that point. […]