New This Week
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

63 11th Hour, The
47 27 Dresses
29 Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
39 Alvin and the Chipmunks
81 Bamako
84 Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
47 Bella
68 Business of Being Born, The
69 Charlie Wilson's War
64 Cloverfield
30 Cover
68 Delirious
92 Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
43 Final Season, The
41 First Sunday
51 Golden Compass, The
49 Good Night, The
65 Great Debaters, The
63 Hannah Takes the Stairs
52 Hollywood Dreams
7 Hottie and the Nottie, The
60 I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
15 In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
81 Juno
70 Lars and the Real Girl
47 Lions for Lambs
41 Mad Money
71 Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
xx Moondance Alexander
53 Music Within
77 Nanking
44 Nina's Heavenly Delights
24 One Missed Call
74 Orphanage, The
30 Over Her Dead Body
39 P.S. I Love You
37 P2
46 Reservation Road
55 Resurrecting the Champ
57 Romulus, My Father
85 Savages, The
78 Starting Out in the Evening
83 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
57 Teeth
92 There Will Be Blood
38 Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
32 Untraceable
63 Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
68 War Dance
71 Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, The
43 Youth Without Youth

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Color Me Kubrick
Magnolia Pictures


7.0

based on 21 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 3 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring John Malkovich, Marisa Berenson, Jim Davidson, Richard E. Grant, and Terence Rigby

John Malkovich stars as the notorious Stanley Kubrick imposter Alan Conway in Color Me Kubrick.

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Drama \| Foreign
WRITTEN BY:	Anthony Frewin (story)
DIRECTED BY:	Brian W. Cook
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: March 27, 2007 Theatrical: March 23, 2007
RUNNING TIME:	86 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	UK / France

Also known as "Colour Me Kubrick: A True...ish Story"

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Color Me Kubrick is a far more modest movie, but in some ways is more successful than "The Hoax" in conveying how deeply people want to believe something is true against all evidence.

Variety Lisa Nesselson

A sly, enormously entertaining romp based on the antics of real-life Brit conman Alan Conway who rooked his way around '90s London posing as Stanley Kubrick.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Color Me Kubrick is like a nice, deep, clear cocktail of ammonia on the rocks: bracing, comic, astonishing, all of which hide its poison center.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The film reveals, rather delectably, how potent the power of suggestion can be in a world gone madly groupie.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

In Color Me Kubrick, John Malkovich has one of the roles of his life, and he acts it up like a haughty gourmet who's just picked up a succulent treat.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

The filmmakers have wisely turned it into a comedy, and a wickedly entertaining one at that.

Los Angeles Times Ed Gonzalez

Scarcely an insightful biographical portrait, Color Me Kubrick is still interesting, perhaps even intimidating, as a study of the way fandom can so readily be turned against itself.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Even if it doesn't add up to more than a fitfully amusing collection of comic sketches, Color Me Kubrick is a platform for John Malkovich to burst into lurid purple flame.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

This 2005 British feature by writer Anthony Frewin and director Brian Cook, both former Kubrick assistants, uses Conway's unlikely saga to mount an appreciative send-up of a certain style of gay extravagance.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

A playground for Malkovich – enjoyable enough but not terribly deep.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's entertaining if not exactly enlightening.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Color Me Kubrick digs all sorts of devilish ironies out of this "true...ish story," and it's a fine dark farce before turning sad and, worse, monotonous. The con wears off before the movie does, but while it's in the air, "Kubrick" spins with bogus cheer.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Malkovich pulls out all the gaudy stops.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

Best appreciated as a rather amusing farce called The John Malkovich Show, the movie's every scene is anchored, then stolen, by the commanding thespian's Alan act.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Great fun for the first 20 minutes - which include Kubrickian tracking shots and music from "2001" and "A Clockwork Orange" - but seems long at 86.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

The film makes funny use of music (particularly Lionel Richie's "Hello") and excellent use of Malkovich, but it literally only has one idea in its head, and when that idea runs dry, it's as lost as Conway is without his plethora of Kubrick masks.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

If you can't watch John Malkovich being John Malkovich, it's still a kick watching him play Alan Conway, a gay Brit who pretended to be the legendary and reclusive director Stanley Kubrick during the 1990s.

Village Voice Nathan Lee

I find it hard to believe that Conway bamboozled half of London simply by announcing his name, and it's regrettable that the filmmakers premise their picture on such improbable gullibility. The real Conway was assuredly slier than his bio-pic incarnation; he ought to have been played by Sacha Baron Cohen.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The movie is endless even at less than 90 minutes. You could use it, "A Clockwork Orange" style, as aversion therapy for seemingly incorrigible con artists.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Director Cook and screenwriter Anthony Frewin were both intimates of the real Kubrick, which I guess counts for something. But for what, exactly? Does it uniquely qualify them to make a mean-spirited, trashy and intermittently funny film about a guy who wasn't Kubrick?

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

At best a kitschy "Catch Me If You Can" and at worst a tedious comedy that grows more tiresome by every self-consciously irreverent minute.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Byron gave it an8:
Malkovich stretches here fun to watch.

Matthew E. gave it a6:
Malkovich is one of my favorite actors and you can tell he is having a lot of fun playing Conway playing Kubrick. However, the gag gets tiresome after a few scenes and the movie really has no substance to fall back on. Interesting idea, but poorly executed overall.

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page

Color Me Kubrick Magnolia Pictures

Color Me Kubrick
Magnolia Pictures