Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.John Malkovich has played all manner of unlikely roles — a US Army general, a cruise ship captain, a Russian gambler — but more often than not, he exudes the same jaded poise of an exquisitely world-weary dandy. Often, it would be a stretch to say that he is convincing in any usual sense — but verisimilitude is beside the point for a performer whose mesmeric appeal derives from his bizarrely offhand reluctance to seem anything other than his own irreducibly strange self.Now here is Malkovich as a legendary pop star in Opus, the latest offering in the hip horror sub-genre. He plays Alfred Moretti, an internationally adulated icon who breaks a 30-year silence by announcing a new album. A favoured group of six media insiders are summoned to hear it at his secluded desert hide-out — among them, keen but put-upon journalist Ariel (Ayo Edebiri).The debut writer-director here is Mark Anthony Green who, as a former editor at GQ, presumably knows the adulation industry inside out. But Opus proves a shakily paced and altogether hackneyed media satire spiked with wilful eccentricities (a puppet show about Billie Holiday, a yurt full of oysters). There’s precious little characterisation, Opus remaining callously cavalier about its various one-dimensional hacks and influencers. Still, Edebiri, a brilliant alumna of hit TV kitchen drama The Bear, appealingly infuses principled eagerness into an otherwise flimsy role.Malkovich, meanwhile, lip-smackingly devours the scenery — and the costumes: a sumptuous and fairly ill-fitting array of flares, sarongs and Prince-style platforms. It’s preposterous casting, and you can only imagine how Opus would have been with a more flamboyantly energised lead — Robert Downey Jr, say, or Nicolas Cage. Yet the awkward fit is somehow the point: the fun is in seeing Malkovich disdainfully ironise everything that Moretti represents, playing him as an arch-aesthete who seems as if he’d be happier immersed in Debussy than dance mixes. Alas, the songs, by Nile Rodgers and The-Dream, are nothing to write to Paisley Park about.★★☆☆☆In cinemas from March 14
