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 \u2014 a US Army general, a cruise ship captain, a Russian gambler \u2014 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 \u2014 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 \u2014 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\u2019s 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 \u2014 and the costumes: a sumptuous and fairly ill-fitting array of flares, sarongs and Prince-style platforms. It\u2019s preposterous casting, and you can only imagine how Opus would have been with a more flamboyantly energised lead \u2014 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\u2019d 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.\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606\u2606In cinemas from March 14<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 \u2014 a US Army general, a cruise ship captain, a Russian gambler \u2014 but more often than not,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":239250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-239249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239251,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239249\/revisions\/239251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}