Adaptation. (Shout Select)

Director Spike Jonze delivers a stunningly original comedy that seamlessly blends fictional characters and situations with the lives of real people: obsessive orchid hunter John Laroche (Chris Cooper), journalist and author Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep), Hollywood screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage), and his twin brother Donald (also Cage). As Charlie struggles to adapt Orlean's best-selling book The Orchid Thief, he writes himself into his own movie. The various stories crash into one another, exploding into a wildly imaginative film. Adaptation, 2002's most-talked about movie, is at once a hilarious drama and a moving comedy.