Jack Nicholson

not sure yet what im votin tho

Five Easy Pieces

Five Easy Pieces through Cuckoo's Nest is one helluva string.

Voted for Chinatown.

Wow I forgot what an amazing career he had before he went completely off the rails.

I AM THE MOTHERFUCKING SHORE PATROL!

"Chinatown" seems the obvious choice to me?

voted chinatown with a nod to as good as it gets tbh

voted 5 easy pieces out of instinct but admittedly I haven't seen the more obscure stuff

chinatown 4-ever

The Last Detail.

So, was the "Little Shop of Horrors" too obscure for the poll?

He's made so many movies that he deserves his own Most Underrated Jack Nicholson Movie poll.

For example:

The Passenger
King of Marvin Gardens
The Border (one of his best quiet performances)
The Pledge (ditto)

xp no, just had to cut it to 50

he's really good in 'the two jakes', which is a totally enjoyable movie with an even better harvey keitel performance. only mentioning it because it's underrated. i'd vote 'the last detail'.

xp fair enough

Chinatown ahead of 10-12 other great performances

i can't stand the counterculture movies he was in.

voted the pledge.

its Chinatown

"xp no, just had to cut it to 50"

I understand that, but some of what you left he has fairly minor roles in.

I remember really liking the two Hellman Westerns (only one of which is on the Poll). Suspect I'll vote Five Easy Pieces.

Carnal Knowledge is a movie destroyed by laughable casting.

Post-85 the hits become fewer and farther between, don't they?

chinatown

i recently saw Terms of Endearment and his part was much smaller than i'd expected it to be.

nobody said Shining yet. he's funny there. :) also, a nod to About Schmidt.

wtf, Ann-Margret is great in CK.

that's the problem w/ The Shining, too funny

Sure, his more more nuanced performances are perhaps worthy of merit badges and such, but cmon, the correct answer is so obviously The Shining.

Tho this gets an honorable mention:

"wtf, Ann-Margret is great in CK."

I don't remember Ann-Margret. Jack and Candace and Art are the laughably cast ones! They're all pushing 40 and pretending to play college students!

His Terms of Endearment part is small, but he's so great in it!! But yeah, damn, this is really hard.

the shining = jack nicholson as Godfather 2 = Al Pacino in terms of where self-parody began...

But Pacino doesn't yell much in GF2! The self-parody begins with Scarface, and maybe those other early eighties performances in films no one has much seen.

Jack was 33 or 34 at time of CK, his hairline was just receding... when you have characters aging from 21 to 45 in a film, you have to pick an age, and hope your audience can suspend some belief. That's like ppl complaining about Stewart and Wayne being too old in Liberty Valance -- bullshit.

Also, A-M doesn't appear til after the college sequence in Carnal Knowledge.

Jack's self-parody began w/ Cuckoo's Nest. But he does takes breaks from it, as in The Border and The Pledge.

Also, he's even funnier in Mars Attacks than Pacino is in Dick Tracy.

But Pacino doesn't yell much in GF2! The self-parody begins with Scarface, and maybe those other early eighties performances in films no one has much seen.

― The Screaming Lobster of Challops (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, March 21, 2009 10:52 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^ Watch the "In my BEDROOM" sequence and get back to me.

"Jack was 33 or 34 at time of CK, his hairline was just receding"

He's an old looking 33. They should have cast someone in their early to mid-twenties and aged him for 41 sequences (which are a smaller part of the movie anyway.)

I couldn't suspend disbelief. I found it incredibly distracting.

pity then. CK w/ Ryan O'Neal, DNW.

^^^ Watch the "In my BEDROOM" sequence and get back to me.

I don't know -- I guess! But that's like arguing that the scene in Sophie's Choice where Streep has to choose b/w her kids sewed the seeds for self-parody.

it's weird to realize that i saw 4 of his last 7 movies in the theater - wtf is wrong with me

the pledge is great, it was on tv the other day

I don't know -- I guess! But that's like arguing that the scene in Sophie's Choice where Streep has to choose b/w her kids sewed the seeds for self-parody.

― The Screaming Lobster of Challops (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, March 21, 2009 11:32 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban

It did!

Looking over this list, I account The Shining as the film that ruined Nicholson's career as an actor. It taught him how easy it was to ham it up and persuade audiences to accept it as good acting. He never looked back. Boy howdy, has he been gawdawful the past couple of decades!

btw, I voted Missouri Breaks, just to be contrarian. Chinatown is clearly the strongest horse in this field.

btw, I'm white.

yelling in GF2 (or Panic in Needle Park) is not same as Robot Pacino Yelling

voted easy rider because it's my favorite movie up there, but chinatown will (and prob should) win

I account The Shining as the film that ruined Nicholson's career as an actor. - I see your point, but just because TS birthed the "crazy Jack is gonna snap" schtick that, yeah, got old really quick, doesn't mean that his performance in that film, taken on its own, should be held accountable for The Witches of Eastwick or whatever. To use the Pacino analogy,Glengarry Glen Ross should not be blamed for The Devil's Advocate, even though his lawyer/Satan was essentially a hyper-stylized Ricky Roma.

I'm probably biased, being a horror buff, but I've always thought of the Jack Torrence character as one of cinema's great psychopaths, not necessarily for the cackling and clowning of the film's final third, but for the sinister undertone boiling up between the point when he hurts his son & later starts interacting with ghosts/hallucinations, hitting full stride in the uber-creepy dialog between Jack and the previous caretaker in the washroom. The "here's Johnny" sequence is what people typically associate with the character, but it is that bathroom exchange which best exemplifies the strength of his performance.

Sorry for the lengthy post. I just like The Shining a lot, flawed though it may be.

Sorry for the lengthy post. I just like The Shining a lot, flawed though it may be.

i just watched Louis Theroux in some kind of self-help-hypnosis world and have to say: DON'T APOLOGIZE. that was a good post :)

i'm not a good judge of what makes quality acting, but the movie of these i have enjoyed the most is prob. five easy pieces.

xpost: thanks. I feel a little self-conscious when I'm the only dude on a thread with a long post, which tends to be often, just cuz I'm such a flowery bastard. I wasn't apologizing for my love of TS, but it is a flawed film. The third act just can't support the masterful tone of the first two (but at least it didn't end with an attack of giant hedge bunnies, as King would have preferred).

At first, while voting in polls, I was conflicted about whether I should vote for the objectively "best" thing, or the thing I just happen to like the most. In keeping with the (variably)anti-canonical spirit of ILX, I decided to just go with the latter. So yeah, objectively, Chinatown 9 times out of 10, but I'm voting for the first two-thirds of The Shinning (sic)

i want you to hold this poll between your knees

oh yeah, well I won't stand for your smartness and sarcasm.

the border's really good.

a few good men was on tv the other day so i watched it, jack's great in the 'i eat breakfast' scene. horrible score

it's nicely subtle in that nicholsons character isnt the boy scout cop caricature outraged @ his corrupt colleagues &/or w/ a crusading woody for mistreated brown ppl but more i think that he just realizes that even going along w/ it, getting $ & w/e would only mean his wife would buy more worthless furniture & whatnot so y not do the "right" thing~

otm

don't think I've seen it since '82 so it's time I spose

his best from that dark post-Cuckoo's Nest pre-Reds period.

Just to be thoroughly annoying, The Border came out after Reds...I've never seen it (meant to at the time); better than The Shining?

You're right!

His performance? Yeah. Whether the movie is better than The Shining I'll leave for the Kubrickiphiliacs.

I think you know my answer....

Does anyone like Goin' South? Never saw that one. In an alternate reality he could've been a comedic stalwart, as in The Fortune (or the Little Shop cameo).

I walked out on The Border after the first 50 minutes or so, ages ago, when I saw it in a theater back when it was released. I don't recall Nicholson's performance as being the main problem so much as the script and direction. I felt I was being intensely manipulated and I didn't like it. Still, it makes me wonder at all the favorable remarks that film gets on this thread. I couldn't stand it.

well it's been 21 years, Aim.

incidentally his commentary track for The Passenger, which I praised here years ago, is still one of my favorites -- one of the few actors who understood exactly what the director wanted him to do as well as having perfect insight into the director's methods, period.

in the as good as it gets commentary nicholson doesn't say much for a while and then there's a shot out a window of some boats and he makes a HRMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM foghorn noise. best part of as good as it gets, obviously.

xps hated goin' south so much! not just an early showcase for all his worst tendencies as an actor, but just excruciatingly unfunny & irritating. I mean I don't really rate his comedy performance in the shining either, but he does at least make me lol in that.

in the as good as it gets commentary nicholson doesn't say much for a while and then there's a shot out a window of some boats and he makes a HRMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM foghorn noise. best part of as good as it gets, obviously.

― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Sunday, May 5, 2013 4:46 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark

lmao

Looking over his filmography, I don't see Reds as any kind of demarcation point the way Alfred does. The point at which he starts imitating himself--sometime slyly, sometimes clunkily--and his films don't seem like such a big deal anymore, that seems to come a few years later. I'm not sure exactly when--I haven't seen everything in question--but maybe sometime in the mid/late-'80s? I would agree that Cuckoo's Nest ends his great period.

The point at which he starts imitating himself is Cuckoo's Nest. Though he doesn't always.

Gotta disagree there. Every actor has mannerisms--he's already doing Jack stuff in Easy Rider--but McMurphy is a fully realized character.

I only mentioned Reds as his first Academy-recognized Good Performance since Cuckoo's Nest, and for once the Academy is right: that 1976-1982 period is dismal.

*mentioned Reds BECAUSE it was

he was awful and miscast in The Postman Always Rings Twice and - well, I won't say much about The Shining.

agreed on postman, from that post-cuckoo pre-reds period i am very fond of the missouri breaks.

http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2013/09/04/jack-nicholson-retires/

He needs to do a voice-over role or something so that How Do You Know? doesn't become his Buddy Buddy.

or his Welcome to Mooseport or whatever the fuck it was

he shoulda done that third Jake Gittes film really low-budget, maybe w/ Joe Swanberg

Haha, yes, and poor Hackman needs to do Krapp's Last Tape.

Wow--remember directors making such an announcement, not an actor or actress. (Bet he can be coaxed out of it.) Just loaned Five Easy Pieces to someone this morning.

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTgwMDUxOTg2M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTAyODUyMw@@._V1_SY317_CR2,0,214,317_.jpg

Going out on a high note apparently not these guys' style.

Connery's last was that reclusive author/inner city prep school movie, right? It was probably the most respectable bow-out of the three of them.

Hackman retired too.

no it was league of extraordinary gentleman
xpost

woops – I need lunch.

Nicholson is so rich he can pay these actors' pensions.

oh in that case, nm. xp

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/73/SirBilli_Poster.jpg/220px-SirBilli_Poster.jpg

STAY RETIRED!

I keep thinking Connery was in Skyfall because that dad/Scotland role was so clearly meant for him.

James Cagney hated Billy Wilder so much he retired after One, Two, Three, then came back 20 years later for Ragtime.

Pretty sure Cary Grant announced his retirement 20 years before his death, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZUfuN2DNJ0

The Sir Billi trailer I just watched makes me incredibly sad, like Connery may have been tricked in some sort of scheme and doesn't have people around him looking out for his best interests. Alan Cumming is in it too, but Alan Cumming will do anything.

Nicholson's rep denying retirement and memory loss

78

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_IVurj2Od0

Orion to thread

Producer Jerome Hellman bought the rights to Theroux's novel as soon as it was published, and Weir committed to filming it. Jack Nicholson was originally offered the lead role, but backed out partly because he could not watch the LA Lakers from Belize, where part of the film was to be shot.[1] He instead went on to star in Terms of Endearment, a role Ford had also been offered.

80 today

The point at which he starts imitating himself is Cuckoo's Nest. Though he doesn't always.

― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Sunday, May 5, 2013 9:10 PM (three years ago)

i haven't seen this film in a while, but i don't remember jack being too ott in this one. if anything he plays it down considerably from the larger-than-life character in kesey's novel.

I think he means that's where you start to see the seeds sewn for the rat mimicry to come.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK7TiA9qmuU

Film school should just be Jack Nicholson talking about Michelangelo Antonioni for free on the internet. pic.twitter.com/52kRFCjxxs

— John Frankensteiner (@JFrankensteiner) October 15, 2020

The Crossing Guard is okay--over-the-top resolution (which is moving right at the end anyway), good stuff along the way. Sean Penn, one of our finest actors, was probably at the pinnacle of his career, acting in and directing a series of high-profile films. So he's got Nicholson and Angelica Huston, John Savage, Piper Laurie, Robin Wright (his wife), David Morse--it's an actor's film. He dedicates it to Charles Bukowski, so we know he has literary friends (just in case you still think of him as Jeff Spicoli). He gets a good performance out of Priscilla Barnes, from Three's Company. People were probably clamoring to be in anything he directed.

I'd say the best reason to watch it (Nicholson and Huston are fine) is Robin Wright. She so definitively became Claire Underwood for me, it was startling to see her younger, and how natural and quietly compelling she was. She dances to Salt-n-Pepa and it works. No use for Forrest Gump, but I know why Forrest fell in love with her.