The Witches of Eastwick is fun -- my favorite of his hambone performances.
― The Screaming Lobster of Challops (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 22 March 2009 19:21 (fifteen years ago) link
I'm going for Chinatown on this one, definitely. Has there ever been a thread on favourite director cameos? I adore Polanski in this.
Anyone wanna make an argument for The Trip?
I enjoyed that film a lot, but I don't think Nicholson was in it as an actor. Saw it too long ago to make a proper argument for it as a good film, but it was definitely fun.
― emil.y, Sunday, 22 March 2009 19:59 (fifteen years ago) link
the trip is the russ meyer one w/ peter fonda right? saw it recently...no jack. think he (co?)wrote it
― johnny crunch, Sunday, 22 March 2009 20:02 (fifteen years ago) link
Yeah, it was Peter Fonda. Corman was the director, not sure if Meyer had anything to do with it. It's kind of Meyer-esque in places, I guess.
― emil.y, Sunday, 22 March 2009 20:21 (fifteen years ago) link
Yeah, I just checked on IMDB & Nicholson wrote it. I'm not sure why I associated him so closely with the film. Was he in another, similar, film about the LSD experience?
― 2 ears + 1 ❤ (Pillbox), Monday, 23 March 2009 00:57 (fifteen years ago) link
Psych-Out? Or even Easy Rider?!
― emil.y, Monday, 23 March 2009 01:04 (fifteen years ago) link
vote for easy rider so i'm not the only one
― abe being busy (k3vin k.), Monday, 23 March 2009 01:41 (fifteen years ago) link
i prefer Wolf to The Shining and Blood & Wine and Batman to The Departed.
― Past a Diving Jeter (Dr Morbius), Monday, 23 March 2009 01:45 (fifteen years ago) link
xxpost: Sure, ES is pretty psychedelic, but I'm thinking of something where the depiction of the "trip" is the central premise. I'm guessing Psych-Out is the one I'm (not really) remembering or, at least, so the title would indicate.
― 2 ears + 1 ❤ (Pillbox), Monday, 23 March 2009 01:47 (fifteen years ago) link
Also wrote Head, the Monkees movie, but not in it so far as I remember...
― Pete Scholtes, Monday, 23 March 2009 02:29 (fifteen years ago) link
he is, for 5-10 seconds.
Poll also doesnt have the film where he played Peter Lorre's son.
― Past a Diving Jeter (Dr Morbius), Monday, 23 March 2009 02:34 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't know anyone in charge of making movies, but I wish they would start making more movies like Hells Angels on Wheels.
Get on a motorcycleGo to carnivalGet drunk and stonedPaint Naked Womenrepeat then have fight that goes wrong...
That is a movie. The end is pretty classic as Nicholson has a total 'what the hell just happened' look on his face.
― earlnash, Monday, 23 March 2009 05:52 (fifteen years ago) link
Voted for The Passenger... Tremendous movie and gets overlooked a lot. The Shooting is my #2 pick
― Chris Barrus (Elvis Telecom), Monday, 23 March 2009 07:07 (fifteen years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Saturday, 28 March 2009 00:01 (fifteen years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Sunday, 29 March 2009 00:01 (fifteen years ago) link
Ironweed got a vote?!
― The Screaming Lobster of Challops (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 29 March 2009 00:05 (fifteen years ago) link
far less scandalous than motherfucking Shining -- quintessential bad Jack, save for red bathroom scene.
― Past a Diving Jeter (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 29 March 2009 07:12 (fifteen years ago) link
aw come on it's a great, funny flick.
― Henry Frog (Frogman Henry), Sunday, 29 March 2009 11:24 (fifteen years ago) link
hmm, i just watched carnal knowledge. great film.
― Yellow Carded (titchyschneiderMk2), Sunday, 29 March 2009 12:20 (fifteen years ago) link
I saw it while ago, I hadn't even heard about such a film before, and was pleasantly surprised. Great performance by Nicholson as a smug bastard. I think it's quite rare to see Hollywood films where none of the protagonists are really sympathetic at all. (Though did feel sorry for Ann-Margret's character.)
― Tuomas, Sunday, 29 March 2009 13:16 (fifteen years ago) link
Strikes me as one of those culturally necessary films after the kind of Mad Men era, and I love Ann-Margaret so it was sort of both compulsory and painful viewing. But like a lot of films from that time, it's just so clearly WRITTEN but without the joys of good writing--the worst of naturalism and mannerism, if that makes sense. I just watched The King of Marvin Gardens and had a slightly similar reaction, again with great performances in a game that seems both dreary and rigged. Nice study of classic '70s-film atmosphere though.
― Pete Scholtes, Sunday, 29 March 2009 15:25 (fifteen years ago) link
Agreed. Ellen Burstyn gives the best performance in KOMG anyway.
― The Screaming Lobster of Challops (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 29 March 2009 15:29 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't think I saw this poll, but Prizzi's Honor deserved a vote. Too bad it was misspelled.
― Zero Transfats Waller (Oilyrags), Sunday, 29 March 2009 22:44 (fifteen years ago) link
poor easy rider
― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 29 March 2009 23:15 (fifteen years ago) link
Nothing for Batman :(
― billstevejim, Monday, 30 March 2009 07:24 (fifteen years ago) link
missed this, would have gone Shining.
yeah null points for batman, bit surprised
― Ant Attack.. (Ste), Monday, 30 March 2009 08:51 (fifteen years ago) link
Really good in Hoffa, which, I was surprised to remember, had some good bits.
― Bud Huxtable (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 22 May 2009 23:46 (fifteen years ago) link
Hoffa's pretty ridiculous, but mostly enjoyable - devito's the best dude in that movie though
i think i would've voted for The Border
― ℳℴℯ ❤\(◕‿◕✿ (Princess TamTam), Saturday, 26 February 2011 13:34 (thirteen years ago) link
75 today. Sad scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vys2K_18uk
― clemenza, Sunday, 22 April 2012 12:56 (twelve years ago) link
http://life.time.com/culture/jack-nicholson-unpublished-photos-1969/?iid=lf%7Clatest#1
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Monday, 23 April 2012 11:37 (twelve years ago) link
watched both the border & the passenger today -- similar disconnected vibe in both, but hes consistently compelling to watch in p much every scene of each, think i actually preferred the border a little
― johnny crunch, Saturday, 4 May 2013 23:30 (eleven years ago) link
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
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Sunday, 5 May 2013 00:09 (eleven years ago) link
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~
― johnny crunch, Sunday, 5 May 2013 01:09 (eleven years ago) link
otm
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Sunday, 5 May 2013 04:34 (eleven years ago) link
don't think I've seen it since '82 so it's time I spose
― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 5 May 2013 13:56 (eleven years ago) link
his best from that dark post-Cuckoo's Nest pre-Reds period.
― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 5 May 2013 14:04 (eleven years ago) link
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?
― clemenza, Sunday, 5 May 2013 14:07 (eleven years ago) link
You're right!
― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 5 May 2013 14:09 (eleven years ago) link
His performance? Yeah. Whether the movie is better than The Shining I'll leave for the Kubrickiphiliacs.
― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 5 May 2013 14:10 (eleven years ago) link
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).
― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 5 May 2013 14:28 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Aimless, Sunday, 5 May 2013 20:36 (eleven years ago) link
well it's been 21 years, Aim.
― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 5 May 2013 20:36 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 5 May 2013 20:38 (eleven years ago) link
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, 5 May 2013 20:46 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― just dude intonation (wins), Sunday, 5 May 2013 20:47 (eleven years ago) link
― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Sunday, May 5, 2013 4:46 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark
lmao
― turds (Hungry4Ass), Sunday, 5 May 2013 20:47 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― clemenza, Sunday, 5 May 2013 20:54 (eleven years ago) link
The point at which he starts imitating himself is Cuckoo's Nest. Though he doesn't always.
― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 5 May 2013 21:10 (eleven years ago) link
Gotta disagree there. Every actor has mannerisms--he's already doing Jack stuff in Easy Rider--but McMurphy is a fully realized character.
― clemenza, Sunday, 5 May 2013 21:26 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 5 May 2013 21:38 (eleven years ago) link