A Jack Nicholson double post! Excited? Brilliant! I hadn't seen either of these films for many years so seeing them both with relatively fresh eyes was sweet.
Cuckoo's Nest raked in all the big Oscars in 1975; best picture, director, actor, actress and screenplay. It's not hard to see why. A super performance from Nicholson as the charismatic instigator McMurty is only one of many. Of course Louise Fletcher is perfect as the reviled Nurse Ratched, the bane of McMurty's incarceration. Brad Douriff, Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd are just a few of the fascinating inmates who reside under Ratched's iron fist. I also really enjoyed seeing Scatman Crothers (by god what a fantastic name) as the poor night watchmen who gets caught up in McMurty's shenanigans. Really, he should have known better but who could resist eh?
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| Party time! Think about it Scatman! |
Czech director Milos Forman went on to direct a couple of other films about souls who rub against the grain of society. The People vs Larry Flint (1996) and Man on the Moon (1999) are the interesting biopics of Larry Flint and Andy Kaufman respectively. Two guys who knew how to rattle cages, just like McMurty. Forman's earlier work in the Czech Republic is held in pretty high esteem and features more overt comedy. The Firemens Ball (1967) sounds like a ribald lark as a party for the retiring chief becomes an alcohol fueled disaster. Apparently life in the old communist east was a ripe target for Forman, as shots are taken throughout the film. Sounds pretty good huh? I'm onto it.
Needless to say One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is a gem. Forman has adapted Ken Kesey's novel into a funny, thought provoking and heart-breaking film. A true classic.
4.5/5
Shit yeah. The Shining. Jack Nicholson. Stanley Kubrick. Scatman Crothers. Shit yeah.
Geeze, Nicholson sure did some good work back in the day, and there's still so many top shelf performances I haven't covered in this bloggy. Of course he slays it again here with a typical charismatic and frenetic descent into madness. Scatman's interaction with the kid is fun yet creepy and Shelley Duvall is just right as the warm yet quite useless ma and wife.
Kubrick's vision of Stephen King's novel is technically stunning and is steeped with the sinister intelligence that you watch Kubrick films for. King wrote the original screenplay for Kubrick who rejected it, the final script Kubrick used takes quite a departure from the book. King went on to write his own made-for-television mini-series version which obviously met its critics but King fans seem to be happy. Despite there being some fabulous adaptions of his work, most people have their own horror stories of seeing a Stephen King story on the screen, so please excuse me if I don't rush out to see this.
The Shining has an abundance of truly unforgettable scenes that sear themselves onto your crusty brain. The beautiful aerial shots of the mountains of Montana and Colorado to the waves of blood pouring from the elevator were masterfully captured by John Alcott B.S.C.. He was also cinematographer on Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Barry Lyndon (1975) for which he rightly won an Oscar. The man knew his stuff.
Apart from the awesome performances there is an emptiness to the characters and the story, though that does little to detract from the overall impression of the film, it perhaps stops it from being an utter masterpiece. I suppose when you combine the talents involved in this film with months of isolation in a hotel that echoes the lives of slaughtered children that results in a bloody rampage you just can't go wrong.
4/5
Kubrick's vision of Stephen King's novel is technically stunning and is steeped with the sinister intelligence that you watch Kubrick films for. King wrote the original screenplay for Kubrick who rejected it, the final script Kubrick used takes quite a departure from the book. King went on to write his own made-for-television mini-series version which obviously met its critics but King fans seem to be happy. Despite there being some fabulous adaptions of his work, most people have their own horror stories of seeing a Stephen King story on the screen, so please excuse me if I don't rush out to see this.
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| Come play with us Danny...forever! |
The Shining has an abundance of truly unforgettable scenes that sear themselves onto your crusty brain. The beautiful aerial shots of the mountains of Montana and Colorado to the waves of blood pouring from the elevator were masterfully captured by John Alcott B.S.C.. He was also cinematographer on Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Barry Lyndon (1975) for which he rightly won an Oscar. The man knew his stuff.
Apart from the awesome performances there is an emptiness to the characters and the story, though that does little to detract from the overall impression of the film, it perhaps stops it from being an utter masterpiece. I suppose when you combine the talents involved in this film with months of isolation in a hotel that echoes the lives of slaughtered children that results in a bloody rampage you just can't go wrong.
4/5
This is a pretty amusing re-imagining of the film. I can only pray to an imaginary deity that someone saw the film on the basis of it.
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