Rating: Summary: The best acted film ever in cinema history. Review: Jack Nicholson stars as a two-bit crook who fakes insanity, and ends up in a northwestern mental institution. While there he shows the poor, down on their luck, inmates the meaning of a free spirit, and how faith and hope can overcome your adversities. Louise Fletcher gives the best performance by an actress in a motion picture as the evil head nurse. She gives the film the most credit. Her style of therapy is not to cure them, but to humiliate the hapless patients by exposing their inner weakness. She slowly, and calmly destroys the small spirit of the patients. Scenes like when the patients are taking a vote for watching the World Series, she tricks McMurphy of using all the patients in the ward to vote like she knows that she has all the power and authority. Nicholson sparkles as the optimistic new con who shows a neverending light to the inmates with a past and present life full of darkness. In a while, I've never seen a performance in a supporting role as good as Sydney Lassick's as the shaky Cheswick, and Brad Dourif's as the stuttering Billy Bibbit. One Flew OOver the Cuckoo's Nest's memorable scenes are countless. The best ones are when McMurphy is pretending to be watching the World Series and all the patients gather around him in happiness and start to cheer. The other one is the thought-provoking, and inspirational conclusion of the escape from "the cuckoo's nest". No questions asked, Cuckoo's Nest stands out in cinema history with it's stupendous acting and just how magnificent the movie is.
Rating: Summary: Amazing Movie Review: One of the top ten of the 70's. Jack is superb as Macmurphy and the nurse is also great. Has extradinary moments. The DVD has good quality as well.
Rating: Summary: Deserves every Oscar Review: When a movie sweeps the Oscars, you expect it to be good. But what you might not expect is the pure joy you'll feel watching Nicholson as McMurphy take on Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratchet. Nicholson plays a tramp, a drifter and a fighter who found himself locked up in prison. Only he didn't feel much like staying there so he acted a little nuts and got himself some soft time at the mental institute. As soon as he shows up he begins shaking things up, defying everything around him, as is his nature. What slowly develops is an all out war between McMurphy and the head nurse at his ward, and what's at stake is the souls and personalities of every inmate on the hall. Nicholson is a wonder to watch and the story his story is touching, funny, charismatic and hauntingly memorable. The ending scene will have you either weeping or cheering depending on how you take it (and no, I can't explain that comment, but you'll see), but either way it will give you goose bumps all over. I highly recommend the book as well, one of the greatest literature to film comparisons ever.
Rating: Summary: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Review: This movie was excellent! I saw it in my 8th grade English class and loved it. It was a very profound movie, but also had enough comedy and action to keep someone interested. This movie also depicted the life of someone who dealt with living in a "cuckoo's nest". I would recommened this movie to anyone!
Rating: Summary: Good movie on a terrible DVD Review: First a quick synopsis of the movie - a criminal (in a marvelous performance by Jack Nicholson) "pretends" to be insane to get out of prison and spend his sentence in a mental hospital. When he discovers that he's stuck in the hospital until he's certified sane by his doctors (rather than the length of his sentence) he plans to break out, with the help of selected fellow patients. Along the way, his acts of rebellion against authority become a type of therapy for the patients, much more effective than that delivered by the medical staff. This movie won a number of awards, and seems brilliant and refreshing today, given the claptrap Hollywood is currently producing. While I do not think Louise Fletcher's performance is great, most would disagree, including the Academy. The other performances are all brilliant, starting with Nicholson, and moving right down the list through the supporting characters. The movie, while brilliant, is not always entertaining. It's not perfect, and there are parts that are even mundane, which lowers its score slightly from the 5-star level. The quality of the DVD drops it to three stars. The sound and picture are both not very good - I have 1950's B-grade movies with higher quality. The extras are non-existent. Surely a movie with such a pedigree and of such importance artistically deserves better! At least the price reflects this, but let's hope they come out with a better DVD version of this film.
Rating: Summary: Unforgettable, Fletcher and Nicholson are sensational. Review: In this unbelievably made movie, Nicholson plays a ruthless misfit who finds terror while faking insanity, and being sent to a mental institution. When I viewed this film in my upstairs, i noticed the changing courage of the poor inmates, and i started crying. Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher definetly deserved their awards, while Dourif gives his superlative performance, lost his nom, which was weird. You can't view this movie without crying, and clapping out loud.
Rating: Summary: The Indian cuckoo flies away from the rat nest Review: We are expecting Jack Nicholson and we have Jack Nicholson. The film is great in itself to show how psychiatric hospitals are prisons, even voluntary prisons, when patients are made to believe that they are not ready to leave and go back home. It is also great to show how the patients become dependent on the hospital, the medication, the treatment and the personnel by being deprived of all control over their life or lives. They cannot decide anything, even by voting, even by having a majority in that vote. The personnel is ready to make the beds and the chairs vote in order for the patients not to have a majority. Even the simple things like cigarettes, television, card games or even taking a nap at will are denied or rationed to the patients and they become at least social vegetables, and at times physical vegetables. Jack Nicholson arrives in there as a tornado and creates havoc. He is absolutely perfect for the part, maybe because he plays a part he knows perfectly well, or maybe even because he plays his own personal part. And of course the system defends itself, lobotomizes Jack Nicholson and everything goes back to normal. But the film is a metaphor of America, because only one will escape this hell : the Indian, who made everyone believe he was deaf and dumb. Indians are reduced to silence. But he escapes because he is stronger than anyone else, which means that he stayed because his world had disappeared, because his civilization had been destroyed. But he escapes and runs away across the countryside at dawn. This is in itself the central metaphor of the film : to be free you have to escape this society. To be free an Indian has to escape this white prison. But he escapes into a vast prairie, the vast prairie, and he runs away into that prairie in some surreal light : this is of course a metaphor of death and paradise for Indians. Hence there is no escape except into accepting imprisonment and being locked up in silence, or into death and eternal life that is nothing else but death after all. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX
Rating: Summary: Beyond Perfection Review: I cannott praise this superb film enough. First of all, the acting is magnificent. Louise Fletcher is outstanding as the sadistic Nurse Ratched, and Jack Nicholsion gives an equally stunning performance as the outgoing R.P MacMurphy. Also, the direction is masterful- Bravo to Milos Forman! All and all this is an incredible film and I'd put it ahead of CITIZEN KANE and CASABLANCA any day of the week.
Rating: Summary: ONE FLEW OVER Review: AWSOME MOVIE LOTS OF LAUGHS A CLASSIC INDEED. A MUST HAVE WHEN LIFE ... I THROW THIS MOVIE ON AND ITS ALL GOOD I HAVE THIS NEXT TO MY SHINING ANOTHER GREAT ONE BY JACK..
Rating: Summary: It was unbelieveably hard to sit still! Review: This movie is just plain ol' Jack Nicholson style! It's full of great comedy! I don't know a single person who sat still through the whole thing without laughing a zillion times! It's hilarious! When Nicholson gets taken to court, he has two choices for punishment. He can either go to jail or to a mental institution! So he fakes crazy and joins his fellow "crazies" at the mental institution! He finds that most of the men there are there by choice, not by force. When nurse Ratched treats the men like babies, Nicholson treats them like mature men. He shows them what it's like to live a normal life and to have fun! But how he does it is for you to find out....!
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