One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

Rating:
Summary: Classic
Review: This DVD is a good place to start any collection. The movie is a great work of documenting a terific book. It does not emulate the book exactly but conveys the atmosphere very well. The cast is immpecable. If Nurse Ratchet's personality does not get under your skin you have no soul at all. This is what makes a great movie. Great characters and great acting.

Rating:
Summary: A DVD review
Review: The rating is for the film itself, not the DVD. The DVD is wanting especially in terms of picture quality. The letterbox format had a couple of scenes that seemed distorted, but they were short and the majority of the film looked fine. There was a lot of scratches and floating hairs in the beginning of the film but they became less noticeable as the film progressed. This is a film that would benefit from a restoration with extras such as commentary, deleted scenes and improved picture quality. The production notes include very short actor biographies, and some notes on the concept of the film, probably most of the information can be found with a little Internet search. Overall, this DVD is not bad for a 25-year-old film.

Rating:
Summary: The Perfect Adaptation -- brilliant, but by no means pretty
Review: The transfer from print to film is neither a straightforward nor accurate process, and as such has left many casualties by the wayside: The Cider House Rules, Jurrassic Park, and so forth. Typically poor adaptations are either changed too much or too little: many are made to be suitable to too wide an audience or have additions which clumsily contrast with the more directly transferred parts, and many are so sloppily adapted that vestigial scenes disrupt the movie's flow while not contributing anything that connects to any other part of the much shortened movie. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is adapted nearly perfectly, making significant changes only where necessary for the move to film, and adding ideas of its own which beautifully match the rest of the movie.

Although it exhibits a few vestigial scenes (such as nurse's suggestion that RPM (Jack Nicholson) is ripping the other patients off), it has made many intelligent and neccessary changes. For example, it abandons chief as the narrator, and therefore eliminates the possibility that his mental machinery is warping the whole story ("But, Please. It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it's the truth even if it didn't happen."), opting instead for a more movie-friendly third person perspective, centered on RPM. Of course, some elements had to be completely cut (e.g. the "Black Boys" are nearly nice people in the movie), but all cutting was done with the necessary, elegant precision of trimming a flower.

The acting on almost everybody's behalf is, at its worst, very good, and at its best, brilliant. The mental patients are enjoyably extreme personalities played enjoyably accurately by such offbeats as Danny DeVito. Jack Nicholson seemed to just be playing a side of himself, but his acting is still great to watch even if it probably wan't very challenging for him. But most of all, Louise Fletcher played Nurse Ratched perfectly, making her both understandable and monstrous, while keeping her character so realistic that you will find yourself analyzing her the way you analyze real people instead of the way you analyze movie characters. That is acting at its best.

Not a single frame in this movie is by any means beautiful, including the beginning and ending which contain scenics. These scenics were apparently shot with that relentlessly color-accurate film that you could still find in the 70s, which made some otherwise beautiful shots painfully murky, brownish, and otherwise realistic. Most of the rest of the movie was shot indoors, inside a painfully sterile building with asylum-white walls and asylum-exposed-piping. On more than one occasion, I really started feeling and thinking like I was trapped in that building, like the characters: when we saw some people from the outside playing music by the fence, I was genuinely excited that something was a little different today. There is a painting by the front door near the beginning of the movie which is so drab and obligatorially placed that you can just see Nurse Ratched choosing and placing it in order to miserably fail at lightening up the place. Every frame of this movie ball-cuttingly sterile. It is expertly shot, but don't expect to want to cry at its beauty like with other expertly-shot films, like The Shawshank Redemption.

The mastering to DVD is nothing special in this production, but hi-fi video and audio is so unnecessary to this film that it would probably interfere with its overall feel. Had those scenics at the beginning and end been bright and crisp, their significance would have been vastly changed. Most of the audio is oppressively equalized so that you can turn the volume high, but still not hear what some people are saying, like you are sinking into insanity. Do not expect pretty pictures or amazing sound from this disk -- expect something numbingly, painfully well-done.

Don't let the stupid box art that could just as easily be for yet another mediocre 70s buddy comedy keep you from taking it off the shelf.

-=Marcus

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent Movie!
Review: I watched "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for the first time recently. I'm still thinking about it nearly a week later. I think it's one of the best movies I've ever seen - Nicholson is fabulous as McMurphy, as is Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched. It was never predictable, and you feel as though you're really there in the clean, clean wards. It's classed as a "drama", and I suppose it is, but it has some really intense psychological themes - it really affected me. While I was watching it I was enjoying myself, but it was just another movie. Then I went to bed and started thinking about it and realised just how amazing the story was (credit to Ken Kesey, who wrote the novel of the same name). When I thought about it more, I became really enraged - only two movies have ever had such a huge effect on my life. I'm checking out my local library catalogue at the moment - I need to read the novel!

Rating:
Summary: DEFINITELY OVERRATED!
Review: This film is great the 1st time you see it. Then, with subsequent viewings, you begin to realize that it is only the PERFORMANCES that make it stand apart from other films. It is a very claustraphobic film, almost all of it taking place inside a mental ward. Again, the acting by everyone is fantastic, but somehow the way the Nurse Ratched character (played by Louise Fletcher) is portrayed shows the weakness in the writing of the film. We are never really given a chance to analyze the reason her character is so uptight and even cruel. I believe filmwriters must keep in mind that there is a reason for all behavior, good or bad. Every film, in my opinion, should make an effort not necessarily to be SYMPATHETIC with an "evil" character, but at least give the viewer an idea of why this negative behavior might be occurring. We are not given a clue as to why Nurse Ratched acts the way she does, and so we are simply supposed to hate her, without knowing anything about her...This film was the big deal that launched Jack Nicholson's career. If you want to see Nicholson's best film, check out 1981's "The Border", directed by Tony Richardson. This one is Jack's best and is also on my list of the top 10 best films of all time. "The Border" was one of those films that nobody saw, and lasted about a week in the theaters...but if you want to see Nicholson's best performance, definitely go with "The Border" over "Cuckoo's Nest".

Rating:
Summary: W.O.W.
Review: well, I just so it for the second time in my life about an hour a go! It was something allright! the perfect kind of exploration of human mind and the unresistably intersting and hilarious charecters make this movie one of the best films I've ever seen! Probably the greatest thing of all in this movie is the acting score. I mean, I'd really like to see Cristopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito or Jack Nicholson himself in a better role than this is! Of course, everything is nearly perfect in this milestone masterpiece!

Rating:
Summary: Maybe the Best Film Ever Made
Review: This movie is flawless. Nobody should ever even attempt to make another film about a mental ward. The performances are inspiring. Nicholson does his best work and, let's face it, that alone says a lot for this film. Everybody else does a wonderful job complimenting his zany character. Louise Fletcher, a virtual unknown before the picture hit theaters, is superb as the nurse who belittles her patients, allowing them no chance to control their own lives. This film is essentially about the war, both psychologically and physically, that takes place between Nurse Ratchett and troublemaking inmate Randal Patrick McMurphy. As McMurphy begins to rule the ward with reckless abandon, leading the mutiny of the other patients against the oppressive forces within the hospital, the head nurse begins to feel her power over them dwindling. The disasters that come as a result of this tension make for one of the best dramas ever put on screen. One of the most memorable scenes in film history takes place when McMurphy, upset at the prospect of not being able to watch a World Series game on television, begins announcing the game himself loud enough so that the other members of the ward can hear him. As he becomes more and more excited about what's happening in his fictional game -- homeruns, runners getting on base, etc. -- the other patients rally around him and begin to celebrate his every word. This scene is just one of many captivating moments that take place in this film. Every person past the age of 16 should watch this unbelievable piece of movie-making.

Rating:
Summary: What is the big deal?
Review: I don't understand why so many people love this movie. The acting waspretty mediocre, except for Jack Nichelson but I simply did not likehis character. Nurse Ratched was also dissapointing. People writehow evil she is, but I feel that she was just a strait laced women trying to keep the mental ward patients behaved. I don't understand where "evil" came from. . . Any person would want to spread the gossip, especilaly when there was such a chaotic situation at hand. I just do not understand why this movie is so big. It is slow paced, not funny, does not really contain great drama, and the directing and pictire quality was horrible. How a film so terribly editing and filmed could win best directing is beyong my imagination. Personally, I liked the recent Girl Interrupted allot better. There was allot more emotion, Lisa(Angeline Jolie) was more evil than Ratched(also three dimensional) , the suicide was more suspenful, and there was allot more emotion. Winona Ryder is sympathetic, Jack is not really. This is just a sloppy tyrant movie, that does not portray mental institutions correctly(I know., I was in one 6 years ago). Watch Girl Interrupted for a much more honest, realistic portrayal. And why didn't anyone mention how annoying most of the characters are?

Rating:
Summary: A magnificent masterpiece
Review: This is a movie about Ratched for taking the hospital while McMurphy wants to help the patient. Why do Flecther as Ratched is the best actress in 1975. Ratched just argue and have meeting. Only Jack Nicholson should have a award.

Rating:
Summary: BOTH SPLENDID & LUDICROUSLY OVER-RATED
Review: Milos Forman's One Flew over The Cuckoo's nest is a wonderful film to watch at night on cable alone and then rave about it to friends and family next morning. The barrage of acclaim and Forman's direction do the movie a great dis-service becuase they make out the film to be something much more than it is. This should have been a much simpler movie, one about a convict in mental institution, not A MESSIAH FREEING SOULS FROM THE TYRANNY OF ESTABLISHMENT. We should have seen what the bathrooms look like in the hospital, what kind of food they eat, the human struggle against maddness. Instead we get R.P. McMurphy taking the patients on fishing trips, playing unplayable basketball games all supposedly representing the unbreakable will of the human heart. All this ofcourse is very entertaining, but its also stretching to make a point rather then let events unfold, and let the viewer develop a profound response from which he/she can reach these conclusions. Take for example The Shawshank Redemption(a superior film), that film is patient with its evnts, it doesn't push its messages and as a result it is much more moving. I don't mean to suggest that Cuckoo's Nest is in anyway a bad film, I have merely gone out of my way to point out that it would have been that much better on a smaller simpler scale. The cinematogrohpy in the opening and closing sequences is outstanding as is the musical score and ofcourse the acting. Its just that it could of been much more.