Tuesday, January 3, 2012

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", #20/33, 1975
This movie is about McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, who is a criminal who moves from prison to an insane assylum. And he makes friends with the other patients there, and makes enemies with one particular nurse (with a fitting name), Nurse Ratched.
As you can image, there are great antics that arise from McMurphy stirring up trouble. The actors that make up the wide variety of insane patients are brilliant, and the character dynamics really are tremendous.
Shout outs specifically to Christopher Lloyd (Taber), Will Sampson (Cheif), Josip Elic (Bancini), Vincent Schiavelli (Fredrckson), and especially Danny DeVito (Martini) who I didn't recognize until well into the movie, and even then, it was only with the help of imdb.
So... I liked this movie until probably the last 10-15 minutes. Then I did not like it. At all. And I don't really appreciate a movie with a bad ending.
Watch it if you want to, because the majority of the movie is good, but just know that the end of the movie is not the main character against all odds triumph that you really hope happens.

Tootsie

"Tootsie", #62/69, 1982
This is a funny movie! I mean, come on... it's Dustin Hoffman in drag. He plays the role of a struggling actor, who dresses up as a women to get a role. Then (standard dressing up as the opposite gender storyline), he befriends a girl and than falls in love with a her, and a man falls in love with him, and it all falls apart in the end.
The funniest part of this movie surrounds what role Hoffman's character plays as a women. It's for a soap opera. And the movie makes fun of soap operas so, so much.
It's hilarious.
Watch it!