day 14 - a movie that no one would expect you to love
Aaand back to our regularly scheduled meme...
It was easier to come up with the opposite (movies people might expect me to love that I don't -- Raising Arizona, Donnie Darko, etc), but I did come up with a few. Unforgiven would have been the choice several years back, because I used to hate westerns and that was the film that changed my opinion. But, by now, most folks know of my retrocrush on Clint Eastwood and love of the Sergio Leone films, so I will instead go with...
About Schmidt
I loved young Jack Nicholson. He was brilliant in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and I even loved him up through the 80's, with The Shining and The Witches of Eastwick. But old Jack Nicholson = annoying. He's become a caricature of himself. It's seemed he can only play Jack Nicholson, a crusty, smirky old man riffing one-liners and looking pleased with himself.
About Schmidt was an exception -- Nicholson totally surprised me. It's a sensitive, vulnerable performance. There's nothing self-indulgent about it; there is no winking at the camera. It's the story of Schmidt, a man who has attended to the basic responsibilities of life and worked long enough to retire. He's then faced with the prospect of his twilight years and begins to realize what he may have taken for granted.
Ebert sums it up perfectly:
"About Schmidt is essentially a portrait of a man without qualities, baffled by the emotions and needs of others. That Jack Nicholson makes this man so watchable is a tribute not only to his craft, but to his legend: Jack is so unlike Schmidt that his performance generates a certain awe. Another actor might have made the character too tragic or passive or empty, but Nicholson somehow finds within Schmidt a slowing developing hunger, a desire to start living now that the time is almost gone."
See it.
It was easier to come up with the opposite (movies people might expect me to love that I don't -- Raising Arizona, Donnie Darko, etc), but I did come up with a few. Unforgiven would have been the choice several years back, because I used to hate westerns and that was the film that changed my opinion. But, by now, most folks know of my retrocrush on Clint Eastwood and love of the Sergio Leone films, so I will instead go with...
About Schmidt
I loved young Jack Nicholson. He was brilliant in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and I even loved him up through the 80's, with The Shining and The Witches of Eastwick. But old Jack Nicholson = annoying. He's become a caricature of himself. It's seemed he can only play Jack Nicholson, a crusty, smirky old man riffing one-liners and looking pleased with himself.
About Schmidt was an exception -- Nicholson totally surprised me. It's a sensitive, vulnerable performance. There's nothing self-indulgent about it; there is no winking at the camera. It's the story of Schmidt, a man who has attended to the basic responsibilities of life and worked long enough to retire. He's then faced with the prospect of his twilight years and begins to realize what he may have taken for granted.
Ebert sums it up perfectly:
"About Schmidt is essentially a portrait of a man without qualities, baffled by the emotions and needs of others. That Jack Nicholson makes this man so watchable is a tribute not only to his craft, but to his legend: Jack is so unlike Schmidt that his performance generates a certain awe. Another actor might have made the character too tragic or passive or empty, but Nicholson somehow finds within Schmidt a slowing developing hunger, a desire to start living now that the time is almost gone."
See it.