McVouty

I graduated from college the year this film came out, and saw it in the theatre a half dozen times. Watching it again -- really the best film of Jack Nicholson's career -- makes me realize why: what a great movie!

It's interesting to compare Jack Nicholson in this movie with his role in "About Schmidt." Can't you imagine a character like Bobby Dupea getting too old to continue working as an oil rigger in Alaska? He lands a desk job and is ultimately promoted to mid-management. Meanwhile, he marries an uninteresting woman he doesn't love, raises a daughter who has no positive sense of self, estranges himself completely from his siblings and other family, lets any artistic talent completely atrophy, and one day, upon the death of his wife, realizes his life is empty. In many ways, Warren Schmidt is Bobby Dupea 30 years later... a man who can't connect. I've never figured out why the Dupea character had so little use for himself, but the same personality problem plagues Schmidt.

Nicholson's performance as Bobby Dupea completely sold me, but in "About Schmidt" I thought he was working too hard at acting for the character to be believable. I can understand now why Nicholson may have wanted to do that film. But in no way is "About Schmidt" in the same class as "Five Easy Pieces." This film is a masterpiece.

What tripe!

There was an episode of "The X Files" that had to do with a computer virus coming to "life" that was more credible than this foolishness! Artificial intelligence? 2+2=4? Computers bringing an end to the Cold War by taking away free choice for humans? Compelling stuff, if you're six years old!

One of the best movies about art ever made, `The Horse's Mouth' examines the relationships between vision and creation, between art and commerce, and – most importantly – between art and criticism; and makes us laugh at the same time. Alec Guinness is inspired (when was he ever not inspired, come to think of it) as Gully Jimson, a painter of unlimited ideas who has met with only limited success in the art marketplace – partly because he is so contemptuous of that marketplace. His search for the perfect wall on which to paint, and the subject matter he ultimately winds up painting on one of the walls found in his search, is priceless. The Joyce Cary novel, and its companions in the Jimson trilogy (`Herself Surprised' and `To Be a Pilgrim') are well worth reading, but this movie is a very British, very engaging classic. In many ways, it's the movie that `Pollack' (good though it was) should have been.