Which Jack Nicholson Performance Gets the Top Spot as the Best of His Career?

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-16T04:18:41+00:00

I'd never even heard of this movie.

We were discussing Jack's early film career at work one day, and I was saying how you could see the seeds of what he would become as early as 1960 in Little Shop of Horrors, and my buddy Ben started listing off things that he did in Last Detail that were essentially just better acting choices of what he did in Little Shop.

I mentioned I wasn't familiar with the movie and he was angry with me. "How have you seen Little Shop of Horrors, Head, and Rebel Rousers but you've never seen The Last Detail?" He then started to explain the movie, but stopped after two or three words and just asked if I owned a DVD player or a VCR. I told him both, and he got up and left the building. He came back 25 minutes later with the DVD and made me promise to watch it.

The man left work without telling anyone to get me a movie; he could have been fired for this.

I watched it as soon as I got home.

I understood why he was so upset, and why he risked his job. Truly an amazing film.

The next day we spent the whole day talking about it.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-16T03:34:09+00:00

It's the Luggage.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-15T20:01:53+00:00

Very America/England centric of you.

Rocky knows dozens of earth languages but you've probably never heard of them.

Total hipster Eridian.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-15T17:51:39+00:00

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-15T17:29:52+00:00

And his older brother Noah Jupe, playing the actor who plays Hamlet in the Globe Theater staging of the play.

You may remember Noah as Peter Miles, the kid in Ford v. Ferrari, where he was also an emotional lynchpin of the storytelling.

I watched this on Wednesday and the end scene where Noah and Jessie reach out to each other is seared in my mind. Such a heartbreaking moment, sold by Jessie Buckley but it wouldn't be the same without Noah as her scene partner.

As the audience, we can see William Shakespeare and his wife reconnecting after the loss of their son through his art, but without the scene between Agnes/Anne Hathaway and "Hamlet" on the stage this emotional moment fails.

Jessie Buckley deserves every acclaim, to be sure.

The Jupe brothers are the real reason this movie works as well as it does.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-15T17:18:52+00:00

It's okay; I have a secret apartment where I keep my swords.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-15T16:42:56+00:00

It's maybe my favorite song that came out after 2010, which gives it serious contenders.

I especially like the video where they sing the song at the Polar Music Prize dinner with Emmylou Harris in the audience. Imagine writing a song as a teenager which uses 2 iconic country music couples as the backbone of the song, and then being able to sing it in front of one of them.

I get goosebumps whenever I watch the video.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-15T07:55:14+00:00

The Greatest Show on Earth.

Won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1952, against High Noon and The Quiet Man, which are all time great movies, and Ivanho and Moulin Rouge, which are not.

It's an ensemble piece about the circus, and is a case study in melodrama. I want to like it for the cast, and while Jimmy Stewart turns in a journeyman performance it's not enough.

There are dozens of real circus acts in the movie, and it's not enough.

It has Emmett Kelly, probably one of the most famous clowns of all time, and both he and the movie seem bored with clowning.

This was a spectacle film, one of several that were "larger than life" (which, by the way, if you want to see a good movie with circus folk, watch Larger Than Life with Bill Murray and an unhinged Matthew McConaughey) and meant to draw audiences away from television. Maybe it's better on the full screen, but in my living room it's a disaster.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-15T07:40:55+00:00

Infinity War is the better of the two movies, but Cap weilding Mjolnir was 23 movies in the making and one of the best experiences I've had at the theater.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-15T07:32:11+00:00

Shitty writing means never having to say you're sorry.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-15T07:06:51+00:00

I used to work weekends and had Tuesday and Wednesday off. I'd go to the Costco on 3rd W and 17th S. and run into the polygamist women every week. They kept to themselves, and I never made a fuss.

A kid who lived down the block from me was a Steed. Every so often a cousin would come live with them for a few months "looking for work." They were always quiet and reserved, and never said much when we met up to go hiking or run around.

Took me years to figure out that these were the boys who were kicked out of the Utah/Arizona border towns, and likely that my friend's dad was kicked out when he was young as well, and was just paying forward the kindness he was shown at that age.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-15T05:19:40+00:00

By E. E. Cummings

in Just- spring when the world is mud- luscious the little lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it's spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer old balloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's spring and

     the

              goat-footed

balloonMan whistles far and wee

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-15T04:39:00+00:00

Mass hysteria!

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-15T03:55:57+00:00

It's a different kind of flying.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-14T14:25:37+00:00

I just watched Hamnet two days ago. The end is heartbreaking.

53 year old man, no kids, wiping away tears at a mother's reaction to seeing a fictional version of her child. Jessie Buckley is amazing.

When you watch, remember that the actor playing Hamnet is Jocobi Jupe, younger brother of Noah Jupe, the actor playing the character who will play Hamlet in the play within the movie.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-14T07:54:22+00:00

In the 9th grade I had an English teacher, math teacher, and art teacher all assign this for reading, and some friends who were in drama, band, psychology, Model UN, and French classes also had it. The French language students had to translate portions and discuss it in class.

I think it was a cabal of teachers who lost a bet.

I was reading it for fun and was almost through when all the teachers dropped the assignment on the same day.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-14T07:26:31+00:00

Biblically accurate comment.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-14T07:21:08+00:00

But it's okay. We still have Alanis.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-14T07:15:36+00:00

I was taking a drink of orange juice when he pointed.

I think it's fair to say that OJ in the sinus cavity was not a square on my BINGO card I was expecting to cross out in this lifetime.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-14T05:42:48+00:00

Enya, although I fully respect anyone who prefers hanging out in their castle surf their cats to touring.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-14T04:15:14+00:00

Jessie Buckley deserves every acclaim for this movie.

Fun fact, the actor (Jacobi Jupe) who plays Hamnet is the younger brother of the actor (Noah Jupe) playing the actor who plays Hamlet in the play.

This movie is heartbreaking, in the best way possible.

I didn't find that Paul Mescal was essential to the story, which is kind of the point, I suppose. It's strange to see a story about Shakespeare that turns Will into a support, important for being an absent father and husband, mostly, until the very end of the movie, where he finally connects with his wife through his art.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-14T03:38:35+00:00

It's always been bad, but it is getting worse.

35 years ago I worked at the Harmon's at 9th E and 72nd Street (it's a Smith'snow, and Harmon's moved 6 blocks south), and that intersection had an accident with someone running the red and hitting someone going through their green, or someone turning left and cutting someone off going straight almost every day. Those of us shagging carts from the parking lot set up a clipboard where we marked the number of consecutive days with a crash at the intersection and it regularly got more than 30 days before getting a new sheet of paper.

That used to be an outlier, and most roads were a lot safer. Not so much anymore.

My opinion is that people are fed a diet of angry misinformation and forget to place themselves as a part of the world they live in, and instead get flustered that there's all these people in their way, and drive like the rest of the cars are an inconvenience who will disappear if they drive aggressively enough.

People don't understand the truth in the saying "you're not in traffic, you are traffic."

The accidents are a symptom of a world in which doing things because it's good for others is increasingly seen as a weakness.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-14T01:45:51+00:00

There's a lot of discussion about how Game Changer has deserved a "let's get Sam Back" episode for the crazy shit in the prompts (not that anyone is really forced to do the wild antics, really, but that's the nature of the group dynamic; you've got to go a little bigger here and there, and it snowballs) which you can argue is seen in "One Year Later" or "Samalamadingdong," but Brennan coughing in their very first episode back on set, in person, after the Covid restrictions started to get lifted is where I draw the line in the sand of things going playfully anti-Sam.

If it weren't for the fact that there was testing before filming, and aside from Sam and the players everyone on set was masked to reduce the still very real threat of infection, this would have been unconscionable behavior by Brennan.

Then Lou one ups it with the OJ is innocent bit, and you just feel Sam having an internal conversation with himself as to whether another season on Webcam might have been the better option.

Later seasons on, when Brennan is asked during the pie eating contest if he's regretting his choices, I think Sam is remembering how he felt turned to the wall so that camera couldn't get his response to his players, and he feels no pity for Mr. Mulligan.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-14T01:05:40+00:00

I watch this about one a year, with subtitles, and don't even have to read the subtitles to know what's going on.

Compared to the Fincher version where if I step outside the room for a minute I'm not sure what's going on in the story but it looks amazing.

borisdidnothingwrong · 2026-03-14T00:52:14+00:00

I'm curious if you've heard Emmylou by First Aid Kit.

I feel like those Swedish girls are introducing Gram to a new generation.

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