One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Jack Nicholson has certainly confirmed many times over his place as a master of the big screen. Who can forget his classic role as Jack Torrance in The Shining, or more recently his deft and hilarious portrayal of neurotic Melvin Udall in As Good as It Gets? Still, we think this is by far his finest performance—as angry young man, slacker sweetheart, and harmless delinquent Randle McMurphy, who tries to parlay a petty sentence at the workhouse into a stay on Easy Street at a mental institution. (Things turn out much worse than expected.) Of course, Nicholson had fine material to work with. It was Ken Kesey’s first novel—the outstanding book that established him as a cultural poobah years before he convened the Merry Pranksters and turned them all onto a little-known drug called LSD. Anyway, one of the reasons we keep on eye on DVD releases is to take notice of great moments in film, and to generate an excuse for you to run out and tag up on films that have taken their place in the canon of great American art. This is one of them.