Popular reviews

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  Review by Rick Burin ★★★★½ 12

  *A FEW SPOILERS*

  
  Dear Ndugu,

  How are you? I'm fine. Today I watched the film About Schmidt. I enjoyed it. At times I feared it was just a less inspired take on The Straight Story, with a score that went too jaunty too often, and a tendency to undercut its many truthful moments with smug comedy. But then the ending came along, one of the greatest endings I've ever seen, a heartbreaking voiceover followed by a heart-mending pay-off, and I realised that I'd seen something truly extraordinary, a film whose flaws are a small price to pay for a majestic, life-affirming whole. And then there was Nicholson's performance. It's so long since he bothered to act - I suppose One…

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  Review by The Reel House ★½ 12

  What a load of Schmidt.

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  Review by Ben Hibburd ☘🏀 ★★★★★ 19

  "About Schmidt" could quite easily double as a spiritual sequel for Nicholson's earlier film "Five Easy Pieces". Nobody does existential anxiety better than Jack Nicholson, and here he delivers one of the finest performances of his career. His sullen demeanour throughout the film is so expressive without him having to do or say much, very few actors could match up with Jack here.

  I loved everything about this film, it's brilliantly written and the acting all around is terrific. There wasn't one moment where I felt bored and its two hour runtime was enough to fully explore its complex characters without ever feeling like it was dragging. Every part of this production is first class, I just wish I'd seen it sooner!

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  Review by Michael James ★★★★

  A well crafted and poignant existential road drama from Alexander Payne, that’s enlightening and is loaded with dry humor, empathy and pathos. The character study beautifully explores the melancholy and old age crisis led existential questions, with Jack Nicholson delivering one of his finest ever performances, conveying the necessary emotions simply through his nuanced facial expressions. The powerful emotional climax melts your heart away. A highly satisfying experience.

  Warren Schmidt : “I know we're all pretty small in the big scheme of things, and I suppose the most you can hope for is to make some kind of difference, but what kind of difference have I made? What in the world is better because of me? Well Ndugu, I'll close…

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  Review by megan ★★★★

  my dad hates it so that means it’s good

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  Review by Matthew Christman ★★★★

  Warren Schmidt could be a character in Ghost World, maybe sitting alone in a diner booth behind Enid and Rebecca, eating soup and looking out the window at a dry cleaners. The marvel of this movie, Alexander Payne's best to date, is that it channels the same sort of bland, lifeless suburban hellscape as Ghost World, but does so through the eyes of a character who is largely oblivious to it. Jack Nicholson's best "old dude" performance powers the story of a man who knows, deep down, that life has somehow passed him by, but he doesn't quite know how, and more importantly, he can't figure out what to do about it now that he's in post-retirement, widower drift. It's…

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  Review by Terence Ang 洪偉凱 ★★★

  dear boomer,

  i ain't reading all that
  i'm happy for u tho
  or sorry that happened

  yours very truly,
  ndugu

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  Review by Marcissus ★★★

  does a great job of making Jack Nicholson, one of the most evil-looking people of all-time, seem like just a regular old goofy human being. that ending is So emotionally manipulative i can't believe it still got me. that's how you know it's good. because you know it's bad

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  Review by adambolt ★★★★

  i finally understand why old people are so grumpy, i would be too if my ass looked like that

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  Review by Kunga Sagar ★★★½

  Superbly written as usual, with Jack Nicholson delivering the goods yet again. It’s heartbreaking stuff, but on the subtler side, which is Alexander Payne’s speciality. His characters often use humor as a shield until their battle against themselves proves too daunting. Sideways is the best example of this, Miles finding love meant loving himself first, despite the painful career disappointments. About Schimdt does the inverse of this, tackling an internal rage against elder mundanity, the feeling that you’re losing the will to live the further away your loved one goes. 

  What ultimately sets this one back is the lack of biting dark comedy that makes Payne such a force to reckon with. I love Election now, but I was repulsed the…

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  Review by A. J. Black ★★★★ 4

  The great thing going for About Schmidt is the fact on paper you might imagine Jack Nicholson, a larger than life Hollywood figure known for exuberant, brash, dangerous characters, has been totally miscast by Alexander Payne as the eponymous Schmidt, and yet if anything within a matter of minutes you realise he's tailor made for this uncharacteristic role, which may even be one of his greatest performances - for which he was indeed Oscar nominated, and perhaps should have won. The irony lies in how so unlike Nicholson the passive, quiet, unassuming & embittered Schmidt is that the consequent result is a turn that often rivets in just how counter active it is to what we know of the actor, and…

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  Review by Caty Alexandre ★★★★★

  Beautiful film.

  Jack Nicholson is one of my favorite actors and this is another one of his great performances. In About Schmidt he has a fantastic emotional and sad performance. The last scene is just beautifully emotional.

  Alexander Payne is always capable of doing films with realistic stories where you can feel all of the emotions that each one of the characters wants to transmit.

  
  
  

  I am looking forward to see Nebraska.