Jun. 18, 2003 - 11:07 pm
i first heard about this one from one of our regular homeless patrons at the media center. this was about 2 months or so ago. he was flipping through the catalog trying to find something that sounded interesting, like he always did. he didn't know what this was and was judging completely by the title that it might be good. for some reason it looked and sounded interesting to me too. very strange though, that guy came in all the time and about 3 weeks ago, one of his friends came in and told us that he was murdered a few weeks earlier. he said the regular guy never collected a paycheck and didn't have anything worth stealing. apparently the cops just assumed that he made someone mad. that was very striking to me. i'd never known anyone that had been murdered before. it's quite scary actually. but anyway, i was also looking through Ebert's list of 100 great movies here recently and saw that Five Easy Pieces is also on his list. i don't put a lot of faith in the movie picks of Ebert or Roeper, but they do have good opinions every once in a great while. at the very least, they have seen a lot of movies and they know what is out there to choose from. Five Easy Pieces was also nominated for Best Screenplay, Best Picture, and a few other things.
this movie stars Jack Nicholson as an oil rigger living in California who once came from a family of concert pianists. he is now living sort of a white trash lifestyle though with his idotic, but very loving girlfriend Rayette who works as a waitress at a diner. he more or less hates his life and he always has. the only joy he gets is from having sex, whether it be with Rayette or whoever else looks interesting to him. after his best friend gets arrested, he goes to see his sister for a while. she tells him that their father has had a couple of strokes and that he should really go to see him. it's really a movie about a sensitive man that has gone wrong. all of his intense emotions have turned sour and he ends up festering in hate in many of the things that he does. but it's also about his attempts to make his life better.
it was interesting subject matter. i don't think i've ever read or seen characters that had this combination of emotions to them. they were all very deep and well-written. i enjoyed it for the most part. i think it could have been improved with a bit of a bigger budget and more location variety. the locations became a bit stagnant, but you might say that that was sort of a mimic of what was supposed to be happening to the characters. anyway, it was pretty good and i'd definitely say it's worth watching.