Burn out or fade away?
Happy 72nd birthday Jack Nicholson. Now where the hell have you been the last two years? As Jeff Wells points out, Jack's last movie was The Bucket List in late 2007, a movie I viciously crapped all over because it unforgivably took a potentially crowd pleasing and genuinely heart warming premise and turned it into a cold movie with no soul or emotional resonance. A movie that you might stumble across as a matinee telefilm with veteran t.v. actors, watch for 5 minutes then switch the channel. Such a waste when you had A-listers Nicholson and Morgan Freeman on screen for the first time together. I think I called it the worst movie of that year and with no upcoming projects on the horizon for Jack, I would hate for The Bucket List to be the last song and dance for one of the biggest screen icons of the latter half of the 20th century. Hopefully a good role will come his way soon. Unlike many leading men of his generation, Nicholson is still a major star and when he is in a movie, people sit up and take notice. More so than Al Pacinoor Robert De Niro, Jack still carries with him an amazing star marquee, and his choices pre-The Bucket List were very smart in keeping his name as profitable as it has been. Scorsese utilised him about as well as anyone in the last decade in The Departed a few years back now. Is there a movie role just waiting for him on the horzion? I hope so.