Cinema News: Why Jack Nicholson is a great rebel

December 5, 2025 | View in browser

A man in a diner booth lets his frustration emerge.

By Mark Olsen

Staff Writer

Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

Times critic Amy Nicholson published her top 10 list for 2025 this week, with "Sinners" taking the top spot alongside such titles as "One Battle After Another," "Eddington," ""Sirāt" and "The Naked Gun." It's an incredible sum-up of the best the year had to offer.

On 2025 in film, she noted, "These 10 filmmakers all know that the most vital part of the storytelling business has stayed exactly the same. They have to wow an audience. And they did."

Among the week's new releases is Kleber Mendonça Filho's "The Secret Agent," Brazil's entry for the international feature Oscar. Set in an era of fear and paranoia during the 1970s under a corrupt regime, the film stars Wagner Moura as an ordinary man forced into hiding, then becoming an operative in a world he is not a part of.

Carlos Aguilar profiled Moura, who has also been in such projects "Civil War" and the series "Narcos." While many of his recent projects have been rooted in a social consciousness, Moura said, "I don't want to be the Che Guevara of film. I gravitate towards things that are political but I like being an actor more than anything else."

On Sunday we'll have a free Indie Focus screening event for "The Secret Agent" at the AMC Century City at 5:15 p.m. with Moura and Mendonça Filho there to introduce the film. RSVP here.

'Five Easy Pieces' 4K restoration

Three-time Oscar winner Jack Nicholson hasn't appeared in a movie since James L. Brooks' "How Do You Know" in 2010, but his legacy as one of the greatest rebels to ever hit the screen is already well-secured. Among the reasons for that is his performance in Bob Rafelson's 1970 film "Five Easy Pieces," written by Carol Eastman, which plays in a new 4K restoration tonight at the Egyptian Theatre.

Nicholson received his first lead actor Oscar nomination for the role (following a supporting nomination for "Easy Rider" the year before) and it helped to cement his screen persona as charming but troubled and impulsive. The film features the now famous confrontation with a waitress over an order of toast, as Nicholson plays a man attempting to reject the stuffy upper-middle-class life laid out for him in favor of something he sees as more genuine.

In his original review of the film, Charles Champlin wrote, "Nicholson has again given a portrayal which is exhilarating to watch. He's the charming wastrel, glad to be tender so long as he is not pressed to make a lasting commitment, witty, amusing, eager to ricochet in and out of lives, anything to avoid looking in mirrors and confronting himself. … Whatever the read-out, 'Five Easy Pieces' is an extraordinarily skillful and involving movie."

Points of interest

A world-premiere restoration of 'Trees Lounge' at RescueFest

Taking place from Dec. 5–8 at the Laemmle Monica Film Center, RescueFest spotlights recent restorations overseen by the nonprofit IndieCollect. The series opens Friday with the world premiere of a new 4K restoration from the original camera negative of Steve Buscemi's 1996 directing debut "Trees Lounge." Buscemi will be present at the screening for a conversation moderated by Sundance's Michelle Satter.

Buscemi will be back for an extended tribute conversation on Saturday, as well as a screening of Alexandre Rockwell's 1992 film "In the Soup," also restored by IndieCollect.

"Trees Lounge" (which also stars its director) revolves around a Long Island bar, with a cast that makes for a '90s who's-who: Chloë Sevigny in only her second screen role, Debi Mazar, Seymour Cassel, Carol Kane, Michael Imperioli, Kevin Corrigan, Samuel L. Jackson, Mimi Rogers and others.

Calling the film a "deceptively light dramatic comedy" in his review at the time, Jack Matthews wrote, "Buscemi handles all of this with a casualness that seems exactly right for the milieu. His characters aren't caught up in a great dramatic crisis, they're caught up in everyday life, going over these events like so many speed bumps in time. There are no bad guys in the story, just people struggling to get by and improve their lives — even if, for Tommy, that simply means getting his car fixed so he can go back to work and support his lifestyle at Trees Lounge."

Other films in the RescueFest lineup include Saturday's U.S. premiere of the restoration of 2001's controversial "The Believer," starring Ryan Gosling as a young Jewish man who becomes a neo-Nazi. It won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance. Writer-director Henry Bean will be present for a conversation with critic Ella Taylor after the screening.

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Among the other films in the program are restoration world premieres of the documentaries "Tattoo City," directed by Emiko Omori; "Rate It X," directed by Paula de Koenigsberg and Lucy Winer; and "The Devil Never Sleeps," directed by Lourdes Portillo.

'Reds' in 35mm

As its tribute series to Diane Keaton continues, the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre will show Warren Beatty's 1981 "Reds" in 35mm on Saturday. Arguably the pinnacle of Beatty's directing career, the film shows infrequently, in part due to its epic length, so this is a chance worth jumping at. (I already have tickets.)

Beatty, who won an Oscar for directing, stars as John Reed, a radical American journalist who covered the 1917 Russian revolution and wrote "Ten Days That Shook the World." The film combines politics and romance, with Keaton playing fellow journalist Louise Bryant, caught in love triangle between Reed and playwright Eugene O'Neil (played by Jack Nicholson).

In a pre-release article on the box office prospects for such an ambitious project, Charles Champlin wrote, "If it succeeds, it will be a personal triumph for Beatty. His boyish good looks, his aloof independence and not least his successes have raised hackles among his competitive peers. But the fact remains that he has emerged as an important filmmaker, a remarkable mixture of aspiration and commercial acumen, with a cool and untiring if unorthodox intelligence."

Champlin added that Keaton's part of Bryant is "a role vastly more demanding than the disarrayed kook of 'Annie Hall.'"

In her review of the movie, Sheila Benson notes that "director Beatty serves his fellow actors marvelously well," bringing the best out of both Nicholson and Keaton.

In lauding the craftspeople of the film, Benson added, "Shirley Russell's costumes are magnificent and in them, Keaton is more beautiful than she has ever looked."

Indie Christmas double bill

Even small-budget indie films can get in the holiday spirit. (See Jay Duplass' endearing "The Baltimorons" for a recent example.) The New Beverly will spotlight two other indie Christmas movies next Tuesday and Wednesday with Tyler Taormina's 2024 "Christmas Eve in Miller's Point" and Charles Poekel's 2014 "Christmas, Again." Both filmmakers are scheduled to be present Tuesday, with Poekel back again Wednesday.

"Christmas Eve in Miller's Point" is the story of an extended family on Long Island gathering for the holidays. Premiering in the Director's Fortnight during the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the film's cast includes Matilda Fleming, Maria Dizzia, Elsie Fisher, Francesca Scorsese and Michael Cera.

"Christmas, Again" was shot by acclaimed cinematographer Sean Price Williams, and this will be the first time the 35mm print of the film will be shown in Los Angeles. Capturing the chilly melancholy of the season, the film is the story of a lonely young man (a soulful Kentucker Audley), overseeing a Christmas tree lot in New York City, who takes in a troubled young woman (Hannah Gross). Having premiered at the 2014 Locarno Film Festival, it also played Sundance in 2015.

Reviewing the film, Robert Abele wrote, "The emotions aren't easily pegged in Poekel's sweetly offbeat tale, shot in warmly grainy 16mm by Sean Price Williams. By the story's close on Christmas morning, the faintly scented air of hard work, kindness and melancholy left behind is as quietly real and beautiful as that from any other beloved holiday classic."