This box-office hit from 1969 is an important pioneer of the American independent cinema movement, and a generational touchstone to boot. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper play hippie motorcyclists crossing the Southwest and encountering a crazy quilt of good and bad people. Jack Nicholson turns up in a significant role as an attorney who joins their quest for awhile and articulates society's problem with freedom as Fonda's and Hopper's characters embody it. Hopper directed, essentially bringing the no-frills filmmaking methods of legendary, drive-in movie producer Roger Corman (The Little Shop of Horrors) to a serious feature for the mainstream. The film can't help but look a bit dated now (a psychedelic sequence toward the end particularly doesn't hold up well), but it retains its original power, sense of daring, and epochal impact. --Tom Keogh Starring: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Luana Anders, Luke Askew, Robert Ball, Tita Colorado, Warren Finnerty Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC Language: English Subtitles: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Georgian, Chinese, Thai Region: Region 99 Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Number of Discs: 1 Rating: R (Restricted) Studio : Sony Pictures DVD Release Date : 2002-06-04 Run Time : 95 minutes ASIN/ISBN : B000022TSY Retail $14.94 Easy Rider

One of the key movies of the 1970s, when groundbreaking personal films were still being made in Hollywood, Milos Forman's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest emphasized the humanistic story at the heart of Ken Kesey's more hallucinogenic novel. Jack Nicholson was born to play the part of Randle Patrick McMurphy, the rebellious inmate of a psychiatric hospital who fights back against the authorities' cold attitudes of institutional superiority, as personified by Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). It's the classic antiestablishment tale of one man asserting his individuality in the face of a repressive, conformist system--and it works on every level. Forman populates his film with memorably eccentric faces, and gets such freshly detailed and spontaneous work from his ensemble that the picture sometimes feels like a documentary. Unlike a lot of films pitched at the "youth culture" of the 1970s, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest really hasn't dated a bit, because the qualities of human nature that Forman captures--playfulness, courage, inspiration, pride, stubbornness--are universal and timeless. The film swept the Academy Awards for 1976, winning in all the major categories (picture, director, actor, actress, screenplay) for the first time since Frank Capra's It Happened One Night in 1931. --Jim Emerson Starring: Jack Nicholson, Michael Berryman, Peter Brocco, Dean R. Brooks, Jr. Alonzo Brown, Scatman Crothers Directed by: Milos Forman Written by: Ken Kesey, Lawrence Hauben (screenplay) and Bo Goldman (screenplay) Format: Color, Special Edition, Widescreen Language: English Subtitles: N/A Region: Region 1 Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Number of Discs: 1 Rating: R (Restricted) Studio : Warner DVD Release Date : 2008-07-15 Run Time : 133 minutes ASIN/ISBN : B00168IWU0 Retail : $34.99 Awards : Won 5 Oscars. Another 28 wins & 11 nominations One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Blu-ray Book) [Blu-ray]