One of those movies where you wish there was a book on which it was based.A man who hosts a weird and personal talk show is summoned by his brother to Atlantic city to take part in a scheme involving a resort. His brother lives cooped up in a small hotel room with an ex-beauty queen/cheerleader and a gullible young woman.There is no story line as such. It's just a character study of the four characters and their relationships and the thugs and conmen they interact with.It is a film of place. It is shot around a harbor like multi racial touristy place with run down hotels and bars. I'm not an American so i don't really get the context (if there is any).How good an actress was Ellen Burstyn. She was effortlessly brilliant in this and ALICE Don't LIVE HERE ANYMORE. Julia Ann Robinson looked adorable as the clueless young woman of whom Burstyn's character is jealous. Nicholson and Dern are rarely ever bad. Dern has the flashy role in this film.The ending came as a surprise. I thought it was a comedy until then. I was wrong. These characters were doomed from the start. It is a film that deserves a few watches. I did not understand some things on first viewing. The film looks great on the criterion blu ray release.(7.5/10)

Two brothers get together to re-evaluate their lives and dreams, but it soon become apparent that they have more differences than similarities, and perhaps would have been better off not hooking up at all.This is a movie that makes you work. There are no easy clichés to grab hold of. Nicholson shows that he can act the pants off most others, playing a sundied, self-examining radio host, a million miles from the 'Nicholsom' we're used to.Dern gives an astounding performance as perhaps one of the most obnoxious characters to ever grace the screen - a self-obsessed businessman and would-be millionaire, if he wasn't to busy taking drugs and abusing women.Ellen Bursten is utterly convincing and heartbreaking performance as one of his neglected hangers one, and just as one is thinking the film is burning itself out, steals the show with an memorable explosion of emotion.Julie Anne Robinson, the young of the two women hanging around Dern, is equally impressive. A promising actress with three films to her credit, she sadly died of smoke-inhalation during apartment fir at her home on Eugene, Oregon, 13 April 1975.It's Nicholson one ultimately remembers most from this film, even though he is really an observer thorough whose eyes we witness the self-destructive habits of the others.Really glad I saw this, happening upon it when browsing through a batch of 70's movies that cane into my possession. No car chases, gun fights or sex scenes (well, one brief one), but a rare ensemble performance, a real gem.

Bob Rafelson's followup to Five Easy Pieces. It's a fascinating film that really does not succeed. Jack Nicholson stars as a late night radio personality who receives a call from his estranged brother (Bruce Dern) to bail him out of jail in Atlantic City. After he does so, Dern invites him in on a major real estate deal, buying up a small island in Hawaii. There's not much plot from there. The film progresses into a series of vignettes whose relation is often difficult to determine. Basically, Nicholson, Dern and Dern's two girlfriends, Ellen Burstyn and Julia Anne Robinson, hang around Atlantic City doing weird stuff. Each scene is entertaining enough by itself, but the film doesn't really build, climaxes with a typical 70s bummer and, sort of like Five Easy Pieces, ends on an evocative bit. Here, though, it doesn't have any real meaning. Everything about it seems like a really good movie, but it just doesn't add up to be anything in particular.

I am only giving this film a 6 as I found it rather dull, and having never played Monopoly the inference to the game went right over my head. Instead I found myself wondering what the film would have been like with Jack Nicholson playing the extroverted Jason, and Bruce Dern as David. As a primer for actors, which is what the movie seemed to be, more than an entertainment for an audience, it would have been interesting to see a back-to-back version with the roles reversed.Certainly, the film had the same downbeat theme as "The Last Detail" which I thoroughly enjoyed, and the setting of the off-season seaside town added to the bleak atmosphere. There is nothing more depressing than a sea coast resort in winter. I kept wishing that David would tell his brother to get lost and go back to Philly. The characters, a petty crook and two women of no fixed abode were pathetic losers and, with the exception of David, living in a fantasy of their own making. At least David asked some down to earth questions once in a while. The bullying user, Jason, really got on my nerves - his "everyone else is there to serve my needs" attitude made me cringe, especially the way he turned on people who did not share his "vision".