If you read this blog at all, you may have gathered JJ Petes goes slightly beyond golf, but you may not know there is another domain name to get here with. Neveress.com will bring you to this blog. It stands for Never Ending Story Search.

I’ve loved stories in form of books and movies most of my life. I’ve realized over the years that I don’t read or watch movies just to kill time. I am searching for the best of the best.

I’ve always wanted to write more about that. I few years back, I wrote about my experience reading Don Quixote. You can find it somewhere on this blog.

So, I continue my search with a little game, which I will document here.

I’ve enlisted the help of two others, one woman and one man. The three of us will each pick a movie and use technology to randomly select one and watch it. We are alternating classic movies with modern movies every week or two.

The first movie selected was the classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. We watched it last week. It was selected by the woman, so I took the opportunity to ask what it is women see in Jack Nicholson. I have heard since I was a boy that women love him and think he is so sexy, but never knew why. She said he has a unique personality that comes out in unique facial expressions. His eyes are always forming interesting expressions and his characters are often fun and flirtatious with women.

In this 1975 movie, Nicholson plays a seemingly sane man who fakes being insane to get out of jail and spend his time in a psych ward instead. Midway through, he realizes his stay in the psych ward doesn’t end when his jail sentence is up and he could be kept there indefinitely.

It is a bit disturbing and uncomfortable at times and the subject matter was likely a turn off to many casual movie goers, but it was critically hailed and swept all the major Academy Awards that year. Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor.

It was Nicholson’s first Academy Award victory and no doubt set his career in high gear.

If you look on lists of top movies, this one often appears somewhere in the ranks. While, I’m not intending to give movie reviews here, I will discuss how the movie was received by the group in our game.

All of us liked the movie and gave it no worse than an 8 out of 10, but I ranked it 5 out of 10 for entertainment value. The 5 is considered neutral in my mind. As I mentioned before, casual movie goers would likely find the subject matter uncomfortable and boring. So, even though the movie is well put together, well acted and full of emotional impact on the viewer, there are some who would leave the theater feeling unfulfilled.

Technically, the ending can be called happy or inspirational, but really it was sad and depressing in ways and seemed to indicate it is useless to fight the establishment, because it will always win.

I’m out of writing time, so I’ll stop there.

Our next movie is the modern Academy Award nominee Oppenheimer. This was selected by the man and he said it was recommended by a co-worker that he trusts, so he wanted to give it a whirl.