jack nicholson – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

BREAKDOWN: 1975 – Review by Lynn Venhaus

December 18, 2025December 21, 2025 Lynn Venhaus al pacino, Albert Brooks, Blaxploitation, Breakdown: 1975, documentary, Ellen Burstyn, jack nicholson, jodie foster, Josh Brolin, martin scorsese, Morgan Neville, Oliver Stone, Patton Oswalt, Robert Altman, robert deniro, Saturday Night Live, Seth Rogen, Steven Spielberg, Wesley Morris

In this Wayback Machine, called Breakdown: 1975, we travel back 50 years to a pivotal year that defined daring, imaginative filmmaking, and how coincidentally, it happened between the resignation of President Nixon and the Bicentennial birthday celebration. In Morgan Neville’s well-intentioned documentary, he puts the chaotic 1970s in perspective, touching on how young talented filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman and Steven Spielberg were inspiring a cinematic revolution. Studios took risks, and moviegoers responded in this heralded New Hollywood. As exuberant as this fertile time was, in real life, America was going through dismal days post-Watergate and Vietnam.

Commentaries Reviews

EASY RIDER — Revisited by Diane Carson

September 11, 2019September 13, 2019 awfj-admin 0 Comments criterion collection, dennis hopper, easy rider, jack nicholson, peter fonda

For all the information available about Easy Rider — the motorcycle builders, the heated arguments over the screenplay, the production conflicts and crises, the yin and yang of the meditative Wyatt and the volatile Billy, the improvised insults of the locals, and other incredible minutiae — to me what distinguishes and elevates the film is the visceral experience of it.