This is Nicholson's show -- and he excels.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 22, 2022

Jack Nicholson delivers one of the best performances of his career in About Schmidt.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 14, 2022

The latest film by Alexander Payne (Election, Citizen Ruth) scrutinizes features of America's social fabric with a relatively sharp eye.

| Mar 5, 2021

A character study that has the emotional richness of the great Italian and Eastern European films of the 1960s, in which humor and pathos rode up and down on the seesaw together.

| May 17, 2018

[It] toys with convention, leading us down that happy ending path and then hopping off of it again. It's refreshing, if not humorously frustrating.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 10, 2016

Sharply observed, Alexander Payne's poignant comedy is a character study of an ordinary American, who embarks on a journey of self-discovery and in the process becomes humanized and extraordinary.

| Original Score: A- | Jan 20, 2011

Heartfelt Nicholson, not for kids at all.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 2, 2010

"About Schmidt" is a hostility-provoking film for the same reason that American citizens have lost their civil rights. The picture endorses, nay lionizes, complacency, inaction and the privilege of the greedy to steal whatever they covet simply because th

| Original Score: D | Apr 15, 2009

A simple, silent, static shot of Nicholson's face is one of the most beautiful, powerful, indelible images of the 2002 movie year.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 6, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 7, 2008

Mostly, the satire here amounts to nudging us into feeling superior to other people's lives.

| Original Score: C- | Jul 23, 2007

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 14, 2007

[Y]ou laugh with a growing sense of dread because it makes you feel what it's like to realize it's too late to help yourself.

| Sep 26, 2006

Nicholson offers one of the best performances of his career. ... Warren is alternately smug, confused, selfish, clueless, helpless, mournful, and ultimately, hopeful.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 31, 2006

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 6, 2005

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 6, 2005

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 5, 2005

About Schmidt is like The Straight Story and Ikiru without beauty, warmth, the delightful discoveries along the way, or the hope.

| Original Score: C | Dec 6, 2004

Great work by Jack Nicholson in the title role plus Kathy Bates, Hope Davis and Dermot Mulroney at the tempered hand of writer/director Alexander Payne.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Nov 1, 2004

| Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 7, 2004