One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Nobody on that ward gets as much room as Jack Nicholson, and that’s the one crack in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: the other patients sometimes turn into an audience for his act. Everything else is close to perfect. Nicholson plays McMurphy like a guy who has never met a rule he didn’t want to poke with a stick. Louise Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched is terrifying because she never raises her voice. She just smiles, checks the schedule and wins. The fishing trip is pure joy, and the group sessions are hard to sit through, which is the point. Miloš Forman shoots the ward plain and gray, so every small freedom, a card game, a basketball, a ball game called out loud in front of a TV that isn’t even on, feels huge. It made $109 million domestic, and 1,170,861 IMDb voters have it at an 8.6. A 9.4 because it’s funny, furious and heartbreaking at once. $1,536 says the next time someone tells you it’s just the rules, you ask who wrote them.

What works: Jack Nicholson’s wild, magnetic McMurphy against Louise Fletcher’s icy calm, plus a supporting cast that feels completely lived in.

What doesn’t: McMurphy takes up so much space that several of the other patients stay sketches instead of full people.

Who it’s for: Anyone who has ever pushed back against a rule that made no sense, and people who like their classics funny and devastating.