As Good as It Gets is a 1997 film, starring Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson. Nicholson plays an OCD type writer who goes into the same restaurant and orders the same thing everyday. He eventually begins to fall for the waitress (Hunt). When he learns that she has a son, who is sick, and may have to leave her job – Nicholson sends a doctor friend over to her home to look at the boy. Though he likes Hunt, he tells her he did it so she wouldn’t quit her job.

At the same time, he’s having issues with his gay neighbor and his manager (Gooding Jr.). Towards the end, Hunt, Nicholson, and Greg Kinnear take a trip to visit Kinnear’s family (looking for money). This trip, while almost ripping them all apart, actually strengthens their bond as friends.

Overall, it was a great movie. A mix between comedy and drama, with hilarious moments on everyone’s part.

Budget: $50 million
Director: James L. Brooks
Starring:
Jack Nicholson
Helen Hunt
Cuba Gooding Jr.
Greg Kinnear
Skeet Ulrich

The Shining is titled as such for it is what the characters (Jack and Danny Torrance) dubbed their supernatural visions of past and future horrific events. The movie revolves around a regular person named Jack Torrance who has evolved into a madman (ably played by Jack Nicholson). The movie was directed (and written for movies) by the late great Stanley Kubrick.

Kubrick is really a perfect director, I should say. He made the 70-year-old Scatman Crothers shoot one scene for a whopping 120 times. And he also demanded the same number of shots on Shelley Duvall (who played Wendy Torrannce) in a particular scene.

One funny trivia from IMDB:

Stephen King tried to talk Stanley Kubrick out of casting Jack Nicholson in the lead suggesting, instead, either ‘Michael Moriarty’ or Jon Voight. King had felt that watching either of these normal-looking men gradually descend into madness, would have immensely improved the dramatic thrust of the storyline. Indeed, many fans of the book agreed with King, adding that Nicholson appeared fairly crazy from the very start, thus there was little or no surprise when Jack ultimately went totally overboard.