Born in 1931, Mike Nichols entered the filmmaking world in the 1960s, instantly making a name for himself as a young and exciting director to keep an eye on. He continued to work steadily in the decades that followed, often excelling with dramedies and movies that dealt with relationships, though he also proved himself unafraid to experiment outside such genres, making for an overall diverse filmography. It’s worth noting that his skills went beyond the world of cinema, too, as he’s one of the few people to have an EGOT.
But to stay focused on the movie side of things, he made a total of 20 films in a career that lasted just over 40 years, though admittedly, one was a TV movie, and another within that 20 counts as a miniseries. Still, all these are worth exploring and discussing because he was one of his generation’s most interesting and distinctive filmmakers, and his influence on American cinema continues to be felt to this day.
10 ‘Primary Colors’ (1998)
Primary Colors is based on what’s known as a roman-à-clef novel, which means it retells true events while giving the characters fictitious names. In this case, it’s a story largely inspired by Bill Clinton running for President in 1992, with John Travolta playing the Clinton stand-in, a governor named Jack Stanton.
This means it might not be entirely accurate to label Primary Colors as a biopic, but it reflects real-world political events from the 1990s. Three years before Wit, Emma Thompson also stars here as Stanton’s wife, with other big-name actors like Kathy Bates and Billy Bob Thornton appearing and rounding out the cast.
9 ‘Working Girl’ (1988)
Released several years before Regarding Henry, Working Girl is often held up as the superior collaboration between Mike Nichols as director and Harrison Ford as actor. It’s a romantic comedy about a secretary (Melanie Griffith) who wants to move up the corporate ladder and uses somewhat devious tactics to usurp her uncaring boss, played by Sigourney Weaver.
It’s certainly a product of the 1980s in more ways than one, and it’s fair to say that it lacks the sort of biting satire that could’ve made this one of Nichols’s very best. It smooths its edges considerably and plays it safe, engaging with the rom-com side of things more than it ever criticizes or explores the ruthlessness of business practices with genuine insight, but those looking for something fun, fluffy, and maybe even charmingly old-fashioned might find a lot to like here.
8 ‘Silkwood’ (1983)
Silkwood’s an underrated and surprisingly intense film from Mike Nichols and arguably the greatest movie he directed during the 1980s. It tells the true story of Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep), a woman who worked at a plutonium processing plant and found herself a target after she attempted to make certain safety violations in her place of work public.
It’s a bleak narrative and is rendered more horrifying by the fact that it was based on real events that occurred in 1974, but it’s a story that needed to be told nonetheless. Streep gives a remarkable performance in the lead role, and the film earned five Oscar nominations, including one for Streep and a Best Director nomination for Nichols.
7 ‘Postcards from the Edge’ (1990)
Though Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine don’t play Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, respectively, in Postcards from the Edge, the story is still a largely autobiographical one for Fisher. She wrote the book upon which the film is based (and adapted the screenplay), which tells a semi-fictionalized version of her life story, particularly focusing on her struggles with addiction and her relationship with her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds.
It’s not the most intense look at addiction, instead focusing more on the ups and downs of a relationship between mother and daughter. Still, the film largely works when covering this in any event, making Postcards from the Edge an undeniably personal and sometimes emotional dramedy, with two great performances from Streep and MacLaine to anchor the entire thing.
6 ‘Carnal Knowledge’ (1971)
Carnal Knowledge is a genuinely difficult movie to watch for much of its runtime, as it explores — in unflinching detail — two young men’s attitudes toward dating. It could be called a romance film because it deals with the trials and tribulations of love, but that would not necessarily make it a great date movie.
It’s impressive and sad how Carnal Knowledge still holds up in how it explores the uglier side of dating, about the attitudes its male characters have and openly discuss. The film was arguably ahead of its time, too, being genuinely controversial in the early 1970s for its frank exploration of sexuality and misogyny.
5 ‘The Birdcage’ (1996)
Understandably holding up as one of Mike Nichols’s most popular and entertaining movies, The Birdcage is a classic 1990s comedy starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. The plot is farcical, about two gay men in a family gathering-type situation where they must act straight, leading to plenty of comedy and misunderstandings.
It handles the material with care, finding humor in the situations while never punching down on its gay characters. It was praised for staying away from stereotypes and for humanizing its characters, which certainly can’t be said about all 1990s movies that contain characters who are LGBTQ+.
4 ‘Closer’ (2004)
Closer is a feel-bad kind of movie, but in no way can it be called a bad movie. It’s about two different couples who end up in a complex situation where partners are effectively swapped, leading to plenty of dramatic fallout and characters reckoning with their own cheating habits, and coming to grips with their partners doing the same.
It’s based on a stage play and maintains an intimate, often uncomfortably personal feel for most of its surprisingly tense runtime. As a romance movie, it’s bleak but manages to explore troubling behavior and troubled characters in a manner that rarely comes close to feeling melodramatic, with the film’s brutal honesty likely to leave a lasting impression on those who watch it.
3 ‘Angels in America’ (2003)
Though it’s a miniseries and runs about three times as long as the average movie, Angels in America is still worth highlighting as one of Mike Nichols’ greatest filmmaking achievements. It’s something of a character-focused drama that feels epic because of its ambition, detailing the lives of various people who are all dealing with the AIDS epidemic during the 1980s.
It boasts an extremely impressive cast, featuring prior Nichols collaborators like Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep, while other great actors appearing in it include Al Pacino, Jeffrey Wright, and Patrick Wilson. It’s heavy-going at times due to its tragic narrative, but it is an engrossing watch for all six hours of its runtime, making it one of the best miniseries of the 21st century so far.
2 ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ (1966)
Almost 40 years before Closer, Mike Nichols made his feature film debut with another movie about two pairs of couples gradually tearing each other – and themselves — apart. That film was the incendiary Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? based on the stage play of the same name and standing to this day as arguably one of the most impressive feature film debuts of all time.
It’s unnerving how tense the film still manages to be, even though it was released more than half a century ago. The years have done little to dampen the power of its dialogue and the way it’s delivered by a cast filled with actors who all knock it out of the park (Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis), making it one of the greatest films of its decade, and up there with Nichols’s very best works.
1 ‘The Graduate’ (1967)
The Graduate is one of the greatest and most radical movies of 1967, which itself was a notably radical year for American cinema. It’s about a young man facing a lack of direction in his life and how things become complicated when he starts to have a risky relationship with the mother of a girl his age who his parents want him to date.
It gave Dustin Hoffman his star-making role, had an iconic soundtrack with songs by Simon & Garfunkel, and dealt with relatable themes to anyone who’s ever felt lost in life, exploring such things in a way that could be both funny and dramatic. It’s simply an expertly crafted movie all around, overflowing with great elements to the extent that it’s easy to point to it as the greatest film Mike Nichols ever directed.
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