NEBRASKA

Alexander Payne is either hit or miss with me.  Either his films are great – Perfect little character driven films with plenty of messiness that  still somehow lead to a satisfying conclusion or they are not – Long on look and atmosphere and great locations but without much of a plot or anything to say.

I consider ABOUT SCHMIDT (My favourite Payne film) and ELECTION to be the former while THE DESCENDANTS and SIDEWAYS (an awful film) to be the latter.

NEBRASKA falls in the middle not as consistent or interesting as AS or ELECT. but certainly much better than the other two.

What makes this a good film or better than a good film is the performances, the acting.  Bruce Dern is superb.  He understands the character he is playing not just what he thinks but how he would communicate (or not) with other people and that really makes this all character and no Dern.

I sincerely hope he wins the Oscar for best actor this year.  He deserves it not just for this but for all the great pictures he’s made.

However, there are a number of other great performances here as well.  June Squibb (who played Jack Nicholson’s wife in ABOUT SCHMIDT) plays an even louder version of that elderly nagging wife who is actually the one who kept the family together. Bob Odenkirk does an ensemble turn as the older newscaster brother.

Every Payne film has at least one totally villainous character.  Here it’s Stacy Keach and he is excellent almost stealing the film away from Dern and others.  What a solid acting career Stacy Keach has had.

If there is a weakness here, it is Will Forte.  He has no screen presence whatsoever.  I didn’t like him on SNL and I don’t like him here.  He is an absolute zero.

I am focusing on the acting because the script while working very hard to make us believe this is all real, can’t seem to shake off the Hollywood flaws of coincidence and neatness that rob real life of the “real” part.

But hey I liked the ending of this film a lot. I like the father/son relationship as it played out and I liked all the other characters.  A good film.