Nebraska

Alexander Payne is one director who marches to the beat of his own drummer - films in Nebraska, uses black and white, and casts some parts locally to get the correct flavor. He doesn't miss a note.

Nebraska is the story of a family of usual dysfunctionals living where else but Nebraska - a quiet, distant father with a little dementia, Woody (Bruce Dern), his two sons, David and Ross (Will Forte and Bob Odenkirk), and their perpetually complaining mother Kate (June Squibb). David sells home electronics and just broke up with his girlfriend; Ross works for a news station and recently replaced the "talent" up front.

The current major problem is that Woody has received something akin to a Publisher's Clearing House certificate telling him he's won a million dollars. All he has to do is buy these magazines and check if the numbers are his. All Woody sees is that he won a million dollars. No one will take him to Lincoln to claim his prize so he starts walking - more than once - until David says he will take him.

On the way, they stop by his parents' home town and drop in on Woody's brother and his family - a scary bunch. Kate takes a bus in and shows David around the cemetery in a scene you'll never forget, trust me. Woody runs into his old partner, Ed (Stacy Keach), and as word spreads that Woody is going to be a millionaire, everybody wants a piece of him, including Ed, who says Woody owes him quite a bit.

This is really a character-driven film, with some of the most vibrant, fleshed-out characters ever on screen and some of the starkest landscapes, filmed in black and white, and giving the viewer the feeling of what it's like to live among miles and miles of farmland interspersed with small towns.

Bruce Dern gives an Oscar-worthy performance as a lifelong alcoholic who has escaped inside himself, a man out of touch and seemingly untouched by any events around him. As the outspoken Kate, June Squibb is absolutely hilarious - always yelling at Woody, threatening to put him in a home, complaining about him, but just don't let anybody take advantage of him, or you'll have to deal with her.

The sons mirror their parents, with David quiet and thoughtful but trying to bond with his father, and Ross, more confident and less sympathetic.

In learning about his father's background, in talking with his old girlfriend (Angela McEwan) David begins to see the man that his father once was and what shaped him. And he finds out that love is sometimes an unspoken thing, but it's there all the same.

A wonderful film, powerful in its simplicity. Don't miss it.

Bruce Dern gives the performance of his life. He is wonderful. He maintains the quality of tuning in and out of reality throughout the film. Typical of someone with dementia, you are never really sure if he's there or not. There is a moment in the film when he drives and you can just see him glow and come alive.

This is not a film for everyone because it moves slow, but true movie buffs will love it.

Filmed in black and white and bleak (if that were a color) it's a son that takes his father on a road trip

It's quietly poignant, with a lot of very funny moments in it. When the mother is in the scene, she steals every one.

The cousins are a riot and the family members are a cast of characters. This is the sort of film that you leave but doesn't leave you.

Greetings from Lithuania.

What a terrific and warm movie this is. Shot beautifully in black and white it tells a story as old as the movies itself. Acted wonderfully by a veteran Bruce Dern with a terrific support by June Squibb and all involved this a great film by a great Alexander Payne. If you have enjoyed his movies in the past, the you will be in nirvana watching "Nebraska". This film also reminded me of "The Straight Story" - another terrific film. "Nebraska" is a forth film from 2014th contenders for best movie Oscar that i saw, and to be honest, i enjoyed it more that "Captain Phillips" or "Dalas Buyers Club" - two very solid film. The forth is "Gravity", but that one is in another level of movie making, hope you know what i mean.

Overall, "Nebraska" i a great, slow, quite road movie that will definitely move you.

For those of us not from the Midwest, there is something strange about the place. Its people are taciturn but full of character; its landscape is wide, foreboding and sends the viewer into silence. "Nebraska" sits somewhere between "The Last Picture Show"; monochrome and a sad town full of back stories; and "Fargo", black humor, caricatures and illusions.

Nebraska has many wonderful moments and all of them come along without fanfare, building one on another; little piles of sand mounting to bring the whole piece in one. The structure of this movie is as near to ideal as it gets. It adds and adds layers and events and meaning to the relationships within a family and between a son and his rather hapless father.

The actors make this work so well. The comedy, the idiotic humor, the awkward silences and bitter stories out of the past are alive with humanity. The whole cast is superb. Dern's performance is almost like an old man from a Beckett play; white-haired and selfish, bitter and sad.

The photography and design really add texture. The geometry of the towns and house on the landscape; the broad emptiness of the country create a sense of place. Alexander Payne has made a film to watch again.

"Nebraska" offers viewers an unstinting view of some very unpleasant things: extreme decrepitude, boundless stupidity, greed and ignorance. There is also very deep, and very painful, love on display in this portrait of an embittered working class eking out a meaningless existence in a dysfunctional and remote place. "Nebraska" oscillates between cynicism and schmaltz, pulling off a wondrous kind of emotional alchemy that few films aspire to, let alone attain.

All of the acting is first rate, though the characterizations are rather broadly drawn. Will Forte plays a dutiful, sensitive, repressed son with seemingly unlimited patience for the eccentricities of those around him. He's the perfect foil for Bruce Dern's semi-catatonic, alcoholic ramblings (both verbal and spatial). June Squibb serves up hilarious venom to spice up the mix.

There were scenes in the movie that so perfectly captured the narrow, soulless, deadening ethos so prevalent in small-town America that I could hardly stand to watch them. It was almost as if the tire stores, bars, gas stations and motels of every desolate corner of America were rolled up into one set of visuals here, captured in stunning black and white cinematography.

I highly recommend "Nebraska."