Review of Nebraska (2013) by Tom L — 15 Mar 2014

I am a big Alexander Payne fan, and I appreciated his choices in Nebraska, and thought this was a touching, well built film. I liked the choice to go black and white, and I am reminded of similar directorial choices in portraying stark, bland landscapes with hard, earthy characters, from the film, Paper Moon (one of my favorites!).

The pace of the film can slow down at times, and some of the peripheral actors do not rise to the caliber of Dern (such as the Pegy Nany former girlfriend who I thought was rather flat). But I seem to remember that Payne likes to use actual real people and not actors, with secondary characters, in his films, and I kind of like that too.

Bruce Dern was magnificent. If you didn't see Nebraska, works great on DVD, on a lazy evening, with a nice glass of pinot noir (a nod to Sideways).