: diligent in application or pursuit
I'm lovin' the Fantasy Football season. As of this writing, I have seven teams! AHHHH!
Movie Review
If you want to see one of the best films of the year, check out Bernie. Why? Here are five reasons:
1) It's based on a wild true story. In 1996, Bernie Tiede, a funeral director and all-around beloved community man in Carthage, Texas - in the eastern part of the state - shot and killed the elderly woman, Marjorie Nugent (played in the film by Shirley MacLaine), he had been working for. Tiede had met her at her late husband's funeral, and Tiede slowly and surely weaved his way into the life of the wealthy Nugent, a mean old rich woman largely despised by Carthage. Before long, Tiede and Nugent were arm-and-arm all over town, traveling the world together, with Tiede having unlimited access to her money. Eventually, the increasingly henpecked Tiede decided to do away from her. He stored her body in the garage freezer, where it wasn't discovered for nine months.
2) The filmmaker.
Richard Linklater is the writer-director here. He's one of America's best filmmakers, a national treasure, responsible for some of my favorite films of the last twenty years: Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise/Before Sunset, School of Rock, Fast Food Nation. His style is easy and freewheeling, adventurous without being pretentious. He captures period and locality beautifully and he can juggle tones - hilarity and heartbreak, melancholy and silliness - masterfully.
3) The supporting cast.
Throughout the entire film, local townspeople comment on the action, in documentary, talking-head fashion - they provide humorous anecdotes and local color. At first, I thought these were real people who lived through the events of the film. I thought, wow, kudos to the casting director. Turns out, they're just actors - which is even more remarkable, considering how authentic they are.
4) You can't pinpoint this movie.
The film works as a character piece, a study in criminal behavior, a courtroom drama (with a sly, winning Matthew McConaughey as the DA out to seal Bernie's fate), and a To Die For/Fargo-esque black comedy; To Die For, Gus Van Sant's wonderful 1995 satire with Nicole Kidman as a weathergirl who knocks off her husband, really is the frame of reference here. It's short, too, without wasted scenes. It's a slight movie that doesn't feel slight - the filmmakers never treat the various serious, very sad subject matter with jokiness or lack of gravity.
5) An Oscar-worthy turn.
I'm not sure I'll see a better performance by an actor this year than the one by Jack Black as Bernie. Black is walking on a tightrope here - a little too much caricature to the right or left and over he goes. He succeeds brilliantly. Almost impossibly, Black fools and woos us the same way Bernie did the townspeople of Carthage. Constantly, we're reminded how nice and earnest and polite and good-hearted Bernie was - Black seems to have born with these qualities, and we can't help but like him despite us being a little on edge. Is he gay? We're not sure - Black suggests it, without overplaying it. Is he acting? Black certainly suggests slipperiness. And the other attributes of Bernie - rage, confusion, deviousness, mania - well, Black plays these too. The actor gets ample chances to show off his rich voice - Bernie often leads the church choir - but I was really, deeply impressed by the number of levels on which this performance worked, a detailed, virtuous characterization of a man whose motives may never be clear.
(****)
*
The next entry in my 500 Greatest Performances of All Time is...
Jessica Tandy
as Daisy Werthan in Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
A well-deserved, late-life Best Actress Oscar for a beloved star of mostly stage went to Tandy for her indelible performance as the crotchety, set-in-her-ways Daisy, whose hardened resolves slowly begins to melt the longer she is friends with Morgan Freeman's Hoke. Tandy is impeccable here, never hitting a false note. She never softens the character, never lets you see ahead to any profound character change, but there's never a second of screen time when we don't recognize the universality of this type of woman and see the societal changes she's adjusting too on her face- and, of course, deep down, she's not all that bad or stubborn. The relationship between her and Freeman is extraordinarily touching and subtle.
Images:
http://parabasis.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451ce4269e2016306b3b683970d-800wi
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/sites/tcdailyplanet.net/files/imagecache/teaser/images/Jessica%2BTandy%2BDriving%2BMiss%2BDaisy.jpg
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