Directed by: Alexander Payne
Staring: Bruce Dern, Will Forte and June Squibb
Director Alexander Payne is probably best known for “Sideways”, shown in an earlier season. His latest film is a road movie with a difference. Woody (Bruce Dern), is an elderly grumpy American who infuriates his son David (Will Forte). Woody is often convinced that he has won prizes in competitions but ends up losing money. David decides the only way to convince him the competitions are fake is to drive him to Nebraska, the source of the scams, to try to claim his prize in person. Despite being set in the poor Midwest with initially unsympathetic characters and the increasing evidence of Woody’s progressive dementia, Payne finds sympathy, and sometimes humour, in the developing relationship between the previously estranged generations. The black and white cinematography finds a certain beauty in the economically depressed Mid-West of America.