Nebraska

Wait, is your real name Saul, and is she

driving us to New Hampshire?

Grade: B +

Director: Alexander Payne

Starring: Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Bob Odenkirk and Stacy Keach

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 50 min.

Returning to his Midwestern stomping grounds, director Alexander Payne drains the palette but not the poetry from Nebraska, a film’s whose state of mind is more emotional than geographic. Traversing the byways from Billings, Mont. to Lincoln, Neb., the simple road trip comprises complex themes: fathers and sons, regret, detachment from family and one’s past and the decay small town middle America. Like a fine wine, it seeps into your system, its effects lingering far past its content.

Septuagenarian Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) believes he’s won $1 million and can’t stop talking about it. In fact, he takes the directive of a magazine sweepstakes flyer quite literally, determined to trek from Billings to Lincoln in order to collect his winnings. To mollify his old man, who suffers from early dementia and old alcoholism, son David (Will Forte) agrees to take time from off from his big box electronics sales job and wayward everyday to drive Woody south and deflate his foolhardy fantasy once of for all.

A head gash caused during one of Woody’s boozy escapades leads father and son to a layover in Hawthorne, Neb., the hometown of Woody and his wife Kate (June Squibb), a harridan whose foul mouth and churlish disposition mask a caring heart and buried hurt.

The majority of Nebraska is situated in Hawthorne, a dying dustbowl whose residents cling to their ways. Taciturn menfolk sit stoically gazing at the boob tube all day; womenfolk gossip over coffee in the kitchen. But, when word of Woody’s baseless rants about hitting it rich gets out, all the townsfolk—particularly Woody’s extended family—buy in despite the protestations of David, Kate and Ross (Bob Odenkirk), David’s older brother. Their blind belief is triggered by a melange of reasons, from envy-cum-greed to the hope that one of their own would find success in a place where success has been in short supply.

Payne’s characterizations tread perilously close to condescension, but he ultimately avoids it thanks to a rendering that satirical without being sanctimonious. Indeed, while the film eagerly incorporates Payne’s trademark dark humor, its execution and staging are more deadpan and slightly farcical, like a more humanist Coen brothers film. Great credit also goes to Dern, who won Best Actor at Cannes for a performance that lends subtle shadings to a role that could have easily devolved into a codger cliché. On the other hand, Forte is merely serviceable, taking his diffident directive too literally and adding little emotional edge to a role that sorely sang out for it.

Filmed in black and white, the autumnal plains and wide open spaces are their own characters, feeding a milieu of desolation and loss in the heart of flyover country. Nebraska is an elegy—there’s real heartache as Woody ambles around his old haunts and homestead, while David’s interstate lark evolves into an exploration of his parents’ true selves.

There’s no grand revelation or life-altering catharsis in Nebraska. Only the sort of emotional feast that often follows the harvest.

Planes

I feel the need ... the need for spin-offs

Grade: C -

Director: Klay Hall

Starring the voices of: Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Brad Garrett, Teri Hatcher, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, John Cleese and Cedric the Entertainer

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 32 min.

Disney’s Planes is one of the most thought-provoking films of the year. That statement is not intended as an endorsement or even a compliment, for this Cars spinout is as monotonous as it is derivative. But it posits some existential topics to ponder, if only to distract the audience from the nosedive on the screen.

I reference “Disney’s” since although the film is advertised as being “From Above The World of Cars,” this is not a Pixar production. Instead, Disney—Pixar’s parent company—skyjacked their own trademark and parlayed it under the far more banal DisneyToon Studios, typically the purveyor of Disney’s straight-to-DVD dreck (which Planes was initially intended as).

The result is a mix of Cars and the recently-released Turbo. Dusty Crophopper (voiced by Dane Cook) is a cropduster that dreams of competing in aerial races. Beyond not being built for speed, Dusty’s also afraid of extreme heights. When Dusty manages to qualify for a global plane race, it ostensibly pits him against the world’s best racers … and obvious stereotypes. The Mexican plane wears a Lucha Libre mask; the strains of a sitar accompany every appearance by Ishani, the comely Indian aerial; John Cleese voices, well, you can figure it out.

Of course, there are Dusty’s hometown mates, including his dimwitted bud Chugg (Brad Garrett, since Larry the Cable Guy wasn’t around) and the grizzled old codger Skipper (Stacy Keach, since he kinda sounds like old Paul Newman).

Who wins and how is both anticlimactic and irrelevant. Planes left me with more profound puzzlers:

1. In this world of animatronic machinery, why do the countries, cities and other cultural touchstones retain the same names as our own: America, England, Mexico, Iceland, Nepal, China, etc.? There’s a JFK Airport in New York City, and Dusty flies over the Taj Mahal. At one point, there are references to Rocky, Old Yeller, and the story of David and Goliath. Is this Cars/Planes universe some post-apocalyptic world in which machines have become fully sentient yet absorbed humankind’s cultures, languages and even prejudices—a mechanic working at JFK yells out, “Go back to Jersey!” Skipper is modeled after a Chance Vought F4U Corsair that flew in “the War” back “in ‘41.” What, the year 2541?

2. I understand the value of will, training and ingenuity. But, there’s no way a single-engine flyer is going to best jet airplanes in any race, much less one that circumnavigates the planet.

3. What crops is Dusty dusting? Presuming it’s corn the machines convert into fuel (it really can’t be anything else), what pests is he trying to kill? Are there mechanized insects?

4. Beyond sharing the same names as our world, why would the largest population centers—such as New York City and Shanghai, China—still be located adjacent to large bodies of saltwater? Wouldn’t metallic beings likely settle in more arid climates and not where the threat of rust is highest?

5. Speaking of cities, why do their skylines sport the same skyscrapers as today, structures designed by and for humans?

Before you accuse me of trying to think too deeply about an animated kids movie, these lapses are illustrative of a film that fails to follow its own internal logic and, moreover, is just plain lazy. Elsewhere in the storyline, an aircraft carrier is called the "U.S.S. Dwight D. Flysenhower" and a TV sports announcer is named “Brent Mustangburger.” How hard would it be to throw out a few more puns and made-up names? I’ve got another: After 90 minutes of putting your brain on autopilot, Planes amounts to little more than a crash-landing.

The Bourne Legacy

"Why didn't I get to play The Hulk in The Avengers...Answer me!"

Grade: B –
Director: Tony Gilroy
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, and Stacy Keach
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hr. 15 min.

A rogue secret agent shoving a tracking device down a wolf’s gullet to mislead a missile-armed predator drone is a scene that sounds awesome even on paper. Unfortunately, there’s not enough of those adrenaline rushes in The Bourne Legacy, the fourth installment in the movie spy series.

Relentless early cross-cutting reveals that events in this sequel take place concurrent with those in the last Bourne film. With Jason Bourne on the loose and running amok (Matt Damon doesn’t appear, but his photograph does several times, curiously), the CIA decides to terminate other black ops programs, including their chemically-enhanced field agents. When Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) escapes a drone attack, he circles the globe looking for Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), a geneticist with access to the chems and viral cultures needed to keep Cross super fit and focused.

Whereas the original Bourne trilogy was a modern-day Frankenstein story—a mind-altered monster searching for a creator now trying to destroy his creation—this reprise is about a junkie jonesing for his pills and a vial of liquid detox. Little else really happens aside from Cross and Shearing dodging repeated efforts to, you guessed it, eliminate them.

Still, consider me a sucker for jut-jawed bureaucrats—played here by Edward Norton, Stacy Keach, Dennis Boutsikaris, Scott Glenn and others—barking urgently to “cut off all loose ends” and “minimize the damage.” Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton), who adapted the screenplays for the preceding three Bourne films, assumes the series’ directorial reigns from Paul Greengrass. The consequence is an increased predilection for dialogue and labyrinthine plot lines and less for kinetic action. The film has its breathless moments: a workplace shooting massacre is cruelly captivating, while a climactic car-and-motorcycle chase through the streets of Manila is exciting if haphazardly shot. And while Renner doesn’t possess Damon’s magnetism, he grittily fills his predecessor’s shoes.

As a standalone, The Bourne Legacy is an engaging spy thriller. As the inheritor of the Bourne mantle, however, it’s merely an adequate continuum…until and if Damon and Greengrass decide to jump back in.

Neil Morris