Nebraska (2013)

We liked a lot this story of a father, on the verge of dementia, and his grown son on a road trip to claim a million dollar sweepstakes the father is convinced he has won. With deserved award-winning and -nominated performances by Bruce Dern (Oscar-nominated for playing Jane Fonda's husband in Coming Home (1978), he was also great in The Great Gatsby (1974) as Tom Buchanan, That Championship Season (1982), 29 episodes of Big Love (2006-11), and many more, among his almost 150 roles) as the father, Will Forte (I know him as cross-dressing Paul on 13 episodes of 30 Rock (2007-2012) and didn't realize he was on 158 episodes of Saturday Night Live from 2002-12, among his 59 acting credits) playing it straight as the son, June Squibb (her face was familiar but I would not have been able to tell you she was in 41 things, including Scent of a Woman (1992) and About Schmidt (2002)) as the mother, director Alexander Payne (covered in The Descendants), writer Bob Nelson (his first feature after two TV series), it also features cameos by Bob Odenkirk (last in The Spectacular Now) and Stacy Keach (the winner in this post, he's got 189 acting credits but nothing really calls out to me--I must be tired), and Rance Howard (father of Ron and Clint).

The beautiful black and white photography is by Phedon Papamichael (last blogged in This is 40) who is also someone to watch this awards season.

I said to Jack afterwards that all of the music seemed to be in 3/4 time. I found the soundtrack by Mark Orton streaming on this page and correct myself that most of it but not all is in waltz time--either 3/4 or 6/8. Very nice guitar work with other strings. There are plenty of songs listed on imdb as well.

Film fans should see this before the Oscars. Don't just take our word for it--rottentomatoes critics average a whopping 91% and audiences 89.