Do you let your old man live out his lingering dream and delusion, even if it means turning the small world he inhabits upside down? For Woody Grant, he’s clinging to the news he’s received in the mail from a sweepstakes company that he has $1 million dollars coming his way, but he needs someone to drive him to Nebraska to claim his “prize.” The only one willing to help? His son David.
And so we enter Alexander Payne‘s low-budget, black-and-white road dramedy “Nebraska,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this past spring and will make its stateside debut shortly at the New York Film Festival. It does seem to fit in the writer/director’s established wheelhouse of road trips, flawed family relationships and bittersweetness, and talk is already swirling around Bruce Dern for some Oscar recognition for his lead turn. While our correspondent out of Cannes thought it was a touch too familiar in her review, Payne’s voice is always one we love and the rest of us are eager to see what he’s delivered.
Co-starring Will Forte, Stacy Keach, Bob Odenkirk and more, “Nebraska” arrives on November 15th.
