Killing her softly

Bernie

Crit

Jack Black is just shy of brilliant as a murderer beloved in his small East Texas town in a--you should pardon the expression--black comedy cowritten and directed by Richard Linklater. The story is based on actual events--and hews to them with remarkable fidelity, especially in the most unbelievable aspects, according to a New York Times Magazine piece by the victim's niece that, by sheer coincidence, I read on the stair machine this morning--and Linklater mixes documentary style into the narrative nicely, with colorful townspeople so devoted to the near-saintly Bernie, so lacking in sympathy for the hideously unpleasant woman he befriends before killing (played, in a no-brainer bit of casting, by Shirley MacLaine) that the district attorney (Matthew McConaughey in the sort of larger-than-life role he revels in) employs the rare prosecutorial strategy of asking for a change of venue.