Bernie

Directed by Richard Linklater

(PG-13)

***

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This “deceptively sunny” story inspired by a real-life Texas homicide is “the best movie I’ve seen all spring,” said Lou Lumenick in the New York Post. Playing a beloved small-town mortician who befriends a nasty widow and then kills her, Jack Black “gives the performance of his career.” There had to have been a temptation to camp things up, but neither Black nor his director succumbs to it. “As far as the town is concerned,” Black’s slightly effeminate do-gooder is too nice a man to be punished for killing the old nag, said David Denby in The New Yorker. Texas-born director Richard Linklater frequently cuts to interviews with actual residents, and he “almost falls victim” to his commitment to authenticity. He’s reluctant to fully imagine what the relationship between killer and victim was like, and the interviews sap the story of momentum. Still, Linklater has a way with actors, said Peter Rainer in CSMonitor.com. Even Shirley MacLaine, whose recent performances “have become so mannered,” is terrific here as the widow. In this “gentle, light-fingered horror story,” the secrets of human behavior remain tantalizingly mysterious.