Nebraska is unsettling, Thomas Jane is hot, and beef jerky is equivalent to god kissing us on the lips. Ok, so maybe we only truly agree on the first statement.
Dave: This movie had the bones to be entrancing: an eerie plot, a captivating locale, and some damn good actors. Thomas Jane as Wilf is mesmerizing, even if his accent sounds like he’s constantly chewing on marbles*. Watching his character’s long, slow decay is hard to look away from. The long, sometimes snowy shots of the unerringly flat Nebraska landscape are as dizzying as they are unsettling. Some dings that keep this from being a five-star movie, though, are the jarring array of accents from the main characters. I’ve no idea what folks in western Nebraska really sound like, but these actors felt like they popped out of the Fisher Price Old MacDonald See-'n-Say toy: you didn’t know if you’d get a sheep, a chicken, or a pig when they opened their mouths. On top of that, the sets sometimes seemed overly staged, like they were ripped from a high school drama department’s staging of a particularly dreary Oklahoma!. Still, this is worth a watch if you missed it in theaters. (️️️️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Folks, I have a deep-seated aversion to jerky in all its forms. If the good Lord had intended for us to eat jerky, he would have left cows out in the elements like that one in 1922. And perhaps He did, but friends, I’ll stick with bread and grape juice (good Methodists don’t use real wine, y’all) over jerky any day. Still, the salty, cheesy, and slightly tangy notes in this popcorn won me over, at least until we’d finished half the bowl and my stomach realized how much grease was in it. But I ate a lot of it and didn’t even complain when Joe told me there was jerky in it! (⭐️⭐️⭐️️️️1/2)
Joe: Am I the only one who thinks Thomas Jane is smokin' hot? My god. The man gives me the vapors. He's never been in anything that made me consider him an actor, but I've got to say: he brings his A-game to 1922. He's nailed the aloof, hyper-masculine rural Nebraskan, from the marbles-in-his-mouth* accent to the facial expressions that give nothing away. As for the film: it's based on a Stephen King novella, and it hits all the marks one would expect. It's supremely creepy, and the dread that seeps into every moment is palpable in each frame. It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, but it more than makes up for that with genuinely disturbing imagery and some truly gross moments. Also, I've been to Hemingford, Nebraska (!!) and I can safely say: it's starkly beautiful, but there's no way I'd choose to live there. (⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2)
I love beef jerky. In fact, my Ride or Die (the very same person who's been to Hemingford with me - Hi, Ally! ily!) makes it a point to pick up unusual beef jerky flavor combinations for me when she finds them in places like rural Missouri. Anyway: to me, this popcorn was a no-brainer. Beef jerky + popcorn + cheddar cheese? Yes, sir. Truth be told, though: it's actually a kind of strange combination. As it stands, the recipe could use a little more salt (insane to say, but it's true), and the spices folded in the butter could have been doubled to give the popcorn more punch. Did that stop me from shoveling globs of it into my mouth? Of course not. It has beef jerky in it. (⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2)
* Dave and I almost fell over when we discovered that we had both used this description for Jane's performance. Remember: we do not say anything about movie or popcorn until we're ready to post the blog.
Popcorn recipe from: The Popcorn Board
1922 on IMDB
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