The darkly comic docudrama "Bernie" details the unusual friendship between a likable Texas mortician and a wealthy but reviled widow, and the shocking crime that followed.

Inspired by Hollandsworth's 1998 Texas Monthly article that first caught the attention of Linklater, "Bernie" takes place in Carthage, TX, where effeminate mortician Bernie Tiede (Jack Black) enjoys a reputation as a friendly and upstanding member of the community. Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine), on the other hand, couldn't hold a lower position on the local social scale.

Repressed and bitter, nasty Marjorie...

This week there will be a little something for everyone in theaters. You’ll have the chance to see the Jason Segel relationship comedy “The Five-Year Engagement,” the John Cusack gothic thriller “The Raven,” the swashbuckling animated adventure “The Pirates! Band of Misfits,” the Jason Statham action vehicle “Safe,” the indie drama “Sound of My Voice,” the foreign crime thriller “Headhunters,” the dark dramedy “Bernie,” and the coming-of-age flick “Girl in Progress.”

MY PICK FOR THE WEEK: The Five-Year Engagement

Later in the week, I will be covering IFF Boston, so look out for reviews o...

Jack Black got deadly serious for a prison trip to visit the killer he portrays in new movie "Bernie."

The star tackles dark drama in the new Richard Linklater film - about a Texas funeral director who murdered a wealthy widow - and he met the man he plays, Bernie Tiede, behind bars at an East Texas penitentiary.

Director Linklater feared Black would not consider a prison trip, but he was more than happy to sit opposite the man he was about to portray.

Black tells Nylon magazine, "I was a little nervous about it (meeting). You don't really wanna go to a maximum-security prison.

"(There ...

Matthew McConaughey had two films show during the SXSW film festival in Austin, TX this week, the dark and violent Killer Joe and the true crime comedy Bernie. The real star though maybe his mother, who makes a cameo appearance in Bernie. McConaughey reunites with his Dazed and Confused director Richard Linklater in the latter film.

“He’s done this,” McConaughey said. “In Newton Boys he hired my oldest brother Rooster and put us in a scene together, all right? So mom tells me she went to audition, or met. She goes, ‘And Rick said he thinks I’m just right for it.’ So a couple weeks go by an...

Jack Black is just your average friendly neighborhood killer -- complete with ultra-moustache.

Black and his "School of Rock" director, Richard Linklater, have reunited for "Bernie," a pitch-black crime comedy based on a real-life 1996 murder case in Carthage, Texas.

Black plays the title role, a mortician whose reputation as the nicest guy in town doesn't get tarnished too much after he offs an elderly millionaire widow (Shirley MacLaine), an intolerable shrew whom most of the townsfolk believe had it coming.

The trailer doesn't make "Bernie" look like anything special, but it's good t...