BERNIE (PG-13) No one wants to be murdered by an idiot. It goes without saying that no one wants to be murdered at all, but if you had a choice, an idiot wouldn't be yours. To simplify matters, let's just say most murders are committed by bad people. It takes a bad person to kill someone for selfish gain. And since most murders are committed by criminals, and most criminals aren't exactly the smartest people around, the odds are pretty high that if you're going to be killed by someone, it'll probably be at the hands of an idiot.

What if your killer, however, happened to be the nicest guy in town? Based on a true story, Austin-based filmmaker Richard Linklater's latest movie, Bernie, focuses on the 1996 murder of 81-year-old Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine), a wealthy widow, by 38-year-old Bernie Tiede (Jack Black), an assistant funeral director in the small town of Carthage, TX. Tiede is beloved by most everyone in the town. He is generous with his time and makes friends easily. Nugent, on the other hand, is hated. She's petty, exasperating and downright mean. After her husband dies, though, Tiede starts spending more time with her and eventually becomes her closest friend and companion. The two take lavish trips around the world, fly first class, sail on cruise ships, and Tiede has complete access to Nugent's finances. But Tiede starts to feel smothered by Nugent and their relationship becomes a strained one, with Tiede becoming her servant and Nugent just as trapped in her dependence on him. One day, Tiede ends the relationship.

This is a remarkable movie. Bernie is a thorough crowd-pleaser: funny, whip-smart and filled with some great observations about small-town American life. Linklater packages it as a mock-docudrama of sorts, playfully mixing actors with many real Carthage residents to give it a feeling of authenticity, and those interviews with the townspeople are easily some of the best stuff in the movie. Bernie is breezy entertainment, but Linklater is also working out a complex examination of artifice and how people—in particular Tiede and over-the-top D.A. Danny Buck (Matthew McConaughey)—hide behind their public personas and, in Tiede's case, conceal a dark side. What's perceived as truth is indeed false. We're only halfway through the year, but something tells me we'll still be talking about Bernie in December when listing the best of 2012.