Best movie of this year hands down!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I lived in Florida a good part of my life and traveled to areas like Vernon. I had "country boy" friends in these areas, people I truly enjoyed visiting. They had time for life and time for others. I once came into Perry, Florida to see a preacher friend, but did not know where he lived. I stopped in the first church I came to and asked if they knew him. I was motioned into the pastor's office, where the senior pastor was seated in camos sharpening hunting knives. He got on the phone to my friend (who pastored another church a few miles away) and said, "Boy! Got folks here lookin' for you."After supper as we were getting into our van to go to Wednesday prayer meeting, one of his goats jumped in and sat proudly on my velour seat. My friend said, "Yep . . . She'll load up on ye."So, this documentary is true to life in slower rural areas. The folks seem funny, only because we are used to our fast-paced and so called "intelligent" suburban lives. In the final analysis, who ends the game happier, he who took time to live, or he who lived wishing he had found time?

Errol Morris's 1982 documentary Vernon, Florida, is rife with a great backstory; one that is interesting as the quirky townsfolk it portrays, This was Morris's second stab at the documentary form- after his earlier Gates Of Heaven, and it detailed the ramblings of a number of wacky folk from the town. Initially, the legend goes, Morris was drawn to Vernon- a Panhandle town, because, over the prior quarter century dozens of residents had taken up the bizarre practice of cutting off assorted limbs of theirs to collect large insurance payments. The working title of the film was Nub City, but Morris changed the title and focus once several people threatened his life. Morris is said to have chimed in, 'They literally became a fraction of themselves to become whole financially.' Yet, the truth is that the sorts of wacky folk portrayed live all over America, and the world- I saw them growing up in New York City, I've seen them in Midwestern suburbs and Great Lakes fishing towns, as well as the heart of Texas. Thus, the thing that I found the most interesting was that this 56 minute long film was not originally a theatrical release, but made for WNET, the New York City public television station. Given how formulaic most PBS documentaries have become in the quarter century since this film's release, that, alone, is a fact worth pondering.

It's strange to see an Errol Morris film that works and doesn't work all the same. The film is short, maybe too short, and doesn't really take much time to going into much of what the town of Vernon is about, or if these interviewed are its only residents. There's no unifying theme though to the work, which is the basic problem, as Morris at his best (Thin Blue Line with the stylization and depth of reasonable doubt in true crime; Gates of Heaven with loss of life as a means to understand what human nature is all about; Fog of War about knowing limitations and understanding mistakes made in history; Fast Cheap & Out of Control with the process and joys of a job well done), as it's simply a series of interviews with the residents. Maybe, as one person here pointed out, it's that everyone has a story. But, not to be modest, you sometimes can't understand what these people are saying anyway in their storytelling.But at the same time, as Morris just goes about with his very unobtrusive and expert eye for human detail (the detail, anyway, of people at their goofiest and more sincere), it's very funny to see these backwoods folk and old guys tell their everyday stories and tales of hunting turkey and other animals. Favorite scenes would include: the preacher, who is part-time a laborer and part-time an obsessive word nut, specifically the word 'therefore' as it appears in the bible and what it means; the guy with his pet tortoise, who he tries to get to move around by gentle kicks, and also with his wild possum; the simple coot who's got one tooth and plenty of pictures of possible life elsewhere with clouds and stars in the sky. Morris doesn't shy away from these idiosyncrasies that one can find right away in the not-quite-Deliverance parts of the deep south, and watching the film with an audience is an added treat, to see who may laugh at who doing what.At the end, there aren't really any big ideas to take away from the film, at least on a first viewing, and it may be a little repetitive for some- or maybe not, as it may hit so close to home that it's a likely candidate for best documentary about a town with population 40. It's a little quirk of a doc-comedy that's worth it for Morris fans, but far from being any kind of masterpiece.

I am not sure what to think about this movie. To me, it was just some people talking about their daily, original thoughts. I know people like this. I might be someone like this one day. I guess I don't see the point in it. I felt like the filmmaker was trying to prove something - but what? I couldn't figure it out.And did anyone notice there are NO WOMEN who tell stories in Vernon, (except the wife at the end)? Why is this? Was the filmmaker only trying to make a movie about old men? Or did the women of Vernon have boring stories to tell? I suppose this could be compared to a folklore collection. The rural folks, telling their stories, with or without a point. I love reading rural folklore because it often seems abstract, simple and enlightening at the same time. Even if you didn't live in that time period or under those circumstances, you can relate it to your life. I am sure I would have loved to talk to these old men about their lives. I could have easily sat at the bench with the opossum/turtle guy for hours hearing his stories. I would have been touched to ride on the boat with the man who talked about God, and he probably would have made some good points. It's not a big deal.Yes, he cracked me up when he said "I was the only person he knew that knows what to do with a opossum!" and then he held it by the tail and watched it try to walk away, and nothing else. Yes, I laughed when the preacher talked about the word "therefore" forever because it seemed sort of pointless. But, I am just thinking - so what? What's new? Also, what is the filmmaker trying to prove here? am I supposed to be laughing? There are people like this everywhere, and there always has been. Pick up any oral folklore book and you will find this film isn't an idea worth calling "brilliant".Go outside, talk to people. There are folks like this everywhere. Not just in Vernon, Florida. Maybe the reason people like it so much is that it captures this kind of personality in a raw and visual way. But you could do the same thing if you went outside your city limits and had some conversations with strangers. These people aren't freaks, they aren't even that weird, comparatively. They live their lives and they are happy, for the most part. Isn't that what everyone wants? I just don't think it's that weird and wacky. It's life.I don't get it. Also, I would have liked to see more women in Vernon. 5/10.