Green Book

[VoR]

One of the more controversial Oscar hopefuls this year. It's essentially a reverse Driving Miss Daisy with an allegedly shaky grasp on the truth. It was written by the son of the character Viggo Mortensen plays, and the family of the real life Don Shirley have harshly disputed the implication that the two characters were ever actually close friends, and claimed that the characterisation bears almost no resemblance to the man they knew.

Putting all that aside, I found this film totally average. It seems to have its heart more or less in the right place, and the performances were good, but there was nothing to particularly make it stand out, and elements of it felt *very* heavy handed and dated. It'd feels like the kind of really middlebrow Oscar hit that would've cleaned up ten-fifteen years ago, but I'd have thought we'd moved past this sort of stuff in 2019.

 

[Phoenix]

I mean it was an alright sit (the old people in my screening clapped) but it’s so basic and stupid that the racist white guy is suddenly cured from racism and then teaches the black (musician non the less) about Aretha Franklin and fried chicken is just dumb.

 

[Commotion]

Viggo Mortensen is 60. Why is he playing a character who is meant to be 32?
Pleasant enough film though.

 

[FetchFugly]

I saw this today. Certainly heavy handed but the lead performances made it work.

It was going to be an 8, but -1 for the last ten minutes or so.

 

[HeLikedTurner]

I know it's supposedly "problematic", but I thought it was a very fine film indeed. Great performances all round and it did exactly what it set out to do very well.