[size=4]Source: sandiegoreader.com[/size]

[quote][size=3][align=left][blockquote]To pick up some side money, a raffish Copacabana bouncer agrees to chauffeur and an African-American jazz musician on a concert tour through the deep South. Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali’s deeply engaging performances are the best Christmas present moviegoers will open this year. It’s when the two finally find themselves on even footing that the picture goes beyond a standard lecture on the evils of racism. Directed by one half of the Farrelly Brothers, Green Book isn’t content to simply smell like a Driving Miss Daisy. Surprisingly, the messages are not imparted with a wagging finger, but smuggled in as a shared experience. Is it a feel-good charmer poised to rake in greenbacks and Oscar gold? You bet! But don’t let that keep you away from this overall well balanced (and timed) look forward from the safe distance of America’s motley past. 2018.

[size=3]— Scott Marks[/size]
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[size=4]Source: timeout.com[/size]

[quote][size=3][align=left][blockquote]Call this actors’ duet sentimental and simplistic at your own peril. Green Book may well move you, possibly to tears, at the thought of real social change and kindness (at a time when we need it badly). Something of a reverse Driving Miss Daisy, it charts a road trip into racism shared by two well-worn stereotypes, characters that, almost surprisingly, come from real life—a true tale that happened in 1962. “Tony Lip” Vallelonga (a pizza-chomping Viggo Mortensen) is a brutal NYC club bouncer prone to howyadoins. On the hunt for work, he gets an unlikely gig at the invitation of Don Shirley (cryptic Mahershala Ali, superb), a finicky black jazz pianist who requires a tough driver to escort him on a tour of the Deep South. Tony’s no bleeding heart, but for the right price, he’s willing to swallow his pride.

The mouth, however, can’t be closed: Tony cuts loose with deliriously rude arias about Little Richard, fried chicken and the proper way to write a love letter, and both actors shade their roles with unexpected nuance and a generosity of spirit. They widen the already spacious Cadillac into a stage for some of the most relaxed banter of the year. If you recall the movies that Green Book’s director Peter Farrelly made with his brother Bobby (There’s Something About Mary, the Dumb and Dumber saga), you won’t be surprised by the crassness or the unexpected heart, both Farrelly trademarks. The new film creates a beautiful friction eased by conversation—somewhat calculated, yes, but near-heroic in our moment when civil discourse seems less likely than an infinity war.

Green Book, so titled for the guidebook printed for “Negro motorists” hoping to avoid trouble in a region where lynchings weren’t a distant memory, is a much classier affair than any of Farrelly’s prior comedies. When it gets around to its dark side—as well as a Mississippi Burning earnestness—you’ll want to protectively hug its two leads. Concerts will be played and bigotry confronted, yet the most sophisticated aspect here are a pair of transformations so quiet, you might miss them. Don, the closeted artist, stymied in his classical aspirations and a joke to himself, knows he must go on Christmas Eve to the one person who sees him for who he is. And Tony, sitting at his kitchen table, can no longer tolerate any hurtful talk. The film believes in a better us, even if we’ve done our best to drive it away.

— Joshua Rothkopf[/quote][/align][/blockquote][/size]



[size=4]Source: nytimes.com[/size]

[quote][size=3][align=left][blockquote]I saw “Green Book” in a crowd of older white people — the precise audience this film had in mind. Once it was over, they clapped and commented to one another about how good the movie had been. “That was the best film I’ve seen in years!” one woman said as she walked out with a smile on her face.

I could understand why.

Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali are wonderful. As a white driver, Frank Vallelonga, known as Tony Lip, and his black employer, the composer and musician Don Shirley, in the 1962 South, they have genuine chemistry that plays like a Miles Davis solo with a Cannonball Adderley accompaniment. At the end of the film, Frank’s journey from racist to respectful employee is convincing.

There have been plenty of objections to the movie, which is up for five Oscars, including best picture, at the Academy Awards on Feb. 24. There’s the simplistic way it portrays race and its decision to tell the story exclusively through the eyes of a white person, Vallelonga, learning to see the humanity of a black one. I, too, was troubled by these flaws, but what bothered me most was a scene that almost no one is talking about — and everyone should be.

About halfway through the film, Shirley is arrested at a Y.M.C.A. in Memphis. The police have caught him having sex with a man we have never seen before and do not see or hear from again. The scene comes as a shock: Shirley has been largely solo most of the film, and there is no indication until then that he is either gay (indeed, there is mention of a past marriage to a woman) or bisexual. After a few tense moments, the situation is resolved (as many situations are in this movie) with Tony Lip saving the day. He pays off the police officers, but Shirley is hardly grateful and chides his driver: Tony is “rewarding” the officers for treating the men in such an inhumane way … and that’s it. It is never brought up again.

To be sure, for the era, Tony Lip has a rather progressive view of Shirley’s sexuality. Tony indicates he’s accepting of gay people from his time working in New York nightclubs. Still, we hear nothing more of Shirley’s relationship with his sexuality for the remainder of the film. No delving into what it means to be a black man attracted to men in 1960s America. And no wrestling with the enormous stress that Shirley must have felt.

The way this film deals with Shirley’s sexuality is especially problematic in the wake of recent events. A few weeks ago Jussie Smollett, a star of the Fox show “Empire” and a singer-songwriter, was hospitalized after he was attacked in Chicago by two men shouting racial and homophobic slurs at him, according to a police statement. The men hit him in the face, poured an “unknown chemical substance” on him and wrapped a rope around his neck, the statement said, and the police are investigating the attack as a possible hate crime. This is why what “Green Book” is doing to Shirley’s sexuality is, at best, damaging, and, at worst, reprehensible.

It is not safe to be a same-gender-loving person in 2019, more than 50 years after the incidents in “Green Book.” As Smollett and countless others can attest, there are still many spaces in this country that black men who love other men cannot go without concern for their safety. (Indeed other lesbian, gay and trans people of color face similar threats.) In “Green Book,” Don Shirley’s life was in jeopardy because of whom he loved. His livelihood may very well have been taken away if word ever got out about who he lay down with. By merely nodding at the subject, the film fails to treat this complex man with the dignity he deserves. And by not exploring Shirley’s lived experience, the film allows us to move past the threat that he, Smollett and others face.

There aren’t many black and gay characters in popular films and shows today. Smollett’s “Empire” role is one. The central character of “Moonlight” is another. With that drama winning the Academy Award for best picture just two years ago (and with Ali winning best supporting actor for his role as a sympathetic adult in a gay black boy’s life), “Green Book” feels like a miss.

Dr. Shirley’s family has been outspoken about how the film mischaracterizes him and his relationship to them. The screenplay essentially turns Shirley into a black man who thematically shapeshifts into whoever will make the story appealing to white audiences — and that’s inexcusable.

— Lawrence Ware[/quote][/align][/blockquote][/size]