Green Book

The incredibly simple, flat story, is saved from my sheer hatred (which I felt for the idiotic racial jumble The Help) by humor, and by the fact that it’s so stupid and stupider that there is no way it will offend you. The themes of tolerance and self-acceptance do not make much sense. The film, like a forged midcult, avoids everything that is even slightly problematic (or looks at it helplessly as a doctor looking at working nurses), and it always finds a way to get away from it. If I wanted to play at being Žižek, I would see an extraordinary tragedy about how two people help to create a fake version of themselves (supposedly better, yet totally a lie for the person watching). Farrelly's directing is about as progressive as the filter his cameraman uses, but one thing that he has is almost ingenious - the cast. The two idiots are so nice and relaxed that it's hard not to enjoy it for a while. They can convince most people that this film is not as hollow as it seems. Burn after reading. (06/03/2019)

If someone had told me at the beginning of the year that the best film would be a road movie drama with Oscar ambitions, I would have laughed them off, but hats off to them, this is a cinematic gem next to which Forrest Gump and The Shawshank Redemption look like B-movies. Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali deliver superhuman performances and their chemistry is flawless. The film pulls up a lot with tasteful and apt humour, the mafia undertones and the strong racism of the time. There are tense scenes and, most importantly, emotions, where I found myself crying for maybe two whole hours at a stretch and that never happened in my life. After watching it, I immediately got the feeling that I had to see the film again with everyone close to me and that doesn't happen often. The event of the year and for me possibly the best drama ever. 100%. (07/02/2019)

Miss Daisy's driver upside down. A nice, sadly funny and non-conflicting humanly warm film on a serious topic. Just saying nothing that other similarly nice, sadly funny and non-conflicting humanly warm images wouldn't have said already with an equally nice, sadly funny and non-conflicting humanly warm taste. It's not an average movie just because of the working dynamics of the central duo; even if one has to get used to Mortensen in “a true Italian almost parody mode". (27/01/2019)

An easygoing road-movie with strong characters (Mortensen steals the show), a convincing period atmosphere, and dialogues that don’t hurt, at least to watch once. But the “conflict” that the film offers is so unoriginal and fake that it buries the quality of the whole lot. The development of Tony’s racist views are almost invisible and the script is basically a series of stops at moral clichés and shoddy motifs (the cop on the road, the “white” restaurant). There was potential and I can praise Farrelly for the fact that I rooted for protagonists, but that’s not enough to make an above-par social drama. 60% (25/01/2019)

If American Beauty offered a sophisticated, often subtle and graceful critique of the American middle class, Green Book, in a similarly bittersweet vein, presents the issues of racism in 1960s America, unassumingly, without relying on pathos, witty and with just enough insight. Viggo Mortensen dominates with his De Niro accent and redneck diction, Ali got the Oscar because he's black. For a film that is mostly about the interaction of two characters, it is brisk, fresh and entertaining. (03/03/2019)