Based on the true story of an Italian-American bouncer from the Bronx and a gifted African-American musician, “Green Book” is a buddy picture with a message of tolerance.
Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), a.k.a Tony Lip, is an out-of-work bouncer looking to make a few extra dollars to pay bills and buy Christmas gifts for his wife Dolores (Linda Cardellini) and kids. He lands a gig working for African-American pianist Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali). The musician hires Tony as his chauffeur for a concert tour that will take them from Manhattan to south of the Mason-Dixon line. “You won’t last a week with him,” says Dolores. “”For the right money I will,” he replies.
The deal is simple. If Shirley makes it to every concert on the two-month tour Tony will be paid in full. “You better be home for Christmas,” says Delores, “or don’t come home at all.”
To help them navigate the trip they bring along the “Green Book: For Vacation without Aggravation,” a motorist’s travel guide to safe havens for African-American people travelling in the Jim Crow South. Together this odd couple—the plainspoken driver and the erudite concert pianist—journey into the south looking for, and finding, common ground. “Anyone can sound like Beethoven,” says Tony, “but your music, what you do, only you can do that.”
“Green Book” is a crowd pleaser of a movie. Playing it safe the film is content to skim the surface of the racism that lay at the core of the story. Instead it relies on the characters and situations to illuminate the horror of Shirley’s experience in relation to the colour of his skin. It takes its subjects seriously but places them in a formulaic story that plays out in a relatively predictable way. That’s not to say it isn’t moving or enjoyable, it just hits all the beats you might expect.
At its heart are Mortensen and Ali. As Tony, Mortensen side-steps most Italian American caricatures. He plays Tony as a kind-hearted chatterbox, loyal and quick with his fists. He loves his wife and kids but what makes him interesting is his ability to learn. He learns from Shirley, how to write a proper love letter and (AND THIS IS NOT A SPOILER) how to put aside ingrained prejudices and judge people for who they are. The “Lord of the RIngs” actor embodies the character, making him a likable conglomeration of cuss words, backwards attitudes and temperament.
Mortensen has the showier role but Ali provides the heart. Imperious—he first meets Tony while sitting on a throne of sorts—brilliant and deeply wounded, Shirley is a complex character. Whether he’s rolling his eyes at Tony ignorance—“It’s Orpheus and those aren’t children, they are demons”—or smiling graciously at the racists in his audiences, Ali owns it. Shirley begins aloof, as though we’re observing the character from the concert stage but Ali gradually adds layers of vulnerability, grit and grace. “You never win with violence,” he says after Tony has slugged a man in a racially motivated incident. “Dignity always prevails.”
“Green Book” probably could have hit a little harder but its message of unity, of creating bridges rather than walls, is a welcome one in these politically divisive times.
Based on the true story of an Italian-American bouncer from the Bronx and a gifted African-American musician, “Green Book” is a buddy picture with a message of tolerance.
Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), a.k.a Tony Lip, is an out-of-work bouncer looking to make a few extra dollars to pay bills and buy Christmas gifts for his wife Dolores (Linda Cardellini) and kids. He lands a gig working for African-American pianist Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali). The musician hires Tony as his chauffeur for a concert tour that will take them from Manhattan to south of the Mason-Dixon line. “You won’t last a week with him,” says Dolores. “”For the right money I will,” he replies.
The deal is simple. If Shirley makes it to every concert on the two-month tour Tony will be paid in full. “You better be home for Christmas,” says Delores, “or don’t come home at all.”
To help them navigate the trip they bring along the “Green Book: For Vacation without Aggravation,” a motorist’s travel guide to safe havens for African-American people travelling in the Jim Crow South. Together this odd couple—the plainspoken driver and the erudite concert pianist—journey into the south looking for, and finding, common ground. “Anyone can sound like Beethoven,” says Tony, “but your music, what you do, only you can do that.”
“Green Book” is a crowd pleaser of a movie. Playing it safe the film is content to skim the surface of the racism that lay at the core of the story. Instead it relies on the characters and situations to illuminate the horror of Shirley’s experience in relation to the colour of his skin. It takes its subjects seriously but places them in a formulaic story that plays out in a relatively predictable way. That’s not to say it isn’t moving or enjoyable, it just hits all the beats you might expect.
At its heart are Mortensen and Ali. As Tony, Mortensen side-steps most Italian American caricatures. He plays Tony as a kind-hearted chatterbox, loyal and quick with his fists. He loves his wife and kids but what makes him interesting is his ability to learn. He learns from Shirley, how to write a proper love letter and (AND THIS IS NOT A SPOILER) how to put aside ingrained prejudices and judge people for who they are. The “Lord of the RIngs” actor embodies the character, making him a likable conglomeration of cuss words, backwards attitudes and temperament.
Mortensen has the showier role but Ali provides the heart. Imperious—he first meets Tony while sitting on a throne of sorts—brilliant and deeply wounded, Shirley is a complex character. Whether he’s rolling his eyes at Tony ignorance—“It’s Orpheus and those aren’t children, they are demons”—or smiling graciously at the racists in his audiences, Ali owns it. Shirley begins aloof, as though we’re observing the character from the concert stage but Ali gradually adds layers of vulnerability, grit and grace. “You never win with violence,” he says after Tony has slugged a man in a racially motivated incident. “Dignity always prevails.”
“Green Book” probably could have hit a little harder but its message of unity, of creating bridges rather than walls, is a welcome one in these politically divisive times.
Who says there are no new ideas in Hollywood? A week ago we had “A Bad Mom’s Christmas,” the heart-warming (or should that be heartburning) tale of three young moms trying to make Christmas perfect for their families until their mothers crash the scene bringing with them expectations and judgement.
This week along comes “Daddy’s Home 2,” the story of two men Dusty (Mark Wahlberg) and Brad (Will Ferrell), a father and stepfather who just want Christmas to be perfect for the adorable kids they share. It all goes well until Dusty’s rough-around-the-edges father (Mel Gibson) and Brad’s lovey-dovey dad (John Lithgow) both come to town.
One stars women, the other, men. You’re not having déjà vu, they’re completely different, see?
When we last saw Dusty and Brad they asked a very simple question, What do kids need more, a father or a dad? Anyone can be a father, the opening narration tells us, but it takes real work to be a dad. Dusty is the mild mannered stepfather to Brad’s biological children. What’s Dusty like? “Imagine if Jesse James and Mick Jagger had a baby,” says his ex-wife Sarah (Linda Cardellini). “He sounds like a rascal,” says Brad.
The kids adore Brad because he’s more fun but Dusty, though uptight and dull, is always there when the kids need him. By the time the end credits roll the two have figured out an uneasy dente in the co-parenting game.
This time around it’s Christmas and the co-dads are determined to make it perfectly cool yule for the kids. “I got as big surprise,” says Brad. “This year, no more back and forth at Christmas. A together Christmas like a normal family.” The stressful time is made more stressful when the grandfathers show up, turning the cool yule into a blue Christmas.
For most of its running time I thought “Daddy’s Home 2” was the laziest comedy of the year. Then I thought all the way back to last week’s screening of “A Bad Moms Christmas” and I remembered—even though I tried to forget—what little effort that movie put into story, jokes… well, just about everything.
Then something else happened, after an hour and twenty minutes of uninspired comedy seemingly Xeroxed on Christmas wrapping from the 2015 original film, “Daddy’s Home 2” manages to turn from lump of coal to a diamond. At least for a few minutes. It’s too little too late, but you will leave the theatre with a grin.
Now for the elephant in the room; Gibson is a major character, eating up screen time like Santa chowing down on gingerbread cookies. In a completely charmless and grating performance he plays Dusty’s snickering dad as a man who thinks everyone not with his last name is a snowflake. He encourages his young grandson to slap a little girl on the bum and tells the kids a joke that begins with, “Two hookers walk into a bar.” If you didn’t want to see the movie because of him, this is not the performance that will win you over.
“Daddy’s Home 2” gets some things right. When the middle daughter continuously turns up the thermostat so she can be warm while she sleeps with the window open, it ignites a thermostat war that will be familiar to anyone who has ever paid a heating bill. When the movie latches on to those moments, it works. When it doesn’t, it’s as stale as last year’s fruitcake.
Richard and Will Ferrell chat about the new movie “Daddy’s Home,” drinking at the Stay Classy, the world’s only Will Ferrell themed bar and whether or not he’ll be back on “SNL” doing his George W. Bush routine!
Linda Cardellini’s new show is filmed far from Hollywood. The former Mad Men co-star plays Meg Rayburn, wayward daughter of a large, secretive family in the Netflix series Bloodline. She co-stars with Kyle Chandler, Sam Shepard and Sissy Spacek but says the Florida Keys location is as much a part of the show as the cast.
“It is otherworldly. It is different from anything I have known,” she says. “It is a place that has a duality to it. On one hand it is extraordinarily beautiful and on the other there is this oppressive heat and slight danger that follows you around everywhere. When you’re in the elements there are a lot of things around you that are sometimes friendly to human beings and sometimes not so much. It’s perfect for the show because it really shows this paradise and on the other side here are these really dangerous things.”
When she was first approached to do the Bloodline there wasn’t even a script for her to read.
“There was a pitch,” she says, “and I had a meeting with [producer] Glen Kessler and he spoke so beautifully with so much rich detail about who this person is, what she means to the family, what the story means. To me that was very exciting; how much he had to say and how much he knew. It showed to me that the creators of the show were very interested in each and every one of the characters. To have the family dynamic be appealing you have to understand every facet of the family.”
The pitch won her over, in part because she had just binge watched the legal drama Damages, the last show from the same producers.
“When I watched Damages I loved how they wrote for women,” she says. “I thought what could have been viewed as a stereotype was introduced and explored in such a fashion that broke all those stereotypes and broke all those glass ceilings about what a female character could or couldn’t be. To me that was very exciting.”
She now hopes people will binge view all thirteen episodes of Bloodline which went up on Netflix last week.
“I love it,” she says of binging in front of the TV. “It has invented a new way for people to get entertainment. I think it’s great because you don’t have to make an appointment with the television. You don’t have to rely on it coming on every week and waiting.”
