Definite Best Picture Candidate

Rating: 8/10 (27 November 2018)

Confession: when the film introduced us to Dr. Don Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali), I thought that he was disgustingly pretentious and garish. He had exotic furnishings and clothes, and he sat on... a throne. I didn't know if the film was trying to present us to him as a self-actualized and respectable person. Although Viggo Mortensen's Tony character was ignorant, he seemed much more likeable to me than Shirley.
I was extremely pleased as the film progressed to confirm to myself that they were willing to expose some of Shirley's pretentious tendencies as character flaws. Although his character arc wasn't as extreme as Tony's arc, this film's director Peter Farrelly and the multiple screenwriters who constructed it did a fine job of illustrating profound growth in each man. One of the saddest and most meaningful moments that I've ever seen in a film is when Tony returned to a massive, loving Italian family, and Shirley returned to his empty, sanitary, lonely apartment. Whereas he was a pariah in the deep south, he was now also a solitary figure in his own home. I'm unashamed to admit that I bawled. So my opinion of him did a complete 180. Mission accomplished, film.
If it has flaws, I believe that it made Tony seem a bit too oafish, and he was condescended to by various people a bit too much. I enjoyed the hilarious, ironic
moments when he doesn't even seem to realize what he is saying-- i.e.: when speaking about Robert Kennedy: "what else does he have to do?" What else does the Attorney General of the United States do aside from bailing out lesser-known musicians from jail? But I thought that they leaned on it a bit too much. Also, if you're really familiar with film making (a curse, to be sure) some of this material might feel a bit too "safe" and paint-by-numbers.
However, it's twenty times better than last year's "Best Picture" winner ("The Shape of Water") even the vast majority of last year's Best Picture nominees.