A good old-fashioned feel-good movie

Rating: 9/10 (15 January 2019)

If "Green Book" does win the Oscar for Best Picture, as some people think it might, then I for one won't complain. There are, of course, better pictures, ("Roma" and "The Favourite" to name two), but this extremely well-made, nicely directed, intelligently scripted, (if at times a little too obvious in its heart-tugging sentimentality), and very well acted movie ticks all the boxes. It's a feelgood film of the old-fashioned kind that can look back at the bad old days of segregation rather smugly from its 21st Century perspective without feeling particularly smug.
It's a movie about how two mismatched people, (a chain-smoking, rough speaking Italian-American and an African-American you might even call 'uppity'), who, on a long road trip in the Deep South in the early sixties, bestow on each other the gifts of friendship and humanity. Even if you knew nothing of the 'true' story of the musician Don Shirley and his driver you can predict the outcome from the get-go. Of course, it also helps that it's also very funny despite the seriousness of the material and that leads Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali are so damn good, (Ali's second Oscar in three years looks like it's already in the bag). It is, then, something of a treat and might even convince you to seek out the music of Don Shirley.