Oscars 2019

So, does anyone actually like Green Book? I don't mean on ILX, but rather anyone, anywhere? To date, I've seen only one semi-positive review, and the reviewer was very upfront about how the movie is a schmaltzy, likely problematic white liberal fantasy that he found sorta entertaining despite his better instincts. Like, if Roma or Bohemian Rhapsody or A Star is Born had one, I'd get it; the former is a critical hit and the latter two were big crowd pleasers that clicked with audiences (particularly ones of a certain age). I don't even know who the audience for Green Book is supposed to be.

*had WON

i havent seen a anything about whether its good or bad thats not how we grade movies now

David Edelstein's review is basically positive.

http://www.vulture.com/2018/11/green-book-spoon-feeds-you-but-it-goes-down-easy.html

The thing that's really interesting there is the update at the end--before his Bertolucci controversy.

Pretty sure I won't ever see Green Book, much as I like Ali. Just not my kind of film--if I ever do, it'll be solely because of him. (I was going to say that "not my kind of film" applied to most of the winners this century, but, checking, turns out I've seen all but five or six--including The Artist, where I should have trusted the loud voice in my head screaming stay away.)

Ali is the only reason I'd ever see it as well (though I likely won't). It certainly isn't because I want a lecture on race relations from the director of Dumb and Dumber.

green book has a few good jokes that i laughed at, but its take on race relations is cringeworthy

Driving Miss Daisy, which gets shit for winning, is a far better picture.

This seemed calculated to annoy people

what, ILX?

My understanding is that the move to more than 5 Best Picture nominees created a ranked choice type situation where the "least objectionable" movie had a good shot at winning, even if it was no one's favorite movie. Basically it's a consensus pick. There is also a narrative that there was an anti-Roma (the front runner going into the ceremony) insurgency because of its Netflix affiliation.

^sounds right to me (although it surprises me that Green Book was the least objectionable)

that last paragraph of edelstein's review was really bad

and the first part of the review didn't seem like a convincing endorsement of the movie, either

So, does anyone actually like Green Book? I don't mean on ILX, but rather anyone, anywhere?

― Timothée Charalambides (cryptosicko)

old white people

hmmm i wonder how it won best picture

AV Club post-Oscars take seems to be relatively common:

To these eyes, Green Book isn’t an awful film. Both of the lead performances, by Viggo Mortensen and newly minted two-time Best Supporting Actor winner Mahershala Ali, are more nuanced than they had to be. And as a longtime Farrelly brothers fan, I’ll personally admit that I found it a little amusing to see a standard, self-congratulatory Hollywood social-issues movie with a main character broad and goofy enough to have appeared in, say, Kingpin. Hell, it’s probably not even the bottom of the 2019 Best Picture barrel; that dishonor is reserved for Bohemian Rhapsody, a glorified parody of biopic clichés—an accidental Walk Hard—trying to pass itself off as the real thing. But if Green Book wasn’t the worst of the eight films up, it was almost certainly the most retrograde, in its ideas and filmmaking. You watch it and think, “I thought we had moved past this sort of thing”—a dismayingly common sentiment in 2019.

"You watch it and think, “I thought we had moved past this sort of thing”—a dismayingly common sentiment in 2019" sums it up

I liked The Root's take on it.

https://thegrapevine.theroot.com/green-book-has-great-acting-a-misleading-title-and-pa-1830572839

I think it's very well shot, very funny, has a lot of great dialogue and acting and reminds me of a good odd-couple buddy flick. I also think that a lot of the racial stuff is well-meaning but deeply flawed. You can't really make a HotTakeable opinion out of that so it gets lost in the noise

There's a huge gulf between "oh-so-important racial justice tearjerker" and "white savior garbage shitshow" and the movie definitely exists in it, imo!

My 60+ coworker who is v sweet but a total ditz LOVED it said i HAD to see it and i was like sure 🙄

My Mum saw it and her review aside from generally liking it was “you’d enjoy the music”

old white ppl, basically

Whiney, what are examples of fine dialogue in GB?

huge gulf is right

thought that the screenplay was kind of ham-handed but that the acting was really good

The fifth time in six years a Mexican director has won best director. That's some kind of progress at least. Or lack of progress?

I wish Roma had won best picture

Olivia Colman's speech was so much better than the rest of the show

“My kids, if you’re home and watching — well, if not, well done! But I sort of hope you are. This is not going to happen again!”

Green Book was a big crowd pleaser. I saw it opening weekend, packed matinee full of older white people, all of them in stitches throughout. I agree with comments above about it being an enjoyable, perfectly fine broad comedy very clearly from the minds that brought you There's Something About Mary and Me, Myself, and Irene. Its racial outlook is retrograde. I didn't see Boho, but I assume Green Book is better. A Star is Born is anodyne but fine for what it is, the thing about Green Book is it's a blinkered, immature comedy positioning itself as a message movie, and it fails for obvious reasons. It won BP because old white Academy voters, like the audience I saw it with, resented being made to feel bad about liking it, and voted for it out of "rage" (quoting one anonymous Academy voter) and as a response to what they would call "SJW outrage culture." This embrace of the movie for nasty reasons (that email from the producer to the journalist is infuriatingly stupid) doesn't prevent it from sitting in the same canon as Road Trip, American Pie, Dude Where's My Car?, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Harold & Kumar, and all of the previous Farrelly brothers movies. But to see it used as a cudgel for white resentment by the Academy is upsetting, especially considering the circumstance of Spike Lee sitting there 29 years later lose to another Driving Miss Daisy.

The irony is that Black Klansman (which I didn't think was that good) was, at its most basic, about a black guy in the south ... enlisting the help of a white guy to overcome racism.

also ironic that Netflix, the champion of small screen home comfort film-watching, put forth a film that was really best-appreciated in theaters with good sound systems and big screens

xp agree that the Green Book win may have been about a backlash to the backlash

I def thought Green Book would have been a lot better if it just went full Blazing Saddles/Putney Swope instead

Like especially after Get Out and Black Panther proved you can do real, deep criticism of racism in hugely popular genre movies

Vallelonga jr. is now making a romcom about pizzeria worker meeting a woman named Patti Amore. It's titled That's Amore!

Patti Thats

i think i'm okay never seeing green book or the freddie mercury film or any version of a star is born ever

anyway, the thing people should be losing their shit about is "Skin" winning the oscar for best short film; that was the most irredeemable, tryhard powertrip, boneheaded wrt racism thing I've seen this year.

Skin sounds and looks cringeworthy.

impressed that you would have seen Skin but not Green Book or Bohemian Rhapsody! I think I want to be in that world

My stepmom asked me what I thought of the Oscar winners, and I said, "I haven't seen Green Book and don't plan to, but based on what I've heard about it, I was disappointed that it won." She was surprised because a friend of hers had seen it and loved it. Then she said that she'd gone with that same friend to see The Favourite and they both hated it so much they walked out halfway through. I asked what she didn't like about it, and she mentioned the naked dude being pelted with oranges, the "graphic" lesbian scenes, and the fact that it was "inauthentic."

I couldn't even imagine my parents watching it, but that said, I think your stepmom and friend shouldn't have walked out, it had a great ending

I saw it with erstwhile ILXor carl agatha and we both really liked it and stayed to the end.

and the fact that it was "inauthentic."

i assume your stepmom is a noted scholar of 18th-century britain?

although maybe it became more authentic halfway through and she and her friend will never know! :(

i saw precisely one of the BP nominees, blank panther, and thought it was mediocre.

the number of people i know dunking on green book has become so large, the reaction so seemingly reflexive, that i'm inclined to want to like it (or give it a try) just to be ornery.

that said, i don't know why anyone is bothered by a shitty movie winning best picture, it's a grand tradition!

wait, i lie. i did see the favourite. so that's two of the nominees.

that said, i don't know why anyone is bothered by a shitty movie winning best picture, it's a grand tradition!

― affects breves telnet (Gummy Gummy), Tuesday, February 26, 2019 12:18 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Still sucks every time. and Oscars winners/losers have a material effect on the industry. When bad films or bad filmmakers win, they'll get to make more, and with more money.

yes, otm

There was a good Green Book discussion on CNN tonight between Kierna Mayo and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Get Out was not deep. Its best scenes were the social embarrassment stuff, not the horror.

speaking of horror and of best endings, I thought First Reformed had a spectacular resolution, and as insane as the film was I thought Suspiria also had one of the great final moments of any film this year

Its best scenes were the social embarrassment stuff, not the horror.

These are not discrete elements of the film.

Sorry i can't let this go but this is an atrocity and should be called out in advance of its inevitably shitty full length version so people can avoid it.

https://slate.com/culture/2019/02/oscar-winning-short-film-skin-review.html

But even in a lineup of nominees in its category that this year included a child slowly sinking to his death in quicksand and another film that reenacted the kidnap and torture of a toddler, Skin was the pièce de résistance, an idiotic parable about racist violence so breathtakingly vulgar that the audience in the theater where I saw it laughed out loud in incredulity when the lights came up.

slate synopsis edited for brevity/clarity:

Skin opens with a portrait of a father, a mother, and their young son, attending backwoods shooting sessions and joyriding a couch tied to the back of a truck. At first, the film reads as an affectionate portrait of a particular flavor of blue-collar whiteness. Then one night at the supermarket, a black man in line smiles at the son, and when the white father sees this, he fires off a racial slur, and the two men exchange words. The father and his white power gang then brutally beat the black man nearly to death in the parking lot as his own wife and young son watch, screaming, in a nearby car.

Some time later, the Nazi father falls for a trap in the road and, as his son looks on, is kidnapped and thrown in the back of a van. He’s brought to a garage, where a group of black men - pointedly including the young son of the man the skinheads beat - cut off his clothes and hook him up to an IV. Then one of the men fires up a tattoo needle. After a long, smoky and creepily lit tattoo session, the group dumps the Nazi in the street, and we and he realize that his entire body has been tattooed pitch black. The man then goes to his house, where his young son shoots him dead. The end.

https://deadline.com/2019/02/oscars-best-live-action-short-skin-guy-nattiv-news-1202564333/

“I don’t think we were trying to make a political statement necessarily. In the short, we explored [how] what you teach your children is going to influence the next generation,” Newman reflected. “I think the beauty of Guy as a filmmaker is he doesn’t pound anything over your head. [It’s like] ‘I don’t have the answers, but these are the questions.’”

I think I want to be in that world
― Dan S

omg that synopsis!!