Green Book

Green Book is based on the real life friendship between a nightclub bouncer from New York, Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), and an African-American pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali).

Vallelonga also know as Tony Lip, for his bullshitting expertise, is hired as Shirley’s driver and minder as he goes on tour through the still segregated deep south of America in the early 1960s.

They are armed with the Green Book, a guide to hotels and restaurants hospitable to black people, which means that the employee often gets better accommodation than his boss. The further south they go, the more prejudice they encounter and the more Shirley is viewed as a novelty act rather than the world class musician that he is. Shirley knows all this but he is doing this the tour out of defiance because he wants to confront the racism head on even if he isn’t allowed to use their bathroom.

Vallelonga not only has to drive Shirley, ensure that he always gets to play on his cherished Steinway piano, but he also has to protect him from himself. He is prone to act in a very erratic fashion from time to time. Vallelonga has to deal with some thugs in a bar for him and when his sexual escapades with another man land him in jail, he is the one who manages to free him.

 

As the two start to bond, you just know that the pair’s better qualities will rub off on each other and that is how it pans out. The more articulate Shirley even dictates letters for Vallelonga to send back to his wife (Linda Cardellini).

Sadly a lot of the film doesn’t ring true. At the start we see Vallelonga put two glasses in the bin because his wife has let two black workmen drink from them but this level of fanatical racism seems to immediately disappears the moment he meets Shirley. He also appears to be an expert in black culture who introduces his employer to the joys of Aretha Franklin and James Brown. Amazingly Shirley is unaware of them. Oh, and of fried chicken.

It's amiable but lightweight entertainment despite it's heavyweight subject. Generally it is a film more focussed on friendship than civil rights but for saying that we weren't sure if we wanted to see this or not it was a very pleasant surprise. Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen are both excellent and make a very engaging odd couple.

Vice

A band called The Brakes have a song called 'Cheney'. It is only ten seconds long and its entire lyric is 'One, two, three, four... Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney. Stop being such a dick.' It's blunt but for a protest song it is a little light on detail.

Not so Adam McKay's Vice, which presents an entire charge sheet against the man. It will depend what your persuasion is politically whether you believe him or not. He also admits right at the start that he's up against a very secretive man who was also meticulous at covering his tracks.

This is McKay's follow up to the outstanding ‘The Big Short’ where he made mortgages almost enjoyable. The film is narrated by a fictional character called Kurt (Jesse Plemons), whose connection to Cheney isn’t revealed until much later in the film and makes for an interesting plot device.

Throughout the film, Cheney (Christian Bale) is painted as ruthless ambitious political animal, oil mogul and waterboarding fan. Alongside him is a cast of powerful political people. Such as Colin Powell (Tyler Perry), Scooter Libby (Justin Kirk), Condoleezza Rice (LisaGay Hamilton) and Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell). All are easily recognisable likenesses.

It is Rumsfeld who inaugurates Cheney into Washington in the first place and continues to pop up throughout the story. Then there’s Cheney’s wife Lynne (Amy Adams), who is almost as ruthless as Cheney himself.

The story gets even more interesting (and more controversial) when we get to George W. Bush’s (Sam Rockwell) presidency where Cheney reshaped the role of Vice President from merely a ceremonial one to one with real power. That is all the powers he wanted and Cheney seems to manipulate Bush at will. The Bush period is clearly the film’s main target and questions this administration on almost everything but most specifically on 9/11 and on Iraq.

Say what you like about his politics and his morals (or lack of them) but Cheney certainly knew how to take his opportunities. The only handbrake on Cheney’s ambition comes when he considers the effect his career would have on his daughter Mary (Alison Pill), a committed lesbian and very much pro same-sex marriage which certainly isn’t the Republican Party’s line. Yet he ditches even those considerations in the end.

In a speech towards the end of the film, Cheney says that the public got what they wanted because they elected him. This is a message backed up by the film makers in a scene after the end of the film, amongst the credits that the many who leave before these roll will have missed.

Going back to a Republican Party focus group that appeared earlier in the film, this group are now discussing the film itself and coming to blows about it. Apart from one young woman who, looking bored, turns to her friend and says she really wanted to watch the new ‘Fast and Furious’ movie. The message being that she’s not really interested in what matters. A message that could just as easily be applied in the UK at the moment.

A very decent film with Bale, if you can spot him under the make-up and padding, excellent.