Film of the Week: Green Book

It’s become trendy to bash this film, with the online brigade reacting in horror to its Trump-supporting screenwriter and straightforward view of the cure to racism being old-fashioned male bonding. Sure, this true story of an African American musician being chaperoned by a burly white guy around the Deep South in the Sixties may not win any awards for subtlety, and it does feel pitched to an audience insulated from the discrimination it depicts. It also, however, has its heart in the right place, and Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali are sensational, visibly enjoying sparring with the other. And how’s this for a fun fact: in real life the man Viggo plays went on to play Carmine in The Sopranos! Times