{"id":7711,"date":"2019-01-17T08:14:53","date_gmt":"2019-01-17T13:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7711"},"modified":"2019-01-30T08:10:52","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T13:10:52","slug":"weekend-movie-picks-1-18-1-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7711","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Movie Picks – 1\/18-1\/20"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Green Book<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By now you may have heard of the Shirley family’s reservations about director Peter Farrelly\u2019s movie, despite its winning a Golden Globe for best motion picture (trailer<\/a>). Based on a true story, the script was written by Nick Vallelonga, Peter Farrelly, and Brian Currie, who won a Golden Globe for best screenplay<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s no faulting the acting, Mahershala Ali (Golden Globe)\nportraying sophisticated jazz pianist Don Shirley, and Viggo Mortensen as his rough-around-the-edges\nand racist chauffeur, (Nick Vallelonga in real life), are both tops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They embark on a concert tour of the Deep South in the early\n1960s, before the Civil Rights movement, and encounter all the expected\nrestrictions, slights, and prejudices. And that was part of the problem. I\u2019d\nalready imagined, known about, and seen these situations in many other films back\nwhen this type of content was an eye-opener. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I fear it gives today\u2019s white people a too-easy win,\nencouraging us to think \u201cI\u2019m sure glad I\u2019m not like those Southern racists.\u201d Racism\ncan\u2019t be just put in a drawer as if a piece of the past that no longer needs\nattention. Black Americans traveling today still\nencounter racism<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps a new generation needs these reminders, and perhaps younger\npeople will take from the film the powerful lesson that connection and friendship\nand respect can grow between people who are so unlike each other. That\u2019s\nsomething to hope for.Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics\nrating: 81%; audiences 94%.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the Basis of Sex<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having seen and enjoyed the documentary RBG<\/a><\/em>, I was prepared\ntro be disappointed in Hollywood\u2019s version of Ruth Bader Ginsburg\u2019s career, directed\nby Mimi Leder with a script by Daniel Stiepleman (trailer<\/a>). To my delight,\nI was not. Felicity Jones as RBG and Armie Hammer as her devoted and amazingly\npatient husband Marty do a fine job, Mel Wulf (Justin Theroux) of the ACLU is\nbusy being political, and the courts are against her, but Ruth soldiers on to\nvictory (as we know beforehand). I particularly liked the scene where opposing counsel\nwaved a list of the hundreds of U.S. statutes that applied differently to women,\nthinking to show how \u201cnormal\u201d the practice was, and RBG instead used it to show\nthe practice was pervasive and pernicious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a>\ncritics rating: 71%; audiences 72%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Haven\u2019t heard of this one? Me neither, until I found it in the Academy Award shortlist of nominees for song and music. This Coen Brothers experiment appeared ever-so-briefly in theaters then went straight to Netflix (trailer<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an anthology of six short stories, alike only in the brothers\u2019 trademark dark vision and black humor, and it won the best screenplay award at the Venice International Film Festival. There’s music too, of the cowboy lament variety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each of the six tales has its own cast, including Tim Blake\nNelson (Buster Scruggs), Liam Neeson, James Franco, Brendan Gleeson, Zoe Kazan,\nTyne Daly, Tom Waits, and Bill Heck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is violence, of course, but most of it is cartoonish. While there\u2019s humor, there\u2019s wistful sadness as well. Most memorable, I think, is the story \u201cMeal Ticket,\u201d in which a young man with no arms and legs but a wonderful voice for oratory (Harry Melling) performs for a dwindling audience of shantytown residents. In the story, \u201cAll Gold Canyon,\u201d featuring Tom Waits, you\u2019ll see the most beautiful valley imaginable.Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 92%; audiences: 77% <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Green Book By now you may have heard of the Shirley family’s reservations about director Peter Farrelly\u2019s movie, despite its winning a Golden Globe for best motion picture (trailer). Based on a true story, the script was written by Nick … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Weekend Movie Picks - 1\/18-1\/20 - Green Book snagged important Golden Globes, but is it a winner?; Hollywood's RBG story; and the Coen Brothers make a musical--well, almost","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[269,272,366,266,57,104],"tags":[1480,1478,1476,805,1477,1479],"class_list":["post-7711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actor","category-comedy","category-drama","category-history","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-coen-brothers","tag-green-book","tag-on-the-basis-of-sex","tag-racism","tag-rbg","tag-the-ballad-of-buster-scruggs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Green-Book-movie.jpg?fit=446%2C299&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-20n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7711"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7715,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711\/revisions\/7715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}