#brian currie

[moviesframes]

The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022)

Directed by Peter Farrelly

Cinematography by Sean Porter

[straightfromamovie]

Whatever you do, do it 100%. When you work, work. When you laugh, laugh. When you eat, eat like it's your last meal.

Tony Lip’s father, Green Book

[finns-poe]

Maybe when I feel up to it, we can drive out to that little place in La Conner. Mm, long weekend the two of us, right? 

Brian Currie and Tom Beckett in The Inbetween Season 1 (2019)

[asexualtuckerfoley]

if you fucking kill him i’ll kill you, screenwriters

[daltonboettcher]

Green Book (2018)

In the late fall of 1962, “Doc” Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali)—a brilliant African American pianist living above Carnegie Hall—and Frank “Tony Lip” Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen)—an unsophisticated Italian American father, husband, and former bouncer—set off on a concert tour in the Deep South. Green Book is their story. Its title refers to the Jim Crow era publication of the same name, an annual guidebook for African-American roadtrippers and a resource that Tony would need during his time on the road as Don’s driver and general chauffeur.

The film was written by director Peter Farrelly, Brian Currie, and Nick Vallelonga (the real Tony’s son), and its screenplay—while occasionally heavy-handed—serves as an essential backbone for the film that grew up around it. This is a story of plot, action, and character—with the latter repeatedly defined by the two former—and there is great joy in watching these two incredibly different people get to know and understand one another through that vital and under-practiced instrument of ours: conversation.

Green Book is funny, entertaining, and heartwarming, and, as made clear by its director’s acceptance speech for the Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) win at the Golden Globes, its 56-year-old story carries a message we could all use today. Put an underdeveloped bigot in a car with someone he thinks he doesn’t like and watch as our underlying humanity emerges. It can’t help but happen in all but the most hardened of racists. Conversation matters. Listening reveals the heart that beats within us all. Imagine if we all tried a little harder.

★★★

[pigballoon]

Green Book

(Peter Farrelly, 2018)

To me the most important thing to point out about this movie is that if you are (as I was) one of those people that think this movie looks like eye rolling, preachy nonsense, like the kind of white saviour garbage we’ve all seen a thousand times before... It isn’t... At least not as much as it looks like it is.

No, Green Book does actually handle things with a little bit more tact than you might expect from one of the Farrelly brothers. Not all the time, there are certainly scenes that are head slappingly stupid (one near the end with a cop springs immediately to mind) but throughout the course of its run time the movie time and again shows a propensity for not doing things in the most sledgehammer subtle on the nose sort of way.

The first major example is in establishing the Viggo Mortensen characters feelings about folks of other races. No racist rant, no deplorable actions, instead as he beholds two men he does not expect doing something that makes him obviously uncomfortable we get a close up of said act from his point of view, the old Taxi Driver trick, the difference between a movie and a character being racist, taking their perspective to quietly but undeniably make a point. Further still when the two principle characters meet the build towards said meeting is set up in such a way that suggests outrage or disbelief is to follow. It doesn’t.

In short, the writers don’t set the character of Tony Lip up to be some caricature racist monster, so the arc they send him on across the course of the movie is a little bit more believable, feels more of real life, less like something from a cartoon. There’s also a scene where our two principles are saved from a hairy situation via political intervention, and the Ali characters concern over the way he’ll be viewed by said intervener following this incident is another of the films highlights. Still another is a potentially misguided argument about who is more black than who, sort of rescued by the scene in the rain that follows. Perhaps best of all is a brief, blink and you’ll miss it line, something about how ‘they don’t have a choice about being outside. You do’. It’s just a single line, but in context it nudges you into thinking in more interesting directions than the bog standard ‘black folks are people too’ you might expect going into the film.

As noted before, there is some of that stuff. The movie is essentially a buddy comedy, two people going on a road trip and making better people of each other, so with that inevitably comes some tricky material to make work, why Kentucky Fried Chicken had to be written into it, I don’t know. Thankfully Peter Farrelly the director is expert enough at this by now to cover for Peter Farrelly the writer (and his co-writers Brian Currie, and Nick Vallelonga, son of Mortensen’s character. The family of the other character seem a lot less impressed with all of this) and not only is this movie a super easy, breezy quick watch for a movie that is 2 hours in length, a film that manages to be effective in its dramatic moments, but also absolutely hilarious on a consistent basis. It is about as watchable a movie as I’ve seen in a while, and so just as Hollywood has always managed at its very best, it blinds you with its gloss and pizzazz so that the niggling little issues feel that much more forgivable while you are wallowing in its pleasures.

Chief among those pleasures are the central duo (aided by the radiant Linda Cardellini) Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali are a seemingly odd double team who prove one of the great cinematic double teams in recent teams. The two men bounce off one another beautifully, with Viggo’s borderline caricature and Ali’s more buttoned up, pained mystery of a man the fire and ice that work in perfect harmony. The moments then when Mortensen gets super serious, or Ali opens up are all that much more powerful, and each man is performer enough to nail said moments and their characters in all their shades.

So yes, far from a perfect film, certainly better than may have been feared from a brief reading of synopsis or viewing of trailer or poster, but thanks primarily to the class of its two leads and skill of the filmmakers a blissfully enjoyable watch for the most part that commits the sorry sin of being interesting enough to leave you disappointed that it didn’t go further down exploring the interesting routes it touches on.

[straightfromamovie]

The world's full of lonely people afraid to make the first move.

Tony Lip, Green Book

[blogdemocratesjr]

Green Book by Nick Vallelonga & Brian Currie & Peter Farrelly