Green Book

A movie with a beautiful premise of role reversals (white man as a servant of a black master). But it is a single-note tune, which is a accidental pun because the movie is about musicians. But Viggo as a working-class Italian is wonderful. Mahershala Ali was given, figuratively, only a single note to play with but he plays it well. Remarkable is the inclusion of Nick Vallelonga, son of the principal character, both as a screenwriter and as a cameo. This is life intruding art in its most tangled form.

Vice

The movie is not bad but it fails to show the evolution of the inscrutable psychopath within the rarest of the rare--the family of psychopaths--Lynne, Dick and Liz. In particular, nothing is told about his family and influences before his marriage to Lynne. This cannot be surprising--after all there is no rational explanation of the behavior of psychopaths other than some people enjoy hurting other people. Low IQ psychopaths become serial killers and hurt dozens; high IQs go to the media, Wall Street, the CIA and the State Department and, in the case of some, to the Presidency and hurt millions.

However, Cheney in the Dreyfus cameo in W is really shown as a pure evil without any explanation or comment. Paolo Sorrentino in Il Divo is superb in showing another inscrutable, Giulio Andreotti in minute details such as him attentively reading obscene graffiti on himself on the Roman wall or discussing household finances with his wife after the day of plotting corruption, treason and murder. But Sorrentino is the greatest director after the death of Italy's generation of the greatest (Fellini, Rosselini, Antonioni, De Sica, Visconti and Zavattini). Christian Bale is a fine actor but he was not given enough substance to work with.