25 must-see films playing at this year’s AFI Fest

Green Book

What’s the story?: Green Book is the story of an Italian-American bouncer (played by Viggo Mortensen) tasked with acting as a driver for Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a pianist on a concert tour of the Deep South in 1962.

On the surface, Green Book doesn’t sound like a project helmed by Peter Farrelly, one half of the Farrelly brothers who created comedy classics like There’s Something About Mary and Dumb and Dumber. The film initially premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival where it’s received generally positive reviews and currently holds a 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. However, several prominent critics have criticized the movie’s simplistic racial narrative and white savior complex. The first trailer presents this as a gender/race-swap of Driving Miss Daisy, coming off as pure Oscar bait. But it could continue the trend of safe diversity films securing nominations to head off #OscarsSoWhite complaints.

Mortensen and Ali as the leads give the film an added shot of quality and could imply Oscar success. Ali won the Academy Award last year for his searing performance in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight while Mortensen is a two-time Oscar nominee who audiences have loved for several decades. A role like this could nab him the award purely based on the narrative that he’s “due.” Either way, the two actors in unison make this a must-see, with their power for drama doing a lot to head-off weightier critiques.