I recently caught up with two Best Picture Winners for the first time; both of them I didn't like!
Grand Hotel is a movie I've known about forever but never saw --- finally I had a chance to watch recently, but realized I wasn't missing much. I felt the characters were introduced to the audience too quickly and I kept trying to follow with what everyone's purpose in the hotel was. Joan Crawford shows up as a stenographer/reporter needing to interview Wallace Beery for some reason but gets distracted for about 20 minutes fighting off flirtatious advances from John Barrymore's character. Beery has a German accent in this film and his character is different from other tough-guy roles I've seen him in. Lionel Barrymore comically plays a doctor but is ultimately un-interesting. Greta Garbo also shows up but also was really un-interesting to me.
This movie didn't work for me! Apparently it was turned into a musical about 30 years ago but I can't imagine how better or worse it would be with songs.
I also did not like Green Book. I didn't find the Viggo Mortensen character very likeable or believable at any stage of the film. At the very start of the movie he is shown throwing two glasses in his garbage can at home because two Black workers drank from them. If he hates Black people so much I can't believe that he would ever take the job as a driver for Mahershala Ali's jazz musician character, which is almost made to be slightly comical when more seriousness should have placed on his character, I felt. And the movie should have focused more on him instead.
The movie as a whole just didn't work for me. The blogger and former TV personality Bobby Rivers wrote about Green Book and I tend to agree with his assessment; he explains a bit better than I can - Blog post from Bobby Rivers' blog talks about Green Book
I also recently watched another movie about a Jazz player and his white friend - Round Midnight - it's been on my "to-see" list for years and I finally watched it for the first time, and I liked it. Liked it much better than Green Book. Like Green Book, Round Midnight is also about a Black jazz musician (Dexter Gordon) in the 1950s-early 60s era, but in a different country and in a neighborhood with less racial prejudice. Instead of at the prime of his career, Dexter Gordon is at the end of his career - and life. He's a heavy drinker.
The film shows how he befriends a white Parisian man who has idolized him all his life. When they meet and become friends, the white man becomes his caretaker and lets him live in his home with his daughter.
It's similar to Green Book in that it is ultimately a bout how an artist inspires another man's life. But in Round Midnight there's lots of jazz and musical performances from start to finish. I was convinced that Dexter Gordon was this jazz musician in Paris, and that he really was an alcoholic. It was almost difficult to watch because I really felt I was watching a real person disintegrate on film.
