Green Book was solid as well

wouldnt a fact this was a true story based on real people and their real experience help?

"A long time ago I swore off movies where a mis-matched couple bond on a road trip."

That's what the trailer presents, which was enough for me, plus I like Viggo Mortensen.

But the movie is far much more than that.

This is one of the best movies of all time, especially regarding civil rights and race relations, but without specifically touching on those historical touch points.

Movies specifically about civil rights and race relations, whether fact or fiction, tend to be very preachy and hit you over the head, regardless of whichever side you fall on.

But Green Book deals with civil rights and race relations in such a clever way that, on its surface, it seems to be just another movie where a mis-matched couple bond on a road trip.

I've seen that comparison made.

Green Book does refer to specific matters regarding Jim Crow segregation, the need for societal change, and the Kennedy brothers. It is not a movie about the civil rights movement, but it does speak to those historical concerns. 

I certainly do not consider Green Book one of the best movies ever made, but I agree that it manages to be both a terrific character study/male-bonding movie and also an important social-historical film that delightfully uses humor to expose the injustice of segregation and bigotry. And the movie also poses and explores complex issues of self-identity and racial identity, doing so in a way that is unpretentiously humorous yet also affecting. Overall, I deem the film "very good." 

Nebraska is a road movie, but it is not necessarily a film about two mismatched figures bonding. That aspect is sort of there with the father and son, but it does not play in that conventional way. 

I'm afraid it wouldn't. It is surprising how many peoples' true story experiences follow a tried and true movie plot/character arc after screenwriters and producers get through with it.

Excellent post. I enjoyed it very much, as well as the insightful comments from others that followed. One of the ways to avoid many of these pitfalls is to concentrate on just one era or major incident in the person’s life and let that stand for who the person was. Take “The Life Of Emile Zola” (directed by William Dieterle), which won the Best Picture Oscar for 1937. In a 10 or 15 minute opening montage, the early life of the great French writer and social activist is rapidly covered - his struggle to have his books and articles published. But, after the success of Zola’s first novel, the movie suddenly jumps ahead several decades to a time when Emile is rich, famous, and honored by the literary establishment; he has even received an invitation to join the Royal Society. But he has plunged into the Dreyfus case and the appalling injustice done to that Jewish army officer. Zola then has to decide whether to keep his hard won respectability, or, at an advanced age, go back out on the edge and fight another hopeless cause. The result is a movie masterpiece for which no allowances need to be made.

So much of modern major American film output is cookie cutter story telling. The Road Trip, the Sports Movie, the famous movie star playing someone with a disease, etc. The bio-pic is no different. There is really not much interest by the film makers to show what their subject was actually like, but just to hit familiar movie tropes that will make audiences feel comfortable by showing them what they are used to instead of challenging them.

Oh, I couldn't agree more. The Oscars, in particular, are a mash-up of artistic awards and an industry product show not unlike the auto shows in big city convention centers. While smaller indie films are often nominated and awarded, mainstream and "comfortable" films more often headline the annual awards presentations in order to win more interest in going to a theater or buying a disc to see the movie. The aborted "Most Popular Movie" award idea was just another move in that direction.