Driving Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford, 1989)

Typical Hollywood fundamental attribution error whereby race relations exist solely on the level of the individual, here a Jewish Southerner (Jessica Tandy) who overcomes her folksy racism by befriending her Black chauffeur (Morgan Freeman). The film has more trenchant things to say about aging than race. But it's all done up so politely, so anonymously that it's near impossible to remember even basic plot points a month later. 

Far more fascinating is the abyss of a career that is Bruce Beresford's filmography. Driving Miss Daisy was the first Best Picture winner since (coughs) Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding, 1932) which did not receive a Best Director nomination. The slight seems appropriate given how Beresford never rose above hackdom. He managed a romantic comedy called Her Alibi starring Tom Selleck and Paulina Porizkova (which Maltin called "amiable but awkwardly directed") the same year Daisy was released. But I have not even heard of a single one of his post-Daisy titles, from 1990's Mister Johnson all the way up to 2018's Ladies in Black. And even though Daisy cleaned up at the box office in a big way ($145.8 million on a $7.5 million budget according to Box Office Mojo), almost every one of these films lost money, sometimes lots of money. Sole exception: 1999's Double Jeopardy, an Ashley Judd vehicle lost in the morass of thrillers she was starring in at the time.

Grade: B