Tour De Frances

Year: 2017

Director: Martin McDonagh

Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell

Run Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I had been resisting watching Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, which has been probably the most violently divisive entry in the awards bait canon in a year that's rumbling with controversy. But after it won the Golden Globe, I felt obligated to weigh in, so here are my way-too-late thoughts on the project. Strap in folks, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Why couldn't The Greatest Showman have won, so I could just review that again?

So, here's the plot. It's been seven months since Mildred Hayes' (Frances McDormand) daughter was raped and murdered. Still struggling with how to handle the loss and find closure in the case, she rents out three billboards on the road leading into town blaming the police - and especially the beloved Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), who is struggling with cancer - for not making any headway. This stirs up a lot of backlash from the town and creates a firestorm of conversation and controversy.

Policeman Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell) - that's literally his name, I don't know what to tell you - is already prone to violent rages so this doesn't bode well for the town's spirit in general. But she also gets different degrees of support and blowback from her grieving son Robbie (Lucas Hedges, who is there with bells on if you have a part in an Oscarbait movie where he gets to do an accent), the "town midget" James (Peter Dinklage), and her abusive ex-husband Charlie (John Hawkes), who is now living with his 19-year-old girlfriend Penelope (Samara Weaving). Mildred meets the blowback of the town with endless tough-mother posturing and kicking dudes in the balls.

Imagine this picture times thirty and you pretty much get it.

It's very tempting to approach this film from a moral perspective instead of a critical one, which has become ever-so common in today's online film culture. And while I would never argue that the faults of the characters (their use of offensive, outdated terms, for one thing) are faults of the movie, Three Billboards is necessarily about the muddiness of morality and redemption. It invites us to consider the morality of these characters as the story's prime currency, and that invitation leaves it vulnerable because those themes are clunky and entirely mishandled.

For one thing, this is a story about sexual assault and violence against women that was written by a man. For another thing, this is a story about racial injustice and police violence that was written by a white man. For a-f**king-nother thing, this is a story where Woody Harrelson's wife is played by a woman who's 21 years younger than him and is forced to stumble through a line about how great his penis is.

And to be frank, a white man writing this story isn't necessarily a liability. It just shouldn't be this white man. Martin McDonagh somehow manages to write a script with a central thesis on racial injustice that features three black characters with speaking roles in a cast of dozens, and two of those speaking roles have fewer words than your average cough drop wrapper. And the foregrounded statements about women fighting against assault are couched in an endlessly repetitive litany of scenes of McDormand dishing out cartoon violence with impunity. It swivels from being gritty and violent to quippy and light in lurching, uneven motions, and never manages to stretch a consistent tone over more than ten minutes at a time.

The one scene where she doesn't have her fist planted firmly up a man's ass.

The plot is messy and irritating, even though the script does find its moments to shine when the humor is isolated enough from the drama to not feel so maudlin and strained. But the actors living out that plot are pretty uniformly terrific. Frances McDormand has already been more than recognized for her work here, but she really is superb, embodying her role in a very physical, top-down performance that doesn't skimp on the little gestures and details. She even redeems some of the dumb mama grizzly scenes, peeling back layer upon layer of the character that isn't present on the page.

Sam Rockwell is doing fine work here too, especially in his most comic dopey moments, but his character is a little too off the rails of actual human behavior that he is forced to fall back on the marble-mouthed mumbling that most actors do when they want to be tough in movies set in the South. Then there's Harrelson and Dinklage being exactly as good as you'd expect (but not much more).

But honestly, if I was in charge of handing out the awards, I'd make sure not to overlook Samara Weaving, who is straight-up brilliant in an unforgiving role, constantly approaching it at a sideways angle you wouldn't expect. She's the only consistently hilarious element of Three Billboards, and that's saying something for a movie that tries very hard to be hilarious.

It is my burden to be blessed with such good taste in actresses.

However, Martin McDonagh the writer is much more successful than Martin McDonagh the director (which is saying something). He mostly just sits back and lets his excellent cast work their magic, not attempting to do anything particularly interesting with the visuals. The man only really comes alive when it's time to shoot the titular billboards, which his camera swoops over and around with pornographic fervor every time they appear.

And thus does Three Billboards spill out across the screen in a tangled mess of misguided morality and wasted talent. I found it hard to hate, but it's too slapdash to recommend. The fact that it won the Golden Globe speaks to what an uneven slate of films we've been presented with this year more than anything else.

TL;DR: Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri is kind of a mess, but it really does boast some noteworthy performances.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1005

Popcorn Kernels: Half Full, Half Empty

Welcome to our newest slate of mini reviews, about a horror-comedy with a plot that contains pretty much everything that exists and a drama that contains almost nothing.

Freaks of Nature 

Year: 2015

Director: Robbie Pickering

Cast: Nicholas Braun, Mackenzie Davis, Josh Fadem 

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Social tension arises in a town where humans live with monsters when aliens arrive. A vampire, a zombie, and a human from the local high school must team up to save their community.

Right off the bat, Freaks of Nature commits an egregious movie sin. It jams us in medias res into an action-packed scene, then pauses. Whereupon a dopey voiceover asks “How did I get here? To explain that, let’s go back to the beginning.” Now, in the comments of my American Ultra review, friend Hunter argued that several great movies begin this way. I can’t fault him for being right, but since those movies came out, this technique has increasingly been used by lazy filmmakers in cheap movies to get around the fact that their beginning just isn’t very strong.

And boy howdy does Freaks of Nature have a weak beginning. Then again, it has a weak mostly everything. But the intro that dumps a barrel of character actors who have played high schoolers for a dozen years into a pile and halfheartedly develops the world around them while they attempt to untangle themselves isn’t exactly stirring. The worst thing is that Freaks of Nature has a fun, zany concept in fact, the original title was –appropriately – Kitchen Sink), but the lackadaisical treatment it receives from the powers that be is downright discouraging.

If every scene had the subtlety of the moment where zombieism is used as a metaphor for a rebellious teen turning to marijuana, Freaks of Nature would be a post-John Hughes masterpiece. If every scene were as funny as the inexplicable cameo from Werner Herzog, Freaks of Nature would obliterate the competition for AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Horror Comedies list. You can see where I’m going with this. Freaks of Nature rarely rises above the bare minimum requirements to be a film comedy, content to sulk in a low key atmosphere for the bulk of its run time.

Far more frequent than its peaks are its valets. Joan Cusack is wasted in a role that feels like it was written for one of those American Pie spin-offs, the only thread holding up Vanessa Hudgens’ utterly empty performance is the fact that her character is supposed to look high most of the time, and the rules this universe are quickly decimated by a series of deus ex machina throwaway lines. It’s a threadbare slog with an infuriatingly disingenuous ending, supported by character relationships that are held together with scotch tape and chewing gum, in pursuit of a Zootopia-esque moral about tolerance and diversity that completely fails to catch.

It’s all the worse for the fact that this concept with this cast could have really accomplished something great. As it stands, it’s a barely-there trifle that immediately evaporates from your mind upon the closing credits.

Rating: 5/10

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Year: 2011

Director: Sean Durkin

Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy

Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A young woman escapes the cult she has lived in for two years and attempts to live a normal life with her sisters and brother-in-law.

With a title like that, is there any way Martha Marcy May Marlene couldn't be a ponderous indie flick? Hailed as the triumphant debut of the mythical third Olsen sister (the one who could actually act), it made a splash on the festival circuit, much like the similarly dour Jennifer Lawrence showcase Winter’s Bone. If you know my tastes at all, this isn’t exactly a recipe for success.

I did enjoy MMMM, but its glories are fleeting. The film splits its time between a harrowing portrayal of cult life (in flashback) and a harrowing portrayal of reintegration into a society that might be just as flawed, but it’s too distracted by its own seriousness to actually tell a complete, satisfying story. As an exercise in curating atmosphere, it’s excellent, but when they tried to put the narrative gear into drive, they forgot to depress the clutch and stalled the whole thing. 

Anyone else here drive a stick shift? No? Just me?

Let’s focus on the cult half. Here we have a dazzlingly intimate portrayal of how a charismatic charlatan (played to the hilt by a leering John Hawkes) can warp weak minds into serving his sick vision. It’s chilling in its naturalism, living in the subtle interplay between human begins rather than relying on some over-the-top, teeth gnashing villain. MMMM knows that the Manson-esque figures that lurk in the shadows of our world deliver their message with sickly sweet honey, killing you with kindness. It’s even more unbearable for its relatability.

Then there’s the other half. Olsen certainly delivers a suitably broken performance, but her sullen deliveries are no match for Sarah Paulson, as a brittle, selfish woman who strives to help her sister more out of a sense of duty than any actual emotional attachment. Her bind subscription to the tenets of society is just as dangerous as her sister’s brainwashed ideals, and her layered performance reveals things to the audience that even her character doesn’t know.

So these, two cloven segments both work on their own right, but they never synthesize into a coherent whole. The stunted narrative is just a carousel of human misery, content not to be anything more. Elizabeth Olsen is bedraggled before and she is bedraggled after, but it doesn’t seem to making a statement through that. It feels like the first act to a much more interesting story, but as it stands it is still a reliably enthralling mood piece. 

The experience of watching the movie is somewhat akin to cracking open a Kinder egg and discovering that there's no prize inside. It's a disappointing feeling, but you still have the chocolate so it's not like you can complain. It’s even acceptable despite a soundscape that feels like it was edited on Garageband. Don’t run to your Amazon queue to watch it, but it wouldn’t be so bad if it fell into your lap.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1056

There's No Time Like The Present

I've been sitting on this review for some time now because I intended to put it in a collection of smaller reviews, considering that my writeup wasn't long enough for a full post. But you know what? Screw it. The world needs to know. I can't wait anymore.

Year: 2010

Director: Debra Granik

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Garret Dillahunt

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Man, am I in a small minority here. I really do appreciate Sergio's taste in films for being so different from mine and allowing me to access a genre that I've let fall by the wayside. But this 2010 Jennifer Lawrence vehicle is absolutely impenetrable to me.

Winter's Bone is the story of a young Appalachian woman named Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) who needs to find her criminal father and get him to show up to his court date or else the government is going to seize her house. I know this because the first five scenes involve Ree going to different people's houses and telling them that exact same story.

Winter's Bone is an effective portrayal of a family rent apart by poverty and insanity and a young woman who must age beyond her years to take care of her siblings. I will give it that. But in my opinion Ree lacks any sense of real agency. Yes, she goes around trying dutifully to talk to people who might know where her father is. But for the most part, she has everything handed to her. 

Sure, she had to talk to a couple more people extra hard and she got roughed up a little bit for her troubles, but the story resolved essentially without conflict. It's just a charm bracelet of scenes of actors pretending to be rough-and-tumble mountain men. Although J-Law is admittedly great and was fed some of the best lines a story of this type could ever hope to produce.

I hope I can be forgiven for not falling under this film's spell. I understand that my tastes are far different from the norm and I'm really trying to find this film's appeal. Alas, for me it is inaccessible. This is par for the course with Oscar-nominated indie dramas, but I really wish I could find that place in my soul that would allow me to sit through such a serious film with rapt attention.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 399