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 And while I would never argue that the faults of the characters (their use of offensive, outdated terms, for one thing) are faults of the movie, Three Billboards is necessarily about the muddiness of morality and redemption.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: Q4 Review Purge

In which, while I'm still gearing up to begin reviewing current films in earnest, I release mini-reviews of some 2017 releases that aren't quite recent enough to meet my cutoff for getting the full review treatment, but still deserve a nod.

Lady Bird

Year: 2017
Director: Greta Gerwig
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Timothée Chalamet
Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

In her senior year of high school, Lady Bird navigates her prickly relationship with her mother and a series of friendships and relationships as she comes of age and gets ready for college.

Given the Oscar buzz surrounding Lady Bird and the fact that it was being described as the female iteration of Boyhood, I was worried that the film would leave me a bit cold. Well, I'm here to report that I needn't have worried. Lady Bird is a frickin' delightful warm breeze of a film. It's especially relatable to me, because there's a large portion of the film dedicated to putting on a musical theater performance, something I dedicated a good 85% of my high school life too, but this film is genetically engineered to be relatable to as many people as humanly possible.

The central relationship of the film is between Lady Bird and her mother (played by Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf respectively), an effortlessly sharp evocation of the sharp edges and mercurial bonds between mothers and daughters, but every aspect of a teenager's developing friendships and loves is explored with a fine-toothed comb. Obviously nothing can beat Metcalf and Ronan (Metcalf especially delivers up a healthy platter of emotionally-laced barbs that cut to the bone), but every relationship in the film is a well-observed, matter-of-fact marvel, preserving in amber the vast spectrum of feelings that make up one's youth.

Like Boyhood, Lady Bird presents its story as more of a series of vignettes than an actual structured plot, but unlike Boyhood, it's damn funny while it's at it. I bark-laughed more than once in the theater, and the warm joviality of the film's tone makes it so that the dark moments are even more powerful, cast in sharp relief against the genial humor.

I'd say Greta Gerwig the writer is much more on the ball here than Greta Gerwig the director, who is content to bathe her terrific ensemble in desaturated, flatly presented frames, but that writing is whip-smart, capturing the lived-in reality of its setting and characters as if they've always existed, just waiting to be brought to life by her hand. Presumably on a vintage typewriter, because this is still Greta Gerwig we're talking about.

Rating: 8/10

Ingrid Goes West

Year: 2017
Director: Matt Spicer
Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O'Shea Jackson Jr.
Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Ingrid is an ex-mental patient who becomes obsessed with an Instagram lifestyle blogger, moving to Venice Beach to Single White Female her and ingratiate herself into her circle of friends.

If I didn't already have the CW show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend in my life, I'd think Ingrid Goes West was the work of a mad genius. And perhaps that's not fair to Ingrid, but that show handles how mental illness and obsession collide with the cold modern world in a way that wrings tears from me like a sopping wet rag. This movie doesn't quite reach that point, but what it does succeeds in its own, entirely unique way.

Taking the common inclination for Instagram stalking and ramping that up to its logical conclusion, Ingrid Goes West turns the psychologically dubious underbelly of social media into a twisted tale of terror. But as much as Ingrid's scheming is frightening and depressing, the fact that everything she does is instantly and completely relatable adds a startling layer of familiarity that is grotesquely juxtaposed with what could only be called a psychological thriller. It's a satirical indictment of the closed-off emotional world that social media creates, and it cuts deep.

Oh, and did I mention it's a comedy? It's not frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious, but Elizabeth Olsen is perfectly cast as the ne plus ultra of the perfectly primped Instagram hottie who lives her life out in a series of hashtags, misquoted authors, and superlatives. Then there's O'Shea Jackson Jr. (in only his second onscreen role), who breathes life into every scene he's in with an easygoing charm that allows you to forget that his character has literally one dimension and that dimension is that he loves Batman, which is maybe the most thoroughly boring character trait I could possibly imagine.

And Aubrey Plaza reaches emotional depths here that I never imagined her capable of, converting her usual deadpan personality from a sardonic sidekick role to a hollow shell for a totally empty personality. It's a shocking, sublime performance that interacts with the film's themes of identity formation and loneliness in a satisfying and visceral way. Sure, it's far from perfect, with a series of decisions in the third act that don't make a ton of sense or push the plot forward much - if at all - but as a showcase for these performers and the deeply felt central character arc, it's a tremendously satisfying bit of business.

Rating: 8/10

Coco

Year: 2017
Director: Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina
Cast: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt
Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG

On Día de Los Muertos, a young guitarist named Miguel rebels against his family, which has banned music for generations. He becomes trapped in the world of the dead, on a quest for a long-lost musician relative who can release him and approve of his love of music.

A lot of people have been saying Coco is a step down for Pixar, and they might not be totally wrong. The plot is entirely predictable from twenty minutes in, and it pulls much more from the Disney animated musical tradition than films like Up or Wall-E. But if you approach it as a Disney musical, then... Well, it's pretty superb.

Never forget for one minute that The Book of Life did more or less the same thing several years ago, a fact that I'm upset few people seem to have pointed out, but it's impossible to complain about getting multiple films based around the design and folklore of Día de los Muertos. And a mainstream American movie being so steeped in Mexican culture is almost unheard of. From the inclusion of a beautiful rendition of the folk song "La Llorona," to the appearances from many famous Mexican historical figures (including an extended cameo from Frida Kahlo, playing a hilariously exaggerated version of her personality that lovingly pokes fun at her favorite tropes and designs), Coco thoroughly pays homage to a non-American sphere, to the tune of becoming the highest grossing film in Mexican history.

But social issues aside, it's just a fun film to be around. It might not linger in the memory as long as Finding Nemo or even the short film Piper, but it's an emotional roller coaster with original songs that are much better than I would have expected from Pixar's decidedly un-musical crew (the most boring one, an inevitably Oscar-nominated musical theater standard called "Remember Me" that hits on the film's theme with the subtlety of  a jackhammer, was of course written by the Disney duo behind Frozen, and all the great ones that actually channel a distinct musical tradition were by co-director Adrian Molina and Germaine Franco - who also worked on The Book of Life, so she knows what she's doing).

Its depictions of the land of the dead are also pretty dang beautiful, an unnatural barrage of colors and lights and skeletal character designs that are enough to earn back the goodwill that the 22-minute short film Olaf's Frozen Adventure worked hard to obliterate. It's a tremendously satisfying film in its own right, even if its not totally unique or perfect. I'll be listening to the soundtrack for months to come, even if I don't feel the need to see the film again for a while.

Rating: 8/10

The Mountain Between Us

Year: 2017
Director: Hany Abu-Assad
Cast: Kate Winslet, Idris Elba, Beau Bridges
Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

When their charter plane crashes in the mountains, two strangers must fight for survival and just maaaaybe fall in love while they're doing it.

There's maybe nothing better than a soapy romance movie if you just want to have a good time in the theater, and The Mountain Between Us has all the ingredients of being a perfect good-bad romantic thriller. Who wouldn't want to watch a movie you could describe as "Alive meets An Affair to Remember"?

Unfortunately, once again the vengeful gods of boilerplate cinema have struck. Mountain is hovering somewhere exactly between good-bad and mediocre, which is the most boring place to be. It just doesn't commit to being much of anything. Whenever the movie threatens to briefly become The Revenant, every problem from a slip down a mountainside to nearly drowning in a frozen lake is solved in less screen time than it takes for Kate Winslet to take a pee.

So what we're stuck with is a low-stakes survival thriller welded to a hideously contrived erotic romance. The script makes such an effort to paint Idris and Kate's clashing as a Brain vs. Heart conflict, it forgets to give them any character traits whatsoever, other than Winslet's fake American accent, the strained vowel sounds of which are the scariest thing in the movie.

But then the movie has the gall to very clearly end, then prattle on for a good fifteen more minutes, scraping up a thin gruel of drama from a pot that has long since been drained. There's nothing worse than a boring movie that overstays its welcome, and therefore I refuse to celebrate The Mountain Between Us as the second coming of B-movies, no matter how many mind-boggling unmotivated close-ups I get of Kate Winslet's watery eyes.

Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 1189

Pahk The Cah In The Hahvahd Graveyahd

Year: 2016
Director:  Kenneth Lonergan
Cast: Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler
Run Time: 2 hours 17 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

By far the best thing about Manchester by the Sea is Casey Affleck’s SNL monologue describing it: “It’s an incredibly depressing picture. It’s really a downer. I mean, it’s great… It’s a beautiful testament to what we’ll do for our family, to how everyone deserves a second chance, and also to how unbearably sad movies can be. But it’s also great! But sad. And funny! But just, crushingly sad.”

Has there been a movie more obviously teed up for Oscar buzz? I was nervous about sitting down to another film about a deadbeat white dude feeling sorry for himself, but I underestimated Manchester by the Sea by about the same degree pretty much everybody in the world massively overestimated it.

Got some Oscarbait on your hands? Come on down to Popcorn Culture and we’ll trash it for ya, free of charge.

In Manchester by the Sea, Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is a deadbeat Bostonian working as a handyman. When his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) dies, he must move back to the seaside town of Manchester to make the funeral arrangements and see if he’s prepared to be a guardian for his nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges). Being in town forces him to confront his past, especially his ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams). Can he overcome his drunken depression and find it in his heart to take care of a teen in need?

We’ll just have to see, but the odds are against him. This IS an Oscar frontrunner after all.

Manchester by the Sea is not a fun movie, as if I needed to tell you that. But it’s also not fun in the way that giving yourself over to a harrowing movie can be cathartic. Despite its reputation for ravaging melodrama, Manchester by the Sea is a rather intimate and small portrait of a character who’s closed off from the world. And watching someone who’s dead inside going through the motions is dull, far removed from the sharp, searing pain of most cinematic tragedies. While many fans felt that the dullness is applied with such pressure it creates a kind of blunt force trauma, I slipped off the slick surface of this one, finding it hard to get a foothold in any remotely engaging character element.

That doesn’t mean you won’t like it. By all accounts, most film viewers differ from Yours Truly (if they didn’t, The Boy Next Door would’ve had a much higher box office take), But for this reviewer, the emotional core of Manchester was too distant to feel any true connection.

Fortunately, that almost doesn’t matter, because what people don’t tell you is that the film is also quite funny. Manchester by the Sea has a similar sense of humor to The Fighter, chucking a handful of aggressive Bostonians into a room together and seeing what sparks fly. Hedges and Affleck have a prickly yet easy chemistry that feels as lived-in as if they’re genuine relatives, but strained by their circumstances and clashing personalities.

Probably like when Ben comes over for dinner.

And yeah sure, there are plenty of Oscar reel showcase moments. Michelle Williams gives a hauntingly broken performance is what is more like a glorified cameo, Hedges shines with his brassy rebellion until a standout breakdown scene of his own, and Gretchen Mol shines in a brief appearance, cementing in the film’s themes of guilt and addiction. Affleck doesn’t really stand out from the pack because his character is purposefully underplayed, but he is the glue that holds the film together nevertheless.

Manchester by the Sea has a lot of strengths, but a strong hook is not one of them. It’s not quite misery porn, not quite comedy, and not quite realism. And it’s certainly not quite great. It has its share of small, memorable moments crafted through subtle physical performances and dialogue, but other times it drowns out its own characters with endlessly repetitive driving scenes and a swooning score, bizarre tangents that make it clock in at two and a half hours long, and a certain lack of grace in the bigger dramatic moments (including a bar fight that elicits a gasp from a crowd of apparently invisible women at a pub filled with men – the sound designer must have had a hot date that night, because that rushed slip-up is punishing.)

Sure, I liked Manchester by the Sea. Its run time flew by and the humor was engaging. But the drama elements are so quiet they’re nearly inaudible. If you respond to movies about loss and broken people, by all means go see it. But otherwise, unless you’re like me and aiming to see all the Best Picture nominees, you could much better spend that time somewhere else.

TL;DR: Manchester by the Sea is overpraised, but it's an engaging, strangely funny, intimate tale of loss and addiction.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 829