POLL 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri' Is...

No option for an okay movie with good filmmaking and bad ethics.

(cause that'd be my choice)

Bad movie bad filmmaking who cares about ethics

unseen til the library reserve comes up

bad, stupid, pointless movie.

a good barometer tho, i can now judge people's tastes at a stroke if i hear them praise this film

The filmmaking is horrible wtf

Typical medium shot set-up, and conceptually it rises no higher than McDormand talking to her slippers.

I wanted to vote for an OK movie with bad filmmaking and bad ethics but accidentally voted to say the ethics were good.

The first few weeks of this thing was really like Milkshake Duck: The Movie

I have yet to determine what its 'ethics' are, precisely, though that may be part of others' problem with it.

Filmmaking is too broad a term. I think it's generally very well acted and not-uninterestingly written, but as others have said at least a little hamfisted in its tonal variation, treatment of various issues, and relative level of development of various often-unpalatable characters (all perhaps characteristic of the director), though the quarter-cocked nature of its black comedy does seem to suit the times to some degree and however problematic the continuing refinements of some of the characters, I found this a storytelling mode more satisfying than usually found in equivalent sorts of films.

It's not an especially good movie, but the level of opprobrium for it strikes me as a little bit off/odd.

It's because of a raft of Oscar noms obv

If it had slunk off and disappeared in July, I wouldn't have minded so much, but the studio released it in December as an Oscar contender.

first one

i thought the trailer looked really funny with all the badass frances moments but then everyone started talking about how bad it was. so i never saw it.

slevin psychopaths and war on everything were so unbelievably fucking terrible that even with mcdormand and harrelson involved I won't go to a movie by whichever wasteman brother did this

Is there some B-tec First award Movie directing course they both did? I can't speak for his other sibling, but this 'un sounded like an absolute smug buffoon on a recent r4 interview. I couldn't even force myself to watch his movie after hearing that. It would be like reading a Tristam Hunt book or something.

war on everyone was unwatchable. like it was made by an 11 year old quentin tarantino fan. i couldn't believe how bad it was and i only made it about 20 minutes in.

Yeah both were like that

I'm genuinely never going to see a film by anybody named mcdonagh even if it isn't their fault, these two worthless cunts have ruined it for everyone

I made it ten mins in or so to WOE

Other McDonagh is nowhere near as good as the one that is ok at dialogue and comic book characterisation

numerous specific gripes have been levied against the film, both in the dedicated thread and in the wider critical sphere. everyone has the right to disagree with those takes, obviously, but it's not like it's some mystery why people are like gtfo with this being a best picture contender. for example, it's been repeatedly pointed out that the three black characters totally lack interiority or emotional arcs; they're just props there to let us know who to root for or how to feel at key points. i've yet to hear someone argue that they do have interiority and emotional arcs, so i guess the counterargument is "this does not bother me because the film was so good in this other way" and just for me personally that didn't wash, even though i did really enjoy mcdormand's performance and got teary at some of harrelson's narration.

for me it sort of boils down to, if you're just trying to make a meditation on vengeance and grief, and have no knowledge of or opinions on race in america or police brutality, maybe don't make your movie about race in america and police brutality. throwing those in for ~american flavor~ or to pat yourself on the back for being unafraid to ruffle feathers, or whatever the hell mcdonagh thought he was doing, isn't just lazy, it's insulting. hence my pick: "i guess for me it's not super important whether it's a good movie or whether it was created using good filmmaking. i resent the decision by the filmmaker to make the film the way he made it; it seems like an asshole decision on his part." ymmv.

Hugely otm Dr c

Also like apart from everything else I don't think Rockwell would have gone free for attempted murder and I don't think McDormand would naturally have been arrested for setting the station on fire and I don't think natural police would have all friendly like had rockwell back to the station for chatz and this was all after the horrible horrible scene where quirkyface mcexhubby chokes her out before a hilarious applied knife to throat resets everything back to normal lolz

I mean morals, ethics, political point-missing aside these are lumpen stupid things to write into your movie

clicking like on that 2nd paragraph by Dr C.

The ending = one of the more appalling I've seen in a lifetime of moviewatching..

I rather liked its inauthenticity and (unintended?) tone-deafness to certain aspects of US culture. Gives Americans a taste of their own medicine. I'd vote for 'ok film, don't give a fuck about its ethics' if that were an option.

seen worse but its p bad

Re: Doc C's race-in-america+police brutality and intentionally topical descriptions - are you aware (of the claim) that it was written a decade ago and is that irrelevant or do you discredit it?

The fuck would you write about those topics a decade ago and not amend that shit for today when making it now that is a nothing point

Cmon!

Ok, if you take it as a movie about now, is it off the mark to describe it as a movie that attempts to put white middle America in the shoes of, say, Gloria Darden?

Oh definitely, definitely

What?

This film is definitely bad if one of these terrible brothers who are bad at writing wrote it

Alfred, I think your review is very good, but I've read the movie somewhat differently, assigning more weight to the ending than you have. That is, I see this as potentially a movie attempting, however unsuccessfully, to raise questions about the morality of vigilantism (where the authorities are one or more of biased, stupid, distracted, or subject to interference from external forces). While I agree in some sense that it is chickenshit to leave that loose end so untied, I think this choice is intentional to prompt viewers to ask whether the target is in fact guilty of the crime at issue, guilty of a different crime, or a personality-disordered but innocent offensive fantasist, as well as about the perhaps very different motivations and degrees of investigation or certitude that bring the two characters towards the only potential decision that might in fact equate them. I say all this of course as someone who opposes vigilantism and believes deeply in legal process.

The ending is tacked on so why give it such favour

If you say so.

I think you are putting much more effort into thinking about this movie than the director ever did MV. You should listen to the moron talking about his "art".

That's kind of what I'm wondering, whether there's some sort of visceral dislike for the director that explains the dislike for the movie. I had a similarly strong negative reaction to the portion of In Bruges I once saw on tv, but some people seem to regard that as his 'good' movie.

the ending wasn't ambiguous, i didn't think. he was not guilty of the crime at issue, presumed - though the uncertainty of this presumption was not highlighted - to be guilty of a different crime.

xp

There's quite a few of us on here that that think In Bruges is unspeakably shite as well. But I do have a friend who considers it a classic!

it's a classic to the empire magazine crowd

mcdonagh looking at his decade-old script in 2017 and going "cool, nothing that's happened in the world has changed my sense of how i might proceed with handling any of these topics" makes him more of an asshole, not less.

the ending wasn't ambiguous, i didn't think. he was not guilty of the crime at issue, presumed - though the uncertainty of this presumption was not highlighted - to be guilty of a different crime.

― khat person (jim in vancouver), Saturday, March 3, 2018 12:21 AM (nine seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not cosigning this in its entirety but easier than doing it myself - https://www.filmcolossus.com/single-post/2018/02/25/Explaining-the-end-of-THREE-BILLBOARDS-OUTSIDE-EBBING-MISSOURI-the-theme-of-moral-ambiguity-how-endings-inform-the-story-and-whether-or-not-Mildred-kills-the-soldier

And I should add I have no knowledge of that site/those people

best not engage w/this big bore's outsized 'nebbing misery

this Lidl thing is the best McDonagh film y/n

Crazy Lidl thing u love

One Supermarket Outside Dublin, Ireland

Three actually!

oh shit haha

it literally in sentimental montage has saintly Woody, who can't bear to allow his family to deal with his demise, give racist cop bro his endorsement. he's just a kid, he'll be a good cop once he stops being a violent racist cop. in this montage, a guy who would literally leave his hooded, shot body for his family to find is cast as a wise, kind fellow instead of a fucking psycho, though that's hardly surprising - this is a movie that would have of think the sober, world-wise position about racist cop is we should look into his heart instead of his daily, grotesque abuse of power. the movie's not really coherent enough to be dealing with any of this; it's just incompetently telling us a story and hoping we'll do the work of its ideology for it. but when you do that work, it's clear everybody involved thinks years of violent racism on the job is ok if the guy who'd leave his body for his children to find says the dude has a good heart.

*line one: gives not give
*later down, "have us think" not "have of think"

no way I redact correction one, give is correct, it's just an awkward sentence

Three messageboard posts outcried negging mcdonagh

oh man

Swing away imo that is a better written post than this movie and also addresses America more competently and subtly I ain't shamed

One thing that's really funny to me is that everyone is dinging this movie for its morally complicated characters and goofus screenwriter patter when those things make up like an insane amount of critically adored "prestige TV"

prestige TV basically is stuff like this except dragged out for whole weeks of your life

p sure nobody has said "what i hate about this movie is that it has morally complicated characters"

isn't entire argument is about whether a racist cop is redeemable?

*isn't THE

Black characters are sidelined, police brutality is thrown in cursorily as a plot point and the film makes a hamfisted attempt to make a stock racist cop complex. It's a load of piss when it comes to race. It's not that it's too morally complex.

let's remember that Oscar and Frances McDormand were also involved with the morally spotless Mississippi Burning, in which two white FBI agents saved the civil rights movement.

no, please see my multiple posts on other reasons why i hated the movie. but also: arguing over the handling of the racist cop's redemption is not the same as saying the movie is bad because it has morally complicated characters.

but if i did want to get into the rockwell redemption stuff and the "ambiguous ending" discussion - the problem with the ending is not that we cannot perceive or handle moral ambiguity, it's that we think mcdonagh is being glib and irresponsible to treat this as an interesting moral ambiguity. if we follow him, we're accepting an unacceptable equivalence (as alfred articulated very nicely in his review). again, if mcdonagh believes that this makes it an even better and more ~provocative~ film it makes him even more obnoxious, not a sophisticated challenger of our simplistic moral assumptions or w/e.
rockwell's character is a monster who commits at least three serious atrocities in the course of the plot. mcdormand's is a victim who has (through some rather contrived sequences) slipped too far into almost becoming a monster herself, but still nothing on what rockwell has done. now they're going to team up to do something which depending on your moral POV might constitute an irrevocable turn into monstrousness for her and just plain old more monstrousness for him. or maybe they won't do it. or maybe they'll run out of gas because mcdonagh thinks idaho is an easy little road trip away from missouri.

whatever, so maybe you find that an interesting ambiguous point on which to end the film but to me it feels like the film imagines this new quandary is just infinitely more interesting than anything we previously knew about rockwell, all of which turns out to just add up to "hey he's a complex flawed human" and not in fact "he's a monster." the only real ambiguity is between the inclusion of countless details that establish that rockwell is a monster, and the treatment in tone and narration and emotional beats which suggests the film believes he is something other than a monster, to which an american thinking about police brutality at this point in time can only think "fuck you and your blue lives matter horseshit."

Ya

Any other read is impossibly challopy or desperately and stupidly generous

There's also the terrifying possibility that they're setting up the sequel: Two Holy Vigilantes Inside Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, in which they team up with the rapist veteran to set fire to a preschool.

The brother is worse, although it's kind of like choosing between Fred and Rose West.

But as noted, he gets away with a lot thanks to the gravitas of Gleeson and the fact that international audiences aren't familiar with the country he's hamfistedly portraying

Martin McDonagh defends his plays against accusations of Oirishness by saying that he's spent lots of summer holidays in Ireland as kid.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jan/11/three-billboards-director-martin-mcdonagh-little-girls-dont-have-a-marlon-brando-or-james-dean-to-emulate

Should have added a caveat there - plenty of Irish people like the McDonaghs too, but most Irish people are feckin eejits

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/movies/three-billboards-outside-leitir-meallain-connemara-celebrate-martin-mcdonagh-36624524.html

Lol, a couple of weeks in Kerry every year during your childhood is all you need to write in fluent Oirish.

the reason In Bruges works is because it doesn't pretend it has anything to larger to say (about Irish society, about American society, about whatever the fuck he was going for in Seven Psychopaths). It's actually about a well-meaning buffoon who's completely ignorant of the culture around him (an unwitting self-critique on the part of the author?) but it's also just an entertaining crime story. After that, he got notions

also Leitir Mealláin is in Galway but sure look

Calz referring to his own iirc

Should have added a caveat there - plenty of Irish people like the McDonaghs too, but most Irish people are feckin eejits

― Number None, Monday, 5 March 2018 18:32 (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Trootbomb

aye, was just generalising about the UK Irishness of the McDonagh type. I can remember Irish from the slightly posher end of the spectrum who'd send their kids to full kilt Irish Dancing lessons. Maybe it could be formative experiences like this that turned them into a pair of wazzocks.

isn't entire argument is about whether a racist cop is redeemable?

you are not getting what people hate about this movie

MMc's latest the-ultraviolent-Irish play (straight from London) is selling out off-Broadway right now.

He's a bit selective that way imo

A huge hit in London, this Royal Court production of the black farce “Hangmen” — by Martin McDonagh, currently an awards-season darling as writer-director of “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” — makes a smooth transition to the Atlantic Theater with a largely American cast well-coached (by Stephen Gabis) in the dulcet dialect spoken in the rugged north of England.

omfg

Dulce dulce leeds

sorry about the goof, i've only seen two of his Irish underclass plays

Tbh I'm genuinely curious about how an American interpretation of a Yorkshire accent has turned out. More Chicken Run than Chickenley I'm guessing, but I heard McDonagh visited to Compo's Cafe once in '98 and has a writerly keen ear for the nuances of regional dialect.

a guy who would literally leave his hooded, shot body for his family to find

For me this was one of the more extraordinary and hard to deal with parts of the film. But wait, maybe it's a clue... the cop who's painted as a decent family man just trying his hardest against impossible odds is in fact a complete asshole with terrible judgment, so the letter he writes to Rockwell is totally misguided and bogus, giving the lie to any idea of Rockwell's redemption. mindblown.gif

There's also his apparently casual disinterest in taking seriously/doing his job, apparent failure to fire or even punish an officer we're repeatedly told has engaged in racist brutality (that, I think intentionally, we never actually see, though we certainly see evidence of him being incredibly violent, which does get him fired basically on the spot by Harrelson's apparently-more-serious replacement, and at least joking about his own/the department's apparently widespread reputation for racism), and at least expressed (disinterest in the wellbeing of wide classes of the citizenry but) willingness to seek to punish people for personal reasons, among other abuses I may be forgetting or that one could imagine (I have no dog in the suicide, which doesn't particularly signify as immoral to me). But maybe I'm missing some basis for deeming him saintly (a term that like redemption doesn't have significant presence in my vocabulary or cosmology as a non-Christian).

All of us in the audience know that these things make Harrelson horrible but it is really really not clear that McDonagh thinks so. The character is "saintly" in an almost literal sense - his chief characteristic is taking suffering onto himself and turning the other cheek. Despite all the lapses we might observe in his professional conduct, personally he takes the billboards in remarkable stride (the film basically thinks McDormand is wrong to blame Chief Woody but that with his dying-man's perspective, he recognizes that this is something she emotionally needs to do and he doesn't really GAF at this point). We get the tender scene of him taking the family out on one last day trip, he's clearly marked as a Good Dad, and then his first letter (to his wife) is the most writerly and decent and speaking-to-goodness thing in the film (even if we're scratching our heads about the logic of them finding his corpse etc.). His letter to McDormand is almost as big a neon sign for him being A Good Guy if I remember right, so clearly we're being set up to accept the letter to Rockwell as a similar gift of goodness from beyond the grave, rather than the reprehensible hand-waving of police brutality it actually is.

Ok, I accept that, but read the film and therefore director differently.

He's an emblem of "defend the people you know in the name of community" Vs "defend behavioural standards in the name of justice"

The movie clearly approves of this. Were Rockwell's character actually defensible or were his redemption a lot less easy and trite it could be interesting

But they aren't and it isn't

The most interesting thing about the movie is how we are pretty well set up to both sympathise and disapprove of McDormand's character's cold inflexibility but allowing it to turn into the brutalist cop's redemption arc is a waste of all that

One ridiculous moment i don't think has been mentioned yet is the flashback that established that the night her daughter got raped and killed McDormand had an argument with her, refused to pay for her taxi so she had to walk out into the night, and her last words to her daughter were "I hope you get raped". Maybe McDonagh thought this was a Jamesian turn of the screw, it felt more like a Cleesian slap with a fish.

Jesus attacking the man's subtlety seems a but much

hahahahah yes that was so over the top and unnecessary i started cackling

i thought this movie was very funny in its absurdity

Yes

i mean, throwing dude out of the window? setting fire to the police station? the indefensible method of suicide? hilarious. im not being sarcastic, the movie is like an episode of South Park.

this is another reason why the invocations of race and policing in america, and sexual violence generally (all things that normal humans justifiably take seriously) is so disastrous - if this was just a tale of absurd violence spiralling out of control in some small town, as playwrighty conversations wind around them, it'd be viable as a dark comedy that probes some weightier themes of grief and the morality of revenge and vigilanteism. basically "in bruges" again.

is -> are

that "i hope you get raped too" scene was the most hilariously on the nose scene i've seen in years

i was not exactly feeling the movie before it, but that was the scene that made me think, "THIS? THIS IS THE MOVIE YOU RAVED ABOUT?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh-tugm-NPI

another party is heard from