Opened 25 Years Ago: FARGO (3/8/1996)

 

FARGO opening in Toledo, OH on 3/29/1996

In Theaters: THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (2017)

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI
(UK/US - 2017)

Written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Peter Dinklage, John Hawkes, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges, Caleb Landry Jones, Clarke Peters, Zeljko Ivanek, Amanda Warren, Samara Weaving, Sandy Martin, Kerry Condon, Brendan Sexton III, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Kathryn Newton, Malaya Rivera Drew, Jerry Winsett, Nick Searcy. (R, 115 mins)

With its dark humor, small-town cops, generous doses of local color, quotable dialogue, shocking bursts of unexpected violence, and Frances McDormand heading the cast, it's inevitable that THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI will draw comparisons to the Coen Bros.' FARGO. But it quickly makes its case as very much its own film, and it's the best work yet from Martin McDonagh, the British writer/director who gave us the great IN BRUGES and the half-great (loved the first half, didn't care for the second) SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS. McDonagh expertly captures the small-town, rural atmosphere and succeeds in making every major character complex and multi-dimensional. Lesser films would've made everything that transpires black and white and one-sided, stacking the deck against the main character to maximize sympathy, but in THREE BILLBOARDS, everything is in shades of gray. Even the most loathsome characters have redeeming qualities, and while the outrageously foul-mouthed insults and seething anger fly fast and furious, THREE BILLBOARDS is, at its core, one of the warmest, honest, and most emotional films to hit theaters in some time.

Seven months after her teenage daughter Angela was raped, doused in gasoline, and burned to a crisp, Mildred Hayes (McDormand) has run out of patience. There's no leads, no breaks, and local police are still reeling from a recent scandal where Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a racist cop with serious anger management issues, beat and tortured a black suspect. Consumed with bitterness and rage and past her breaking point, Mildred rents out three billboards near her home outside the tiny town of Ebbing, MO, on a virtually abandoned stretch of road that's been rarely used in the 30 years since a nearby highway was constructed. They say, in succession, "Raped While Dying," "And Still No Arrests?" and "How Come, Chief Willoughby?" Understandably, police chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) is upset, explaining to Mildred that there was no DNA match, no witnesses, and nothing for them to go on. The billboards attract the attention of the local and regional media and earn Mildred the scorn of Ebbing's residents, with none more furious than Dixon, who repeatedly tries to intimidate and bully Mildred and local ad agency owner Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones) into taking them down. People also resent Mildred's aggressively calling out Willoughby since it's the worst-kept secret in Ebbing that the chief, married to Anne (Abbie Cornish) and with two young daughters, is terminally ill with pancreatic cancer and doesn't have long to live.

To say much more about the relentlessly busy plot would spoil the rich rewards THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI has to offer. The billboards have an effect on everyone: Willoughby, a good man trying to do his job and being put in an awkward position while facing his certain death; Mildred's son Robbie (MANCHESTER BY THE SEA's Lucas Hedges), who's already having a hard time getting over the death of his older sister (he thanks his mom for the billboards "in case I go more than two minutes without thinking about her"); and Mildred's ex-husband Charlie (John Hawkes), a wife-beater still prone to violent tendencies who's taken up with 19-year-old Penelope (THE BABYSITTER's Samara Weaving). But none are impacted more than Dixon, and Rockwell rises to the challenge with the film's most difficult role and most expansive and unexpected character arc, simultaneously presented as a dipshit, mama's boy cop who took six years to get through the police academy, a virulent and unapologetic racist and homophobe, and ultimately, a guy capable of recognizing the mistakes he's made and doing something to right his many wrongs. It's national treasure McDormand's film for obvious reasons, and it's probably her finest work since FARGO, but an Oscar-worthy Rockwell has never been better. All of the actors get a chance to shine, even if they only have a couple of scenes (especially Weaving as the sweet but dim Penelope, and Peter Dinklage as the local used car salesman and town drunk who has an unrequited crush on Mildred), and McDonagh's dialogue, while occasionally coming off as a little too scripted (particularly Mildred's rant at a local priest played by Nick Searcy), is brutal and lacerating in its misanthropic fury that's also occasionally sweet, if you can believe that. Only in THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI could "cunt" be a term of endearment from a son to his mom and sister. It's a moving, perceptive, tragic, funny, and devastating look at grief, choices, and the haunting regret of words and actions that you'd give anything to take back. It's one of the best films of the year.

On DVD/Blu-ray: THIS MUST BE THE PLACE (2012) and STORAGE 24 (2013)

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE
(Italy/France/Ireland - 2011; 2012 US release)

The Weinstein Company acquired this eccentric, glacially slow-moving road film from IL DIVO director Paolo Sorrentino and sat on it for over a year before sneaking it onto 15 screens in the US last fall.  It's certain to attain at least some minor cult status thanks to Sean Penn in perhaps the strangest role of his career as a reclusive, aging, Robert Smith-lookalike goth rocker named Cheyenne.  Living in Dublin with his firefighter wife Jane (Frances McDormand), Cheyenne, who still dresses the part despite having not performed or recorded in 20 years, is forced to travel home to America upon hearing that his estranged father has died.  Once back in NYC, Cheyenne is reminded of his Jewish heritage and learns from aging, foul-mouthed Nazi hunter Mordecai Midler (Judd Hirsch) that his father (whose letters are read in voiceover by an uncredited Fritz Weaver) devoted his life to tracking down a Nazi officer who tortured him at Auschwitz and is now living somewhere in the US.  Cheyenne, haunted by his own demons--he quit writing "depressed songs for depressed kids" and withdrew from public life when two teenaged Irish fans committed suicide after listening to his music--and permitted by his wealth and celebrity to remain a child in many ways, believes he's finally found his true purpose when he decides to finish his father's work and locate the Nazi war criminal.

Sorrentino's film functions as an homage to road films past, particularly the work of Wim Wenders, a point driven home by the presence of PARIS, TEXAS star Harry Dean Stanton as a chatty old-timer who claims to have invented the wheeled suitcase.  Cheyenne becomes quite the detective on his quest down the back roads of America, awkwardly meeting a retired teacher (Joyce Van Patten) who was once married to the alleged Nazi, which leads him to the man's granddaughter (Kerry Condon), a widowed waitress with a young son.  Filming in Dublin, NYC, New Mexico, Utah, and Michigan, Sorrentino does a nice job of capturing the peculiar sounds and rhythms of rural America, and commendably doesn't go for cheap, fish-out-of-water laughs, with the mumbling, vaguely effeminate Cheyenne often finding accepting, kindred spirits among these misfit souls who live off the beaten path.  This is an enigmatic and sometimes frustrating film that leaves several vital pieces of the puzzle open to interpretation, particularly Cheyenne's friendship with Mary (Eve Hewson, daughter of U2's Bono), a Dublin teenager with a delusional mother who hasn't been right since Mary's brother mysteriously vanished, but if you give it chance, it has its rewards, especially with some frequently arresting visuals and Penn's performance, while initially affected, off-putting, and feeling a bit like a stunt, gradually finds its place after a scene where he dumps all of his emotional baggage on old friend David Byrne (playing himself), whose Talking Heads song gives the film its title.  The US theatrical cut was shortened by seven minutes from Sorrentino's original version, completely removing Shea Whigham's appearance as a fast-talking businessman and the explanation of how Cheyenne is suddenly driving a pickup truck on his journey (Whigham apparently asked him to drive it cross-country for him).  THIS MUST BE THE PLACE isn't an easy film to like and anyone who assumes from a cursory glance that it'll be a Cure-inspired goth-rock CRAZY HEART will bail in record time, but road flick nerds and Penn completists will certainly want to give it a look. (R, 111 mins)


STORAGE 24
(India/UK - 2012; 2013 US release)

Uninspired at best and dreadful at worst, STORAGE 24 feels clumsily torn between being a horror movie and a Noel Clarke vanity project.  British TV star Clarke, who wrote and co-directed the moderately entertaining Tarantino/Guy Ritchie knockoff 4.3.2.1, is still trying to mount some kind of Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright breakthrough in the US market, with little success thus far.  Clarke co-produced, co-wrote, and stars in STORAGE 24, which starts its cribbing with a set-up straight out of SUPER 8 as a military cargo plane crashes near Hyde Park in central London.  As the military closes in, the area is locked down and a group of people in a 24-hour storage facility (very) slowly discover that they've got company in the form of a rampaging alien that looks an awful lot like PREDATOR minus the rasta braids.  But before any of that, director Johannes Roberts overindulges Clarke, who seems like he wanted to write a boring breakup drama intermittently interrupted by gory alien kills.  Far too much time is spent on Charlie (Clarke) bellyaching to his best buddy Mark (Colin O'Donoghue) about getting dumped by Shelley (Antonia Campbell-Hughes), who's also at the storage facility and, it turns out, has been secretly seeing Mark for months.  Even when the alien starts offing people one-by-one and the film just starts to blatantly copy other, better movies (mostly ALIEN and ALIENS, but also PREDATOR, DISTRICT 9, and ATTACK THE BLOCK just to name a few), with the alien dragging people up through the ceiling tiles, people crawling through air shafts, John Carpenter-esque score, etc. without any sense of style, fun, humor or homage, Charlie is still fixating on why things didn't work out.  Ploddingly-paced with a dull cast and shoddy CGI gore effects, STORAGE 24 accomplishes nothing other than reminding you of past films that you'd be better off rewatching instead.  (R, 87 mins)