Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri 2017

• Director: Martin McDonagh
• Based on the novel: no
• Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Hedges, Zeljko Ivanek, Peter Dinklage, Amanda Warren, Samara Weaving, Clark Peters
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Frances McDormand – Moonrise Kingdom, Almost Famous, North Country, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Burn After Reading, Fargo, Palookaville, Barton Fink, Mississippi Is Burning, Raising Arizona, Hill Street Blues
• Woody Harrelson – The Hunger Games, 2012, Battle in Seattle, No Country for Old Men, A Scanner Darkly, Prairie Home Companion, North Country, EDtv, The Thin Red Line, White Men Can’t Jump
• Sam Rockwell – Moon, Frost/Nixon, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, The Green Mile, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hill Street Blues
• Caleb Landry Jones – No Country for Old Men
• Lucas Hedges – Manchester by the Sea, Moonrise Kingdom, Dan in Real Life
• Zeljko Ivanek – In Bruges, Manderley, Hill Street Blues, Dogville, Dancer in the Dark, Homicide Life on the Street, Snow Falling on Cedars, Ellen Foster, Donnie Brasco, the X Files
• Peter Dinklage – X-Men Days of Future Past, Station Agent (nope, I have never seen Game of Thrones)
• Samara Weaving – nothing, but she was very good here
• Clark Peters – London Spy, John Wick, The Wire, Notting Hill
• Amanda Warren – Taken
• Why? The title. Frances McDormand
• Seen: 25 August 2019      

       Didn’t McDormand get an Oscar for this?

       The three billboards are faded and falling apart. Mildred Hayes (McDormand) rents them for a year. Her message: ‘Raped while dying.’ ‘Still no arrests’. ‘How come, Chief Willoughby?’

       Her daughter was raped and murdered seven months ago.

       Officer Dixon (Rockwell) is racist, homophobic and somewhat stupid. Willoughby (Harrelson) is basically decent and dying of pancreatic cancer. He tries to explain to Mildred why no arrests have been made.

       Mildred’s ex-husband is a cop and wife-beater and now has a 19-year-old girlfriend (Weaving). Mildred’s relationship with her daughter hadn’t been great, either. Guilt feelings run deep.

       Complex relationships within families and within the small town of Ebbing make this much more than a bad cop vs victim film. The drama and the twists and turns are almost unbearable but it’s actually quite often funny. The acting is incredibly good. Yes, McDormand got an Oscar. So did Rockwell. They deserve it. I wonder why the film didn’t get it. The Shape of Water did and while Sally Hawkins was very good, as always, the film didn’t come close to this one.

5* of 5

Darby O'Gill and the Little People

Darby O’Gill and the Little People 1959

• Director: Robert Stevenson
• Based on the stories by Herminie Kavanagh  
• Cast: Albert Sharpe, Janet Munro, Sean Connery, Jimmy O’Dea, Kieron Moore, Estelle Winwood
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Albert Sharpe – Brigadoon
• Janet Munron – The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Third Man on the Mountain
• Sean Connery – The Rock, The Name of the Rose, James Bond
• Estelle Winwood – Camelot, Bewitched, the Man from U.N.C.L.E.
• Why?  Pure nostalgia
• Seen: 23 August 2019 

Old Darby (Sharpe) likes to drink in the pub and regale his mates with tales of meeting Brian Connor, King of the Leprechauns (O’Dea), of being granted three wishes only to lose them all through King Brian’s trickery. His job is as caretaker for the lord’s estate but he’s being replaced by young Michael McBride (Connery). Darby has a daughter Katie (Munro). There’s a villain of course, Pony (Kieron Moore) whose mother (Winwood) wants him to have both job and daughter.

Well, there you have it. I think we can guess how it goes. But on the way to the inevitable happy ending there are some adventures among the little people (have the leprechauns no women?)

What my 9-year-old self liked so much about this film is hard to say. Darby is charming and it does get dramatic at the end with banshees and death wagons. And I suppose the soon-to-be James Bond with his gorgeous dimply smile and glowing brown eyes wowed little me.

Older and wiser me, I’m harder to charm. But I’m not completely immune. It was good fun. Even Hal liked it. Shall we say?

3 * of 5

Philadelphia

Philadelphia

·        Director: Jonathan Demme

·        Based on novel: no

·        Cast: Tom Hanks, Denzil Washington, Jason Robards, Anna Deveare Smith, Mary Steenburgen, Antonio Banderas, Joanne Woodward, Tracey Walter

·        Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:

o   Tom Hanks – Cloud Atlas, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Catch Me If You Can, The Road to Perdition, Cast Away, The Green Mile, You Have Mail, Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump, Sleepless in Seattle, A League of Their Own, Joe and the Volcano, Punchline

o   Denzil Washington – The Book of Eli, The Great Debaters, Antwone Fisher, The Siege, Devil in a Blue Dress, The Pelican File, Much Ado about Nothing, Malcolm X, Mississippi Masala, Mo’ Better Blues

o   Jason Robards – A Thousand Acres, Beloved, Johnny Got His Gun, Isadora

o   Anna Deveare Smith – Nurse Jackie, Rachel Getting Married, Rent, The Human Stain, Dave

o   Mary Steenburgen – Song One, The Help, Honeydripper, The Dead Girl, I Am Sam, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?

o   Antonio Banderas – Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frida, Evita, The House of Spirits

o   Joanne Woodward – must have seen her in something

o   Tracey Walter –Veronica Mars, Erin Brockovich, Beloved,  etc

·        Why?  Bruce Springsteen’s song

·        Seen:  Once before. Now 18 August 2019

Andy (Hanks) is a hotshot corporate attorney. He is given a very prestigious account.

He has AIDS. He is fired.

He turns to Joe Miller (Washington), a slick talking lawyer and rival to Andy on previous cases, to sue his employers. Problem – Joe is both homophobic and terrified of catching AIDS. Still, the legalities fascinate him, and he takes on the case.

It goes to trial.

It’s very dramatic and emotionally charged and it deals with painful and important issues. Hanks won a well-deserved Oscar. Washington could have got one too.

Unfortunately, the loving family is smeared on a bit thick and it loses momentum at the end. Cutting the last ten minutes or so would have sharpened it up.

4 * of 5

Predestination

Predestination

• Director: The Spierig Brothers
• Based on the story by Robert Heinlein
• Cast: Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Ethan Hawke – Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Cymbeline, Before Midnight, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Tape, Hamlet, Snow Falling on Cedars, Gattaca, Reality Bites, Waterland, Dead Poets Society
• Sarah Snook – These Final Hours
• Why?  Sci fi. Ethan Hawke
• Seen:  16 August 2019 

In the 70’s the Fizzle Bomber is killing thousands in New York. A time travelling agent in the future (Hawke) is given the mission to go back in time to stop the bomber. He fails in mission after mission. Now it’s his last chance because he is losing psychological stability.

Working as a barkeep in the 70’s he meets a mysterious young man – who is actually a woman – who tells of growing up in an orphanage, a violent but very smart outsider. As a young woman she is recruited by a secret government agency to be a high-class hooker to astronauts. She fails the training. A love affair leads to pregnancy which leads to the discovery that she is more male than female.

The story gradually pulls together but it’s very convoluted, not to say totally confusing, but it is fascinating and intelligent. It’s a worthy attempt at time travel drama but not fully successful at realising its potential.

3 * of 5

The Red Shoes

The Red Shoes 1948

• Director: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
• Based on the tale by Hans Christian Andersen
• Cast: Moira Shearer, Marius Goring, Anton Walbrook
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in: none of them
• Why?  A classic
• Seen:  2 August 2019

 The great Lermantov (Walbrook) takes on prodigies Victoria Page (Shearer), a dancer, and Julian Cranston (Goring), a composer, and offers them The Red Shoes, a ballet based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale of the girl who loved dancing until she donned the red shoes and was force to keep dancing until she died.

Glamour is blended with backstage sweaty hard work, romance with professional devotion and youthful enthusiasm.

Some of the scenes are stunning and the Red Shoes ballet is dramatic and colourful. The story is rather banal – though tragic in its counterparts in real life. Love or career. Can’t be both. Art or love. Can’t be both. However, the conflict in the persons of Page, Cranstan and Lermatov is moving at times.

A lot of it is boring though and the ending doesn’t sit well with me. It didn’t the first time either. As beautiful and admirable as this film is, I don’t really like it.

3 * of 5 (Hal gives it 4, maybe 5)

Under the Skin

Under the Skin

• Director: Carine Adler
• Based on novel: no
• Cast: Samantha Morton, Claire Rushbrook, Rita Tushingham, Christine Tremarco
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Samantha Morton – Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Elizabeth the Gold Age, The Libertine, In America, Morvern Callar, Jane Eyre
• Claire Rushbrook – Doctor Who, Secrets and Lies
• Rita Tushingham – Being Julia, Doctor Zhivago, Girl with Green Eyes 
• Why?  Samantha Morton
• Seen:  9 August 2019

 Iris (Morton) is resentful of her pregnant sister Rose (Rushbrook) who she believes is favoured by their mother (Tushingham). She loves her boyfriend but feels they never talk. It is discovered that their mother has a brain tumour and will soon die.

And then the mother dies.

With quiet close-up detail we see how the sisters deal with their loss and their stormy relationship. Rose retreats into family, Iris seeks solace in sex with strange men.

Morton is superb (as always) as a young woman falling apart and crashing. Rushbrook is good too.

It’s very depressing though.

2 ½ * of 5

Be Kind Rewind

Be Kind Rewind 2008

• Director: Michel Gondry
• Based on novel: no
• Cast: Jack Black, Mos Def (Yaslin Bey), Danny Glover, Mia Farrow, Melanie Diaz
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Jack Black – Margo at the Wedding, The Holiday, King Kong, School of Rock, High Fidelity, Cradle Will Rock, Mars Attacks!, Dead Man Walking, The X Files, Tenacious D
• Mos Def – Cadillac Records, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Monster’s Ball
• Danny Glover – Honeydripper, Dreamgirls, Manderlay, The Royal Tenenbaums, Beloved, Lethal Weapon, Bopha!, The Colour Purple, Silverado
• Mia Farrow – John and Mary, Rosemary’s Baby
• Melanie Diax – nothing, but I’d like to
• Why?  Enjoyed it the first time
• Seen:  Once before, when it came out, at the cinema. Now, 4 August 2019

 Mike (Def) and Jerry (Black) take over for Mr Fletcher (Glover) in his video shop while he’s away. Unfortunately, Mike is not totally smart, and Jerry is not totally sane and through wild complications Jerry manages to demagnetise all the VHS tapes in the shop.

There’s only one way to rescue the merchandise. Mike and Jerry must refilm the films, starring themselves. Ghostbusters. Rush Hour 2. The Lion King. Driving Miss Daisy. 2001 A Space Odyssey.

For being such a silly idea it’s very entertaining. Mostly thanks to Def and Black. And the Sweden jokes (have your films been Sweded???)

This is bizarre and absolutely loveable. It loses momentum towards the end, but we enjoyed it just as much this time.

4* of 5 (Hal gives it 5 and he might be right.)

Tyrannosaur

Tyrannosaur 2010

• Director: Paddy Considine
• Based on novel: no
• Cast: Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman, Eddie Marsan
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Peter Mullan – Sunshine on Leith, Top of the Lake, Liability, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Stone of Destiny, Boy A, Children of Men, Young Adam, My Name Is Joe, Trainspotting, Braveheart, Riff-Raff
• Oliva Colman – Broadchurch, The Night Manager, Doctor Who, Hot Fuzz, Much Ado about Nothing Re-told, Black Books, The Office
• Eddie Marsan – Happy-Go-Lucky, Their Finest Hour, River, Filth, The World’s End, Snow White and the Huntsman, Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows, Merlin, Sherlock Holmes, V for Vendetta, Vera Drake, 21 Grams, Gangs of New York
• Why?  The cast and the director
• Seen:  2 August 2019 

Joseph (Mullan) is violent. Really violent. He kicks his own dog to death in the first scene. He flees from himself and stumbles into a second-hand shop run by the religious Hannah (Colman) who prays for him. He hates God as much as he hates everyone and brings Hannah to tears with his vicious ridicule. Hannah, though wealthy, has sorrows of her own. Her husband James (Marsan) is horrible and she drinks. Heavily.

Two very damaged people who somehow find ways to help each other. Their pain is essentially unbearable but maybe there’s hope.

I haven’t seen the film for which Colman won her Oscar, but she could just as well have got it for this. Mullan is extremely good too and how in the world can Marsan be so good at being so bad when he’s usually so good at being good?

Oh yes, Considine? He’s just as good at writing and directing as he is at acting.

Don’t miss this one.

5 * of 5