Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Seen at the Studio Cinema in Dunoon

Cecil says:  The strangest thing about the timing of watching this film is that only the night before we had watched a DVD of a classic film made 50 years ago, and immediately there were so many parallels. In fact, some might say that Sidney Poitier's In the Heat of the Night inspired Three Billboards so much that you could argue the new film is virtually a remake of the old.

It's the setting of a small town police station, though in Missouri now rather than Mississippi; there are the bumbling idiot cops with their racism and sexism (the latter is new in the 2017 film, mind); the Chief who means well and is trying to do the right thing by the disadvantaged; and the black hero, who in both films is a senior police officer, though Poitier is the main man right from the start in the Heat, whereas Clarke Peters only comes in at the end to sort out the mess in Three Billboards...

There's a lot of violence in Three Billboards, some so bad that I had to look away. There isn't a lot of joy, either, but since we're dealing with a middle-aged woman coming to terms with her anger and grief over her teenage daughter being raped and murdered, as well as the anger and internal confusion in many of the small-town folk she has to deal with, I guess laughs were never likely to be aplenty here.

It was hard to empathise with any single character in the film, too, which meant I never felt emotionally engaged or too bothered about which way events turned. Funnily enough, the only moment of being moved came from a relatively minor character, the wife of Willoughby, the police chief (Woody Harrelson), played by Abbie Cornish. Her emotion at the sudden suicide of her husband is raw and well-played, though her accent is a bit bizarre throughout, and we wondered if she was even meant to be an English woman or Aussie (she is actually from NSW).

Overall, Three Billboards was a gripping watch, though not the masterpiece some I know have claimed it to be. Coming for us so soon after watching In the Heat of the Night meant we had lots to talk about afterwards about how much (or in many ways, little) America has changed in 50 years.

***.5

Bea says: 
Watching this film made me wonder how age affects our ability to tolerate graphic depictions of violence.  Back in my 20s when Tarantino was all the rage, I saw all of them and don't remember it bothering me too much.  I haven't revisited them though - perhaps it was how it was presented?  I too had to cover my eyes and turn away from the screen a lot during this film.  It's also not one for those who don't like bad language as there is a lot of it.

The story is strong; a woman with a lot of personal issues attempts to take on a local police force and in doing so most of the small town who support them, who she feels are dragging their feet in solving her daughter's rape and murder.  It is a bleak story, and a complex one as the film uncovers themes of connection, understanding, and forgiveness.

There are many very moving movements - her memory of the argument she and her daughter had the last time they saw each other; her son's intervention when her violent ex-husband pays a call; the moment the billboard advertising salesman offers the violent cop Dickson a glass of orange juice; the letters left by the chief of police after his suicide and read out by various characters, at times turning their lives in different directions.

All was not what it seemed in terms of characters in this film, which gave it much depth; I found it hard to dislike Dickson despite his violence and racism; and in fact his character improves with guidance and experience; the new chief of police I thought I should like made me question his trustworthiness as I wondered if his response to the new evidence Dickson brought him was a cover up.

The ending  -I won't spoil it was equally disturbing and uplifting

It's good - it's not often that a film attains the depth of a novel, but this one does.  Good performances all round.  A little bit too realistically shot for me.  Well directed.
****

All the Money in the World

Seen at the Studio Cinema, Dunoon

Cecil says: The kidnapping of John Paul Getty's grandson happened when I was just 12 years old and in my stark view of the world at the time, I probably just saw it as a young rich kid in a rough country a long way away and a stingy family that made matters worse by not paying the ransom.

Of course, real life is much more complex than that, and the saga portrayed in All the Money in the World shows the different levels of psychology going on both within the Getty clan and among the gangsters involved.

The strange thing for us, though, was that the cinema in Dunoon had left the preview for this film on the footage to be screened before this film, so we got a fairly lengthy extract of the film which made us wonder if we had walked into the wrong room. Even more interesting was that the preview still featured Kevin Spacey in the role of Getty himself, even though the film itself has become a talking point for he fact that Spacey was air-brushed out after the scandals against his name, and Christopher Plummer took on the Getty role in the final version.

Plummer (Christopher - rather than the other unrelated actor Plummer who played the grandson) was actually magnificent, and it's a credit to him that he played the role so well at such short notice.

Getty may have been a pretty despicable character, but for me the more alarming aspect was the portrayal of 1970s Italy, particularly in the south, where it must have been hard to know who you could trust, and I can remember a politician called Aldo Moro being kidnapped and his body ending up in the boot of a car.

The film dragged on a bit longer than it maybe should have, but otherwise was a good watch. I can't say I identified with anyone portrayed, mind you, and was at no point actually moved, though I had to turn away when the rather graphic scene was shown of young Getty getting his ear cut off...

I can't help wondering how good Spacey might have been, but then having seen Plummer at his best, I can't help also wondering why he wasn't cast in the role in the first place.

***.5

Bea says:  An interesting story which I knew nothing about before seeing the film (I was a toddler when the story would have been in the news).  However the questions the film brought up for me were in a way much more interesting than the film itself - firstly, based on that unexpected preview was this actually the film that had edited Spacey out (I had heard that there was one that had done so)?  And secondly, what happened to Paul Getty after that highly traumatic kidnapping episode at the vulnerable age of 16?  With alcohol and drug abuse in the family, did he turn to those in order to cope?

Well, the answer to both questions is yes.  Ridley Scott re-shot all of Spacey's scenes in a very short period of time; with Mark Wahlberg allegedly doing better out of that financially than Michelle Williams, according to the internet.  And Paul Getty - already a drug user prior to the kidnapping, a fact rather glossed over in the film - did develop a major problem with drugs and alcohol after the kidnapping, and followed a rather hippy and arthouse 1970s.lifestyle, if again the internet is to be  believed.  Such a major problem in fact that he experienced a stroke following an overdose in the 1980s, with life changing consequences.

The film is good - it is well-written, well-shot, and well-directed as I would have expected from Ridley Scott.  It is perhaps a little overlong; I did want to cut to the chase about 3/4 of the way through and see the resolution of the kidnapping and what happened after - this was brief actually and prompted my research into the life of Paul Getty.

Plummer was a surprisingly inspired choice and was excellent, as were Wahlberg and Williams.  They had a lot to work with and did so with understated flair.

***.5