“Person-of-color-torturing” is what Jason says you must call it now, with exasperated lament. There’s a scene between Mildred and a hotheaded dimwit cop - the racist - named Jason (Sam Rockwell), in which she baits his racism by calling him a “nigger torturer.” He hits the roof. One of the toys is the word “nigger.” Another is the concept of political correctness. My favorite bad thing about “Three Billboards” is its ambition to play around with America’s ideological and geographical toys. That presumption of truth is driving some of the annoyance over this movie.
To “Three Billboards” admirers and to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the outfit that hands out the Golden Globes, something about the movie rings true or feels timely. “In Bruges” featured two hit men on a chatty stroll in Belgium, and certain people’s passion for it is fit for Valentine’s Day. Often they feel as if other filmmakers are doing the pulling. You believe what people do because they appear to be making the choices - ugly ones - as opposed to an author you can picture yanking the strings.īut his movies are all strings. His plays - like “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” or “The Cripple of Inishmaan” - tether behavior to state of mind. He’s a dramatist and a linguist who can be glorious about the ordinariness and misery of duty and work. “Three Billboards” is his third movie (“In Bruges” and “Seven Psychopaths” precede this one), and the second set in the United States. The Martian is actually Martin McDonagh, a playwright from the U.K. ‘Drive My Car’: In this quiet Japanese masterpiece, a widower travels to Hiroshima to direct an experimental version of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”.‘Passing’: Set in the 1920s, the movie centers on two African American women, friends from childhood, who can and do present as white.‘Spencer’: Kristen Stewart stars as an anguished, rebellious Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s answer to “The Crown.”.‘Summer of Soul’: Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Mavis Staples and others shine in Questlove’s documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival.Scott and Manohla Dargis, selected their favorite movies of the year. It’s like a set of postcards from a Martian lured to America by a cable news ticker and by rumors of how easily flattered and provoked we are. Meanwhile, the issues of the day come and go: brutal police, sexual predators, targeted advertising. And Mildred seems desperate to believe in the power of the billboards as a shaming vehicle for justice. Somebody else smashes through one while on fire. This is a revenge movie that’s also a dead-child tragedy that’s also a local-law-enforcement comedy that leaves room for physical comedy, cancer and a bad date. But they’re conflated here in a way that achieves a grating otherworldliness. Individually, not one of these choices qualifies as a disaster. We’re talking about the sort of heartland populated by average-looking people meant to be made poetically interesting by their exotic brides (from Australia!), dying words (“Oscar Wilde”) and symbolically sadistic late-night film taste (one vindictive woman who isn’t Mildred is glued to “Don’t Look Now”). It’s set in the country’s geographical middle, which should trigger a metaphor alert. It’s one of those movies that really do think they’re saying something profound about human nature and injustice. The reason to do any barking - well, the reason for me - is that “Three Billboards” feels so off about so many things.
“How come, Chief Willoughby?” asks the last. Frances McDormand plays the woman - her name is Mildred Hayes - and the billboards are the site of her campaign.
“Three Billboards” is about a mother determined to humiliate and harass a small-town police force into solving the months-old rape and murder of her teenage daughter. In 2005, it was “Crash.” This year, the entrant is “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” The movie won four Golden Globes, including best drama, making it a contentious Oscar favorite (the nominations come our way Jan. Last year, that movie was “La La Land.” Two years before that, it was arguably - suddenly - “American Sniper” (winner of nothing especially big, but big in the meaning we ascribed it). And the more love the prize givers throw at it, the more some people want to throw themselves off a cliff. In its own accidental way, it does seem to be saying something about, you know, now. Nonetheless, the movie is even kind of a hit. It gets a bunch of nominations and wins some big prizes, occasionally the biggest ones, and most of the time, people - moviegoers, moviemakers, movie critics - will say they didn’t see it coming, that the enthusiasm for this movie doesn’t make any sense, that the praise being slathered insults how good about a dozen other movies actually are. Sometimes, a movie comes along that appears to take the H.O.V.