Review: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

* * * *
Director: Martin McDonagh
Starring: Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson

We are living in an extraordinarily angry time (or maybe it just seems that way because the internet makes that anger inescapable) and Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri functions like a snapshot of that overriding cultural emotion. It's a film about people who are angry about circumstances they cannot change and who, without any productive outlet for that emotion, have nothing but the violence and pain they're capable of inflicting so that the outside world is as chaotic as they feel inside. If you're familiar with McDonagh's previous features In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, you'll be prepared for the violence of Three Billboards and for the fact that the film often finds a comedic beat or two in the midst of that violence, but what sets this film slightly apart from those previous two is how deeply felt it is on an emotional level. It's angry and then that anger begins to fade into despair and it just leaves you feeling wrecked in the best possible way.

Review: This Must Be The Place (2011)

* * *
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Starring: Sean Penn

Where to begin discussing This Must Be The Place? It's an odd little bird of a film, one which courts the bizarre so openly that it should be annoying, one which takes such a hard left turn between its first and second acts that the whole thing ought to come apart in front of your eyes, one anchored by a performance that seems at first like it will be too mannered to be compelling. A movie like this shouldn't work, it has so many potential liabilities, but it's actually pretty delightful. I knew almost nothing about it before watching it and as it started, I experienced a slight sinking feeling, as the protagonist seemed tailor-made for Johnny Depp (and not necessarily in a good way) but on a Sean Penn budget. Very quickly, however, the film won me over - and that's despite the fact that, objectively, I'm not totally convinced that it actually works as a story.

Review: Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

* * * *
Director: Wes Anderson
Starring: Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray

"Quirk" doesn't always play well. Done inelegantly, it can come across as "cloying" rather than "charming." Wes Anderson is a master of quirky movies, a writer and director who always manages to find that delicate balance that keeps his projects from careening out of control and becoming annoyingly twee. Anderson is able to create stories and characters that are overtly artificial but that also feel "real" within the context of their own rules because Anderson creates living, breathing worlds in which to house those stories and characters. His latest, Moonrise Kingdom, is no exception and is definitely a contender for his best so far.

Maythew #6: Wonder Boys (2000)

* * * *
Director: Curtis Hanson
Starring: Michael Douglas, Toby Maguire, Robert Downey Jr., Frances McDormand

As someone who loves books and films in more or less equal measure, I've long had a special affection for Wonder Boys, a movie based on a novel in which the characters love both books and films. A curiously underrated film when it was released, it has aged very well and is definitely a film worth returning to.

Wonder Boys follows a weekend in the life of Professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas), who has not been having a very good time of it lately. His wife has left him, his mistress and boss Sara (Frances McDormand) is pregnant, the novel he has been writing for years is still not finished and his agent is breathing down his neck, one student (Katie Holmes) has a thing for him, and another (Toby Maguire) proves to be nothing but trouble at each and every turn, particularly when he shoots Sara's husband's dog and steals a piece of Marilyn Monroe memorabelia from him. Oh, did I mention that Sara's husband is also chair of Grady's department? Yeah. It's a shit storm.

All of the issues in Grady's life are really just a manifestation of his own personal stasis; he's stuck both in terms of his work and his life. Sara is pressuring him to make a choice about their relationship so that it's either over or evolving into more. He wants it to be more but, given his track record, that's also a prospect that scares him - the more that the relationship is, the more that he stands to lose. Likewise, his editor (Robert Downey Jr.) is pressuring him to hand over his manuscript which Grady insists isn't yet finished at over 2,000 pages. He can't stop writing even though he's lost sight of what the story is about because the idea of handing it over and then finding out that he's lost whatever it is that made his previous novel such a success is terrifying. To Grady it's better to be left out than to participate and fail and what he learns through the film is that that supposed safety is false because while you don't lose anything by not playing, you can't win anything either.

To my mind, Wonder Boys is Michael Douglas' best performance to date. The character type is really nothing new but Douglas' subdued performance hits all the right notes. The supporting cast, particularly Downey, McDormand and Maguire, are also excellent and leave me wondering how it is that this film didn't get a single acting nomination. Too much of a good thing, perhaps? Certainly, no other explanation makes sense.

Matt's Thoughts: For the most part, I liked this movie, but I took issue with a few of the characters. As usual, I think Katie Holmes could be excised from the film and it would make no difference to the plot. Also, Oola was an extremely minor character, basically a walk-on role, that was later thrust into the main spotlight for a pivotal task that could have been performed without her and her boyfriend.

The events surrounding the dean's dog were passed off as basically nothing, and I think they really could have been avoided entirely since the jacket was stolen as well. It just seemed like a way to spit in the dean's face twice to ensure that Grady would lose his job. If they wanted him to lose his job so badly, maybe they should have exposed his romantic relationship with Hannah to give Katie Holmes something to do.

That being said, I would recommend this to people if they asked about it specifically, but it probably wouldn't be the first movie to come to mind if they didn't bring it up in conversation first.

Review: Burn After Reading (2008)

* * *
Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Starring: Frances McDormand, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton

Burn After Reading is a farcical look at paranoia, national security, and spy games that manages to be equal parts funny and sad, shallow and deep. In it characters stumble into a web of political intrigue that no one really comprehends, mostly because there’s essentially nothing to comprehend because they only think that they’re in the middle of something. I don’t know that it’s entirely successful as a film, but I liked it just enough to recommend it.

At the centre of the maelstrom that will become this plot is Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), who is let go from his position as an analyst at the CIA and decides to use his newfound free time to write his memoirs, which his wife Katie (played by a wonderfully flinty Tilda Swinton) thinks would be of little appeal to readers anywhere. Katie is carrying on an affair with Harry (George Clooney), who is also married, and planning to divorce Osbourne. As part of that effort, she copies financial information from his computer to a disc (also, inadvertently, copying parts of the memoir) and that disc ends up being lost at a gym where it is found by Chad (Brad Pitt) and Linda (Frances McDormand). Linda needs money for a series of plastic surgeries she’s decided she wants – nay, needs - and Chad comes up with the idea to ransom the disc.

Things get increasingly convoluted. When Osbourne refuses to pay for the return of the disc, Linda decides to try to sell it to the Russians (why the Russians? you might ask and you would be joined by pretty much everyone other than Linda). Meanwhile, Harry – who Linda meets over the internet and begins dating - becomes increasingly paranoid as he realizes that he’s being followed, and the CIA, having been tipped off by the Russian embassy about the attempted sale of “information,” is baffled by the various goings-on they witness through subsequent surveillance (“They all seem to be sleeping together,” a perplexed agent informs his supervisor).

The set-up for the story is a bit slow – I’d go so far as to say that the first half-hour plods along – but once the ball gets rolling, the plot unwinds itself at an almost dizzying speed. To be honest, I didn’t really start to like the movie until Pitt showed up and proceeded to be awesome during every moment he was on-screen. He has so many great scenes, from his initial phone conversation with Osbourne where he adopts a raspy voice to extort him (“I thought you might be worried... about the security... of your shit.”), to his face-to-face meeting with Osbourne where he keeps squinting his eyes in an attempt to appear tough. This last scene ends with Osbourne illuminating all the reasons why Chad is stupid including the fact that he came to the meeting on a bike, and all Chad gets out of it is that Osbourne has mistaken his bike for a Schwinn. Pitt is genius at being a moron.

The comedy that is Chad is offset by a few more serious elements: Linda’s self-esteem issues which manifest themselves in both her desire for plastic surgery and her desperation for the approval of the men she meets over the internet (she cites sense of humour as an important factor and yet when one dates fails to pass the test, she sleeps with him anyway), and her boss’ (Richard Jenkins) infatuation with her which leads him to involve himself in an increasingly volatile situation despite his reservations. But for all that, this is a comedy and one that, in its brilliant final exchange, effectively summarizes the insanity of the last decade.

Review: Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day (2008)

* * *
Director: Bharat Nalluri
Starring: Frances McDormand, Amy Adams

The success of Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day rests largely on the ability of the actors to raise the material above its base level. While the dialogue is clever, the pacing quick, and the film overall quite charming, it is also in many respects a shallow exercise in storytelling. Save for a few key moments, the film is all surface and no depth.

Frances McDormand stars as Miss Pettigrew, a governess who can’t manage to hold a job and doesn’t have a penny to her name. On impulse, she shows up at the home of Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams), whom she believes to be in need of a governess, though in actuality she’s seeking a social secretary. Delysia is an actress who spends most of her time inhabiting a dizzy, Marilyn Monroe-esque persona and juggling three romantic attachments: Phil (Tom Payne), a producer, Nick (Mark Strong), her official boyfriend, and Michael (Lee Pace), the man that she actually loves. Over the course of one chaotic day when Delysia’s future will be decided (she’ll either go to New York with Michael, star in Phil’s play, or continue her toxic relationship with Nick), Miss Pettigrew proves to be indispensible, a sort of savant when it comes to managing Delysia's romantic entanglements.

There are a few significant flaws in the film, the most glaring of which is one of the two central conflicts. Delysia’s friend, Edythe (Shirley Henderson), knows the truth about Miss Pettigrew, having seen her standing in line at a soup kitchen, and threatens to reveal this fact to Delysia unless Miss Pettigrew works her relationship magic on Edythe’s on-again, off-again fiancée, Joe (Ciaran Hinds). There’s not really any good reason why Miss Pettigrew should see this as a threat when, for one thing, Delysia knows what it is to put on an act and wouldn’t be likely to fault her for it, and for another is already aware that Miss Pettigrew came to her penniless. This “conflict” is meaningless and, to make matters worse, Edythe, the supposedly savvy social player, just gives her game away without much prompting.

Another problem is that the film doesn’t seem to know that Miss Pettigrew is its most interesting character and constantly drifts away from her, treating her as secondary. The story takes place just before the outbreak of World War II and there is a moment when a party is interrupted by half a dozen bombers flying overhead. As the other guests gape at and cheer on the bombers, Miss Pettigrew turns to Joe and says quietly, “They don’t remember the last war.” More is expressed about the character with this one line – and the way it’s played by McDormand – than is expressed about most of the other characters during the course of the whole film. It’s quiet moments like this one, and a couple of scenes between McDormand and Adams in which they’re allowed to reveal hidden sides of their characters, that elevate the movie from being glossy but meaningless.

I suppose that what it ultimately comes down to is a problem of tone and genre. Despite its comedic leanings, the film doesn't have the confidence to be an out and out screwball comedy, and despite its quieter moments it doesn't have the gravitas to be a serious drama, and so remains hovering between the two. Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day is a very beautiful film to look at, and the performances by McDormand and Adams are great, but the film itself doesn't hold up that well to scrutiny.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Fargo (1996)

Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Starring: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare

At some point in their lives, the Coen brothers must have know a really cool cop. How else to explain that they managed to depict two of the very best police officers ever captured on screen – here with Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) and in No Country For Old Men with Ed Tom Bell. In this twisted tale of kidnapping, greed and murder, where everything that can go wrong does, Marge is the only character who isn’t severely out of her depth. By mixing the brutality of the crime with the pleasant ordinariness of Marge’s everyday life, the Coens created a film that defies any easy classification. It’s clearly a drama. And it’s clearly a comedy. It is most certainly a masterpiece.

The film begins by telling us that this is a true story, which is and isn’t true. It’s actually bits and pieces of several true stories combined into one narrative. “If an audience believes that something’s based on a real event, it gives you permission to do things they might otherwise not accept,” Joel Coen has said by way of explaining the “true story” foreword. And it’s true because when you watch it, you can’t help but think that some of the things that go on in the film are so outrageous that they have to be true. The infamous wood chipper scene, for example, is based on the actual murder of a woman from Connecticut. So, knowing that truth is stranger than fiction, it’s easy to believe that car dealer Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) could come up with a plot to rid himself of his debts by having his wife kidnapped so that her wealthy father will pay the ransom. It’s also believable that the father-in-law will push Jerry aside to take matters into his own hands, that the two hired kidnappers (Steve Buschemi as Carl and Peter Stormare as Gaear) will prove to be less than reliable (not to mention compatible), and that the story will end in tragedy for all.

In and of itself, the basic plot of a kidnapping gone awry would be enough for a compelling story, but Fargo goes beyond simply being “good” and becomes “great” through the addition of pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson, a character who possesses something which remarkably few film characters are allowed (or, at least, allowed to use): a brain. Her ability to observe and correctly assess situations in order to make the best decision sets her apart from the other characters, many of whom make snap decisions while in a panic – Jerry, Carl – or who simply fail to properly think things through – again, Jerry, and Marge’s deputy Lou, who provides the set-up for Marge’s best line, “I don’t agree with you 100 per cent on your police work, there, Lou.” Aside from her intelligence, Marge also provides a welcome counterbalance to the Lundegaards’ tragedy through events which take place in her own life apart from the investigation. The scenes between Marge and her husband (John Carroll Church), and Marge and her high school classmate Mike (Steve Park), have nothing to do with the murder plot, but tell us volumes about Marge herself and make her all the more easy to identify with.

The Coens walk a fine line, balancing the elements of comedy and drama in this story and often pitting the two against each other in the same scene. In the scene where Marge meets with Mike, for example, there’s an awkwardness between them which is funny, but there’s also something a little off, a little sad about Mike, whom Marge handles with as much delicacy as possible. In the kidnapping scene itself there is the faint hint of slapstick as Mrs. Lundegaard comes running out of her hiding spot in the bathtub, gets caught in the shower curtain and takes a tumble, but the scene is pulled back into its darker undertones by the presence of Gaear. And any scene involving Jerry features a healthy dose of both the comedic and the dramatic.

If nothing else, Fargo is a perfect example of how big a role casting plays in the success of a movie. Frances McDormand as the sincere and steady Marge, William H. Macy as the nervous Jerry whose self-doubt creeps just beneath all his words, Steve Buscemi as the excitable Carl, and Peter Stormare as the quietly menacing and cavalierly cruel Gaear – all of these actors are irreplaceable in their roles, so completely do they encapsulate these characters. However, not content to let it rest on great performances – or great writing – the Coens also bring considerable technical skill to it. My favourite shot in the film is of Jerry walking to his car across a deserted, snow-covered parking lot. The vastness of the white, empty space around him seems to perfectly encapsulate his state of mind as he finds himself pushed further and further away from his dream of finally making something of himself.

When all is said and done, the film ends not with the resolution to the investigation, but beyond that on a quiet note between Marge and her husband. He’s just learned that his painting will be featured on a stamp, downplaying the achievement in the face of Marge’s support. “It’s just a three cent stamp… People don’t much use the three cent,” he insists. “Of course they do. Whenever they raise postage people need the little stamps,” Marge replies. It’s Marge’s ability to come home from her own major triumph but still be able to recognize and celebrate that of her husband that makes her so very endearing, and it’s the film’s ability to take us to the darkest of places but still end on this quiet, charming note, that makes it so very watchable.