Oh I'm sorry, Did I Break Your Conversation........Well Allow Me A Movie Thread by S&T

Caught I, Tonya last night after the GG’s. Definitely better than I expected. Had no idea it was a black comedy film like ‘Wolf of Wallstreet’. My interest was immediately peaked. Allison Janey killed that role. :lol:

6.5/8
 
Watched lady bird yesterday and it was really good. Funny too.

3 billboards is next.

Basically almost watched the big three

Shape of Water
Lady Bird
3 Billboards

Call me by my name, seems interesting. Idk if I’ll watch though
 
Yo does anyone want to participate in the 50 movie change this year?

Could help keep the thread moving during those dead times we had last year
 
3 Billboards was really good. 6.4/8

That ending was pretty dark. Hell after that one Woody scene it leveled up in darkness.

It was very very well written. Really was a white poll's perspective of a specific issue. It was basically middle America actually is. I enjoyed the dialogue.

Not surprised a certain character had somewhst of a redemption arc or that most were lousy individuals but it did hit home that they're human.

Frances earned that globe and is probably gonna get the Oscar.
 
calibeebee said:
Is it just me or did Daisy Ridley get thick between this and TFA? Not like good thick but like freshman 15 thick?
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probably ate herself to a plumpy pulp in depression after watching the first cut of last jedi and what you are seeing is her thicker self in reshoots
 
shape of water: so abe sapien gets busy with a mute white woman with a dash of government bad guys and russian spies? this movie had more nudity than i expected (i expected none).
michael shannon was the standout playing the bad guy. good movie. the visuals and feel of the movie were great. i enjoyed it but i'm puzzled as to why it's an oscar-contender. 6.5/8

will watch ladybird eventually....maybe. three billboards is up next tomorrow.
 
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noblekane said:
probably ate herself to a plumpy pulp in depression after watching the first cut of last jedi and what you are seeing is her thicker self in reshoots
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Confirmed.
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Read some quote about how she really didn't feel good at all going into filming this.
She still bae though
 
'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri' is Hopelessly Bad On Race
Many critics have praised Martin McDonagh's nuanced portrayal of bigotry. But his black characters are mere devices—and the bigot's redemption never really feels earned.

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Frances McDormand in Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
(Photo: Fox Searchlight)

https://psmag.com/social-justice/three-billboards-bad-on-race

Before mentioning Frances McDormand's truly mesmerizing performance, and before mentioning the way Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri imagines the joys and grievances of small-town America, and before mentioning the film's meditation on the rage and grief that are often siblings to loss, I would first like to mention the joke.

About halfway through Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, there is a joke, really just a gag in the model of Abbot and Costello's "Who's on first?" McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, a grieving mother who looks to town authorities for answers about her daughter's unsolved rape and murder. Sam Rockwell plays police officer Jason Dixon, a character presented as somewhat oafish at first. The first thing we learn about Dixon is that he was responsible for the torture of one (or more) of the town's black residents while questioning them. There are no details given, and the viewing audience doesn't actually see the torture, but the understanding is that Dixon has tortured black people and kept his job as a police officer.

The gag goes like this: In the midst of being questioned by Dixon, Hayes shoots out "How's the ****** torturing business, Dixon?" Dixon, flustered, offers a response along the lines of "You can't say ****** torturing no more, you gotta say peoples of color torturing." The gag goes back and forth like this, Dixon becoming more and more flustered as Hayes eggs him on, before Woody Harrelson's Sheriff Bill Willoughby enters the room. When Willoughby asks what's going on, an exasperated Dixon exclaims: "Sheriff, she asked me how the ****** torturing business was going, and I said you can't say ****** torturing business anymore, you gotta say peoples of color torturing."

93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, boosted by several notices that gush about how the film is a dark but honest look at humanity and grief. I haven't seen many reviews mention the ******-torturing gag. I haven't seen any review that asks about the joke's purpose, or who the punchline might be serving. The joke is that the white cop who tortures black people is trying to stop calling them ******s. Or maybe the joke is that McDormand, the righteously angry white protagonist, has a black friend (one of two black people we see in the town) but still thinks provoking a joke about ******s is funny. Or maybe the joke is that if we got rid of every racist police officer, we'd have no police at all—according to the white police chief.

In the conversation about being The Only One in the Room, we mainly talk about black people in professional settings. I think about it in those moments, of course, but I also think about it in movie theaters, particularly when I'm at a movie that uses race as a narrative vehicle—a movie that uses black people as part of a storytelling device, but doesn't cater to black people or show the faces of (m)any black people onscreen.

I imagine, then, that perhaps the problem of Three Billboards is one of who it is being made for: the type of people who might laugh at an extended gag about ****** torturing in the first act while looking forward to the redemption of a racist and abusive police officer in the third.

I would like to say here that I believe redemption is something earned—in real life, yes, but I'd also like to see that played out in the characters I'm expected to find a connection with. I will not spoil Three Billboards for anyone who hasn't seen it by revealing too much about the nuances of the plot. The film does center on a stunning performance by McDormand, presenting a portrait of grief that we don't often see: the kind that can lead to a disconnected anger, leading the griever to focus on a mission in hopes that it might bring them healing. For anyone who has spiraled through every stage of grief and found themselves still in it, the film might offer a bit of comfort. The failures of the film are not in the performances of the actors, but rather in the script, which presents a conclusion that left me frustrated, given the way it turns a portion of its focus from a grieving and determined mother to the redemption of a racist and abusive police officer.

Again, without spoiling the film: In the third act of Three Billboards, Officer Dixon beats an innocent, unarmed man. Before this, he targeted and detained a black woman on a bogus charge, but here, he is beating an innocent, unarmed man. He then throws the man out of a third-story window before knocking out a woman with the handle of his pistol. Dixon, in full police uniform at the time, calmly and casually steps over the writhing body of the man he's just assaulted and walks back into the police station. I found the scene difficult to watch, and likely would have been jarred by it longer if not for what happens next: Dixon is fired, by the town's new chief of police, who—of course—is black. It was almost comical, as though the writers had thought the casting decision constituted some small justice.
Dixon serves no jail time for assault. We are to believe he feels bad, but no change of heart actually plays out on screen. Shortly after his assault, a tragedy befalls him (still, no spoilers), and this is how the fourth act of the film begins: building a redemption narrative for the disgraced cop. By the fourth act of the film, some viewers might even have forgotten about Mildred Hayes altogether. Dixon's redemption becomes the center of the movie, as he takes on a renewed interest in cracking the case of Mildred's daughter. In this way, we are to see him as tortured and complex—he goes from racist buffoon to concerned detective on The Right Side of Things over the course of what appears to be weeks.
A word thrown around a lot by fans of Three Billboards is "
nuance." But nuance is a single plank in the bridge to redemption, not the entire bridge. It is asking a lot of people to watch a story in which we root for a racist and abusive police officer in the name of his own redemption, but it is asking even more of the audience if Dixon himself does no actual work in the name of earning that redemption. In the fourth act, Dixon is sad and newly determined, but he's still the police officer who used his power to torture black people and terrorize innocent men and women in his town. The narrative, then, becomes "even bad cops can be good if you dig deep enough," and the movie bends toward this narrative from the moment when Willoughby— perhaps the movie's only truly sympathetic character—enters the room and forgives Dixon's racism after the "****** torturing" gag.

I'm interested in how much people are asked to invest in the interior of racists. It doesn't take much work to see how—in our actual lives, not just in movies—Americans are not asked to invest in the same way in the interior of the marginalized, particularly after the marginalized have died. I didn't know why I should care about the interior complexities of Dixon. After what I watched of him and after what I knew of him, I was so uninvested in the character that I had zero interest in complicating him. I was more interested, for example, in the interior of the woman he busted on a bogus drug charge—a woman presented as one of just two black people in town, who seems loyal to McDormand's character and interested in protecting her at all costs. There are Jason Dixons everywhere.

It is also worth mentioning that race didn't really need to be a topic in Three Billboards at all, especially given that writer-director Martin McDonagh handles the topic so clumsily, and never really sees it through. Black people in this movie largely exist as victims, seen and unseen, of the town's violence, and as I watched I found myself wondering why they existed there at all. As a final point of hilarity, the only two black people we see in the town end up on a date together after laying eyes on each other for a few seconds. The movie didn't need racial provocation to get its point across, and McDonagh clearly wasn't the writer to handle it anyway. In this instance, I would have gladly bowed to a landscape bereft of black.

It is awards season, and Three Billboards will certainly be nominated for several. It is the kind of story that critics love, focusing on the human condition above all, ending without hard answers and asking viewers to find where they land on their own. I think there's merit to all of those elements in art. It's just that, in my case, that search led me to a place of deep distaste for what the film was asking out of me. When the movie ended, the small group in my theater applauded. That's when the laughter arrived for me, several scenes too late.
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Tone-Deaf ‘Three Billboards’ Tries Absolving White People of Racism. And Oscars Season Loves It.
The redemption of a racist cop in the awards season favorite will surely tug at the heartstrings of industry voters. But it’s unearned, manipulative and altogether offensive.

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/tone-...e-people-of-racism-and-oscars-season-loves-it

In 2006, Paul Haggis' awful movie about racism that nevertheless made white people feel good about racism won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. You might recall this film. It was Crash. As this year's awards season hurdles forward, it's become clear that Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri might just end up the next Crash. The film stars Sam Rockwell as a violent and racist cop who finds redemption not through owning up to his racism or doing jail time for his crimes, but because he's determined to solve the mystery of who raped and murdered Frances McDormand's daughter. It's not only an attempt at emotional manipulation that runs cold, but it's also a journey that's played for comedy throughout Three Billboards. Altogether, it's wholly offensive — so is it any wonder that it's a frontrunner at the Golden Globes and most likely the Oscars?

The subject matter of Three Billboards wasn't surprising to me. I've been involved in theater for years, so I'm more than familiar with writer and director Martin McDonagh's previous work as a playwright. I'm actually a fan of his work and often adore his blends of soap opera twists (he watched soaps while growing up), violence, and vulgarity.

Born in London to Irish parents, McDonagh spent many of his holidays in County Galway. His first six plays were all set in that area and mix his offbeat sense of humor and penchant for melodrama with commentary on the Irish working class. The Beauty Queen of Leenane depicts an emotionally broken working-class woman who becomes dependent on her daughter and in turn, becomes monstrous toward her daughter's burgeoning relationship with a young suitor. The Lonesome West has two brothers at one another's throats and warring internally with Catholicism. The Cripple of Inishmaan depicts a town cripple attempting to get a part in a Hollywood movie so he can escape his impoverished hometown.

McDonagh's first foray into writing not beholden to his Irish roots was The Pillowman, a dark and searingly funny play about a writer in a police state who is believed to be a murderer because of the content of his books. A landmark success, it won the Olivier Award for Best New Play and received a Tony nomination. Around that time, McDonagh began to make films as well and did it quite well in films like In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths. I couldn't have been more ecstatic to see Three Billboards, because McDonagh writing about the violence that bubbles within our working-class communities makes for beautiful drama.

I had no idea that the film would have a lot more in common with the one play of his I distaste… his first American production, A Behanding in Spokane. It first premiered on Broadway in 2010 and starred Christopher Walken as a man who'd been searching for his missing left hand for 27 years. I expected nothing but joy after seeing one of my favorite playwright's Broadway debuts, but what I watched during a Sunday matinee absolutely nauseated me.

Anthony Mackie also stars in the play as Toby, McDonagh's first black character. Zoe Kazan's Marilyn attempts to give Walken his missing hand, but it's that of a black man's. You can guess what happens next — the word "******" flies out of Walken's mouth freely in the scene and throughout the rest of the play. Mackie's Toby is played like a character that would be ripped to shreds on social media if he graced a film or television screen in this day and age. McDonagh's attempts to translate the working-class Irish clichés of his previous writing into America's history of tension between white and black men is more than horribly misguided, it's distasteful. McDonagh, with no clear understanding that to be black in America is more loaded than to merely be poor or working class, loads Toby with offensive and racially horrifying clichés. He might as well Br’er Rabbit in an Uncle Remus story.

Enough time passed that I’d forgotten about McDonagh’s play. Until I saw Three Billboards. Rockwell’s cop has a history of torturing black prisoners and the callousness with which other characters use the word “******” and cackle about his tactics is unamusing. It brought back every uncomfortable glance I felt on my black body, sitting in a Broadway matinee surrounded by an all-white audience in 2010. I laughed so as not to feel excluded and I’m ashamed that I also laughed during Three Billboards. Whether it be through malice or ignorance, McDonagh’s attempts to script the black experience in America are often fumbling and backward and full of outdated tropes.

While for him, to laugh at the pain of the working class may give him solace from his own upbringing, to laugh at the misery of black bodies in America makes him look like an outsider who wants to fit in with the type of crowd that would laugh along with Chris Rock as he cruelly taunts a fellow black actress like Jada Pinkett Smith for her #OscarsSoWhite boycott. It attracts the type of crowd that likes to reward simplistic tales of racism like Crash, where white people learn how to be good to one another at the expense of black people.

Rockwell’s violent character nearly dies in Three Billboards and he loses his job, so his only course of redemption is helping McDormand hunt for her daughter’s rapist. He discovers potential information by happenstance, but we’re supposed to believe he has such a moral compass that he springs into action. It’s the type of journey that will surely tug at the heartstrings of industry voters and might just lead to awards success. But more than likely, that “moral compass” was only brought about by the visceral image of a young white woman being violated that sprung him into action. The memories of those black bodies he apparently tortured in custody don’t keep him up at night. And the black Americans who have to watch films like this, or plays laced with the word “******,” don’t seem to keep McDonagh up at night either.
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a-friend said:
I've never seen Ronin.
I'm about to get it in.
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Man that movie was amazing, daughters are sick might watch it tomorrow at home while they sleep. Have you seen Heat? We got some real classics back in the day, Michael Mann was on point.
 
servechilled81 said:
there are five types of "black" movies that get made, though things are slowly changing
slavery movies
magical negro
sports/music biopic
white savior movie
civil rights movie
i'm over it, for the most part i just refuse to watch any of those types of movies anymore
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My niece likes ATL trying to see where that would fit in or The Wood.

We get some good movies but they are far and few.
 
I saw the movie.

The bigot's "redemption" was bull ****.

But "nuanced portrayal of bigotry"? "Tries absorbing white people of racism"?

I must've missed ALL of that. To me the movie didn't contain that or even attempt it.

What I liked about the movie was this was most likely an accurate portrayal of white people in middle america/the south when black people aren't around and the topic of race is brought up by them; they bring up the brutalization of black people by the police matter of factly, they say the n-word freely and purposely, even when black ppl show up they don't adjust their behavior or attitude much if at all, then they go about their day and deal about their problems.

Their racism is a part of their lives. They don't see anything wrong with the way things are even the bigots who aren't active offenders but just tolerating it. Its just how it is.

That's what I liked about that part of the movie. Story isn't about racism at all but it gives many many who are unaware how bigotry (of several kinds) and racism is baked in to Americana and society.

Black characters are just mouth pieces or plot devices? That's probably how it is in these white ppl's everday lives. Story just reflects it. Besides I think there was only 3 black ppl in this movie; the guy whose job it was to put up the billboards, his mom (I think) who slightly knew the main character, and the black cop who replaces the white cop. Maybe altogether they had two dozen lines. Main character doesn't know any black ppl, neither does the supporting actors.

It'd be a little insulting given this truthful depiction of the white ppl and their brazen bigotry and racist comments (which comes quite natural to the characters) if the writer went full on fiction and played up some role for some of the existing black characters or tried to soften any of the bigotry by the 3rd act.

As far as I see it, the movie did a good job of showing racist ppl in their natural environment today. Can't just dismiss this as a racist movie or racist story or the writer/director is a racist or make this about no black characters mattering in it when it does a lot to show this is how they are and how bigotry played a role in every other scene. This is what they think about us.

This kinda like when you watch movies from the 40s to hell now and it kinda goes unsaid that the majority of them in it are racists or are living quite fine with racism being accepted, Jim crow laws, segregation being the law of the land.
 
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It sounds like you were looking for this movie to show you what you already knew

I dont like the award hype its getting, the main actress fine but what really happened in this movie?

Not to mention the white privilege on rampant display

Idgaf how they are in real life i watch movies for entertainment and this movie sucked imo
 
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