Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

USA/United Kingdom
written and directed by: Martin McDonagh
starring: Frances McDormand, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Hedges
seen on 5th March, 2018

Olala, don't funk with my billboards. I will have to think about it for a while and I was expecting something a bit different than this, which of course is not entirely the film's fault. Maybe in time I will arrive to the understanding of what the film was about. The character development seemed a bit off and not completely understandable given the limits of the time span shown in the film. I had some real trouble with some of the music, mainly with the songs (and the tone they brought with them), the pieces written by Carter Burwell were the best. And a lot of other strange details threw me right out of the film all the time: like Frances being nervous and touching her face while moving her mouth in one shot and right in the follow-up shot she does not move one facial muscle, her hand is not even in the shot and she shows no previously seen emotions. Is there something I'm missing completely? In a film about inner experiences I find things like this extremely disruptive. Or that particular scene when they are replacing the burnt posters with their copies and all of them look so happy without a hint of all the terrible stuff that happened around it. Their happiness seems so out of place that I just cannot connect with the film and its story, or rather I feel like I misinterpret the whole thing.

Just a month ago I would not think I'd ever say that, but right now I hope Dunkirk wins all the Oscars and other awards. (But Lucas Hedges was great again, it was a real treat to watch his performance.)

Lady Bird (2017)

USA
written and directed by: Greta Gerwig
starring: Saoirse Ronan, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet
seen on 5th March, 5. 3. 2018

There was a time in my life when I thought about what it would be like to kill myself every day and this film strongly reminded me of that, so it did something right to capture a certain episode of growing up, I think. For me, the most precious parts of the film were those short unimportant exchanges with background characters like Danny, that one cool girl, the brother's girlfriend, her dad. They were scattered amongs attempts to unite everything into one story and I found those attempts unnecessary because the overall story arc did not work very well in the end. But those unique details did.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

USA
directed by: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
written by: Michael Arndt
starring: Abigail Breslin, Paul Dano, Steve Carell 
comment. 2nd March, 2018

Damn, I would never have thought that I'd have to spend so much time with a film like Little Miss Sunshine to even figure out what I want to say. I saw it once before just after it came out and I only remember being perplexed as to why do they refer to Olive as fat when the litte girl obviously isn't fat at all, and only wears an apparent fake belly. (But not mystify anyody, I consider Abigail Breslin's performance as the best and most sincere in this film and I am happy to praise her for that.)

The rest of the film seems a lot farther from honesty, in my opinion. Even in "Juno" I was distracted by forced plot points just according to the syd-fieldian logic, and LMS might try just a little bit harder than that. If the institute of "an indie film" stands for something in my book, it is distinction and spontaneity, and I don't find any of those here. All the characters (with the exception of the mother and possibly Olive) are endowed with a triple dose of typical weirdo qualities to assure the audience that they couldn't get anyone weirder. The jumps in tone from a lightweight atmosphere to a depression of the worst kind and back are unexpected and illogical. And mainly, all the stupid storybook rules are being followed to a letter instead of being subverted, as one would expect in this kind of film. This all contributes to me seeing the final feel of a re-newed family togetherness as unbelievable and unearned.

But I have to add some plus points for the film go make the depressed teenager colourblind to have a real reason to see the world as ugly and incomplete. And also for these film siblings being nice to each other, getting on well with each other and caring about each other, because I am kind of sick of the stereotypical film siblings rivalry.