three billboards outside of ebbing missouri

Between Lady Bird, The Big Sick, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and The Disaster Artist, Comedy Is Being Taken Seriously This Awards Season

November 30, 2017

awards season, beatriz at dinner, big sick, disaster artist, ingrid goes west, lady bird, op ed, three billboards outside of ebbing missouri

Yes, Lady Bird just set a new record for Rotten Tomatoes for being the best reviewed movie in the site’s history, which comes as no surprise to us for how much it really does live up to its own hype.

Yet, Lady Bird is not the only comedy movie receiving heaps of praise as well as multiple award nominations and award wins (Spirit Awards, Gotham Awards, National Board of Review).

Comedy, just like horror, is having a banner year in movie theaters.

The Disaster Artist has won at The Gotham Awards and the Hollywood Film Awards as well as gained nominations at the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Toronto International Film Festival.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri has won at the Venice Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Hollywood Film Awards, British Independent Film Awards and been nominated in multiple categories for both British Independent Film Awards and the Spirit Awards.

The Big Sick has won at The Gotham Awards, Hollywood Film Awards, and SXSW and is also nominated at The Spirit Awards.

Nominations have been handed out to the likes of Ingrid Goes West and Beatriz at Dinner as well. You should also not forget that Ruben Östlund’s The Square, a hilariously scathing satire of the high art world, landed the Palme d’Or at Cannes, a rare honor for something so funny.

Normally, drama dominates film awards across the table and maybe, just maybe, one comedy like In The Loop or Grand Budapest Hotel will satisfy some genre diversity at such prestigious institutions like the ones named above or The Oscars.

In fact, we can’t even remember a year where such a plethora of comedy that is unequivocally identifiable as comedy (as opposed to The Martian or Nebraska) getting so much distinction in the film world.

However, we’re certainly not the first to tell you that this year is anything but normal.

Martin McDonagh Offers Up Another Serving of the Darkest Comedy He Can Cook Up with “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”

November 27, 2017

Uncategorized

martin mcdonagh, three billboards outside of ebbing missouri

Admittedly, we went into watching this movie wanting to already like it. It’s not objective, but humans still work here at TCB and we happen to be big fans of Martin McDonagh. If you follow us closely, you know that we have a penchant for very dark comedy, which part of the reason we were looking forward to seeing Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri.

As we suspected might happen, we laughed heartily throughout watching it this Thanksgiving weekend.

Between In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, and the latest, Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, writer/director/playwright Martin McDonagh has his dark comedy formula figured out with his favorite players including Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Peter Dinklage, etc. There’s a sense of a morality tale on the surface, but there’s often no nicely packaged moral to be had at all and all the characters involved lose in some fashion. In a It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia sort of way, we really enjoy that dynamic, which runs throughout Three Billboards.

There’s a bit of “deus ex machina” in setting up the big comedic and uber-dark set pieces, but, we guess, that’s where our expectations overlooked a few janky plot devices.

With so much anger and vitriol that’s present in everyday life now, seeing hate play out with no clear winners (as an integral part of the human experience is being flawed in some way) was oddly calming, which was what we really needed for Thanksgiving.