Film: "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"

Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson are in sparkling form in this hugely entertaining and original grief-and-revenge tale from the writer-director of "In Bruges."

January 20, 2018
8 pm - 10 pm
Location
Visual Arts Center 104 Loew Auditorium
Sponsored by
Hopkins Center for the Arts
Audience
Public
More information
Hopkins Center Box Office
603-646-2422

“The blackest take-no-prisoners farce in quite some time.” —LA Times

There aren’t many writer-directors who could tell a story of small-town rape, murder, grief and guilt while taking you down all sorts of black-comic paths and having immense fun with the writing and acting along the way. But Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths) is one of them, and his bloody and ballsy third film takes his work to a new level of versatility and surprise.

Frances McDormand burns a hole in the screen as a furious and grieving mother seeking justice and wreaking havoc on the local police (Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell) and the rest of the town as her daughter’s murder remains unsolved. The town of Ebbing itself becomes a character, joining a terrific ensemble of John Hawkes, Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea), Abbie Cornish and a grandly mustachioed Peter Dinklage, who gets the movie’s best one-liner.

As seen in his earlier films, McDonagh can flip in a second between laughs and violence, but there’s a new layer of compassion here too. Billboards is full of sharp dialogue and entertaining characters and is fueled by a wryly enlightened view of our world and how it can be at once cruel and caring. For a story built on such dark foundations, it’s weirdly reassuring. It’s also enormously fun. D: Martin McDonagh, US, 2017, 2h

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Location
Visual Arts Center 104 Loew Auditorium
Sponsored by
Hopkins Center for the Arts
Audience
Public
More information
Hopkins Center Box Office
603-646-2422