Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

It’s like a twisted Lifetime movie with better cursing. Performances are really strong. Filmmakers walk a delicate high-wire of tone; combining heavy grief with deadpan wit and southern sarcasm. The stakes are high, and Martin McDonagh and company handle these sudden shifts in tone skillfully. As my lovely wife Kristen Haldeman Kauffman said, “It’s more Coen Brothers than a Coen Brothers movie.” The aforementioned tone shifts, are, in some moments, exhilarating; there are several instances when humor is mined from terminal cancer. So it’s well-done, but occasionally sad.