A ★½ review of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Okay. I’m using this review as my opportunity to talk a little about the films of Martin McDonagh, which I watched this week after seeing “The Banshees of Inisherin” last month. I liked “Banshees.” It was quiet, contemplative, a little mean at times, and quite beautiful. I thought Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson were marvelous, although the standout performances, in my view, were from Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan. I thought the film worked both as a self-contained drama and as an allegory, of sorts, for conflict and especially civil conflict of the kind that forms the setting of the