Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a 2017 black comedy crime film written, produced, and directed by Martin McDonagh. It stars Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes and Peter Dinklage. The film follows a mother who, when the police in her town fail to find a suspect in her daughter’s murder, purchases three billboards to call public attention to the unsolved crime, polarizing the community. (soundtrack by Carter Burwell)
Drowning by Numbers is a 1988 British-Dutch film directed by Peter Greenaway.
The film’s plot centres on three married women — a grandmother, her daughter, and her niece — each named Cissie Colpitts. As the story progresses, each woman successively drowns her husband. The three Cissie Colpittses are played by Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson and Joely Richardson, while Bernard Hill plays the coroner, Madgett, who is cajoled into covering up the three crimes.
The structure, with similar stories repeated three times, is reminiscent of a fairy tale, most specifically ‘The Billy Goats Gruff‘, because Madgett is constantly promised greater rewards as he tries his luck with each of the Cissies in turn. The link to folklore is further established by Madgett’s son Smut, who recites the rules of various unusual games played by the characters as if they were ancient traditions. Many of these games are invented for the film, including:
Bees in the Trees
Dawn Card Castles
Deadman’s Catch
Flights of Fancy (or Reverse Strip Jump)
The Great Death Game
Hangman’s Cricket
The Hare and Hounds
Sheep and Tides
In Drowning by Numbers, number-counting, the rules of games and the repetitions of the plot are all devices which emphasise structure and symmetry. Through the course of the film each of the numbers 1 to 100 appear, the large majority in sequence, often seen in the background, sometimes spoken by the characters.
Angel’s Egg (天使のたまごTenshi no Tamago) is a Japanese OVA film released by Tokuma Shoten on 15 December 1985. It was a collaboration between popular artist Yoshitaka Amano and director Mamoru Oshii. It features very little spoken dialogue. Its sparse plot and visual style have led to it being described as “animated art rather than a story”.
Prior to the production on Angel’s Egg, Mamoru Oshii lost his faith in Christianity. Senses of Cinema opined that the film “seems informed by the existential desperation caused by the collapse of one’s belief system”; Oshii himself has stated he does not know what the film is about.
The Girl with All the Gifts is a 2016 British post-apocalyptic zombie horror drama film directed by Colm McCarthy and written by M.R. Carey adapted from his novel of the same name. Starring Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, Glenn Close, and Sennia Nanua, the film depicts a dystopian future following a breakdown of society after most of humanity is wiped out by a fungal infection. The plot focuses on the struggle of a scientist, a teacher, and two soldiers who embark on a journey of survival with a special young girl named Melanie.