Frances McDormand is one of the most acclaimed actresses in Hollywood today. She’s garnered numerous accolades throughout her career, including a Tony Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Academy Awards. She is known for appearing in Indie films and playing particular roles of women. She has often collaborated with her filmmaker husband Joel Coen and his brother Ethan (Coen brothers) and has appeared in several Wes Anderson films. In an article written by New York Times featuring the actress, they described her distinctive film roles, saying, “Right as she hit the age when most actresses begin disappearing for lack of roles or moving to the edges of story lines, she moved to first billing. For decades, she excelled at the work of embroidering the lives of women who aren’t deemed appealing enough to watch for two hours straight, and rather than aging into a different acting type, she has taken it upon herself to put peripheral women at the center.” Frances McDormand continues to showcase her acting skills and has expanded her career to producing films as well. Her performances are always a treat, even when she’s portraying complex roles. Here are five of her movies that we highly recommend watching.
Nomadland
The 2020 drama film Nomadland, directed by Chloé Zhao, is based on the 2017 nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder, which features the real lives of van-dwelling nomads, “new nomads,” who were affected by the Great Recession. The film centers on Fern, played by Frances McDormand, who is grieving from the loss of her husband and her home in the Great Recession. She is forced to leave her hometown Empire, Nevada, and discovers a new life through a community of van-dwelling nomads. The film also stars David Strathairn in a supporting role and feature real-life nomads including Linda May, Charlene Swankie, and Bob Wells. Nomadland won Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress for McDormand at the 93rd Academy Awards. Her Best Actress win for Nomadland is her third Oscar win. Empire’s review described the film, saying, “Nomadland is a Springsteen song in movie form, a beautifully rendered tale of what it means to be disenfranchised in America. Life on the road has never been so tenderly captured, politically alive and profoundly moving.”
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a 2017 crime drama film written, co-produced, and directed by Martin McDonagh. The film follows the story of Mildred Hayes, played by Frances McDormand, who seeks justice for her daughter’s unsolved rape and murder case. With no leads or arrests from the police department in a span of seven months, she decides to rent out three roadside billboards to get the attention of Ebbing’s police chief, played by Woody Harrelson. The film also stars Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, John Hawkes, and Peter Dinklage. McDormand once again bagged major awards for her performance in the film together with Sam Rockwell. Both actors won the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, SAG Award, BAFTA Award, and Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. The Guardian reviewed the film and praised McDormand, saying, “It is a film which offers no clear reassurance on tone or narrative direction or who you must laugh with and at. And Frances McDormand holds it all together: a Mother Courage resolved on action and toughly holding on to her sense of order and sense of humour.”
Burn After Reading
Frances McDormand appears in a black comedy for the 2008 film Burn After Reading, written, produced, edited, and directed by the Coen brothers. The film follows a pair of witless gym employees played by Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt who find a disc belonging to a former CIA man named Osborne Cox (John Malkovich). The two believe the disc contains classified government documents and therefore try their best to make money from it. The film also stars George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, and J.K. Simmons. In 2018, Vulture wrote about how the film remains funny 10 years later. “There aren’t that many jokes in Coen brothers movies that don’t work. (Putting aside large chunks of Intolerable Cruelty and most of The Ladykillers.) But it’s the Coens’ ability to tap into deeper truths about spying, governing, and human behavior that makes Burn After Reading look even better in 2018 than it did in 2008, when it earned mostly positive but rarely glowing reviews.”
Fargo
The 1996 black comedy crime thriller film Fargo was McDormand’s first Oscar win as Best Actress. The film is written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film was based on true events and follows Jerry Lundegaard, played by William H. Macy, a car salesman struggling with debts who becomes desperate for money and hires two hoodlums, played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare, to kidnap his wife in order to extort ransom money from her wealthy father (Harve Presnell). Frances McDormand plays the role of Marge Gunderson, a pregnant and persistent Minnesota police chief investigating roadside homicides that take place outside of Brainerd, Minnesota, after the trio’s plotted crime begins. Fargo received seven Oscar nominations at the 69th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won Best Original Screenplay. In Empire’s review of the black comedy classic, they wrote, “Put simply, Fargo is Blood Simple with laughs and a heck of a lot of snow. But Fargo is far from simple, it is a deliciously convoluted tale of crime, punishment and a cowardly used-car salesman set in a white-out snowscape of Minnesota, written and directed with the verve, painstaking nuance and outrageously black humour that have become the mainstay of a Coen movie.”
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Frances McDormand’s latest film The Tragedy of Macbeth is a historical thriller film written and directed by Joel Coen and based on the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare. The film also stars Denzel Washington, Bertie Carvel, Alex Hassell, Corey Hawkins, Harry Melling, Kathryn Hunter, and Brendan Gleeson. The film follows Scottish general Macbeth (Denzel Washington) who strives to become the next King of Scotland with the help of her ambitious wife Lady Macbeth (Frances McDormand) who will do anything to seize the throne. CNN described the cinematography of the film saying “The Tragedy of Macbeth” looks as if it could be 100 years old — closer to a stage play and, at times, more a dream (or nightmare) than real life. Like if you reached out to touch it, your hand would pass right through.” The New Yorker also reviewed the film and wrote, “It’s a neat and clean medieval drama, a sanitized “Macbeth” in which the absence of ornament and tangle, the sharp and rational focus on clear action, is the mark of rigorous earnestness.”
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