“Laurel Canyon” (2002)
Those who got a kick out of seeing McDormand as a tight-ass, moralistic parent crusading against rock music in “Almost Famous” were probably tickled by her next major turn in Lisa Cholodenko’s “Laurel Canyon,” a modest but astute study of the strained bonds that sometimes exist between parents and their grown children. In Cholodenko’s affable second feature, McDormand plays Jane, who adores rock n’ roll culture to the degree that she’s more or less spent the prelude to her twilight years acting as a one-woman mascot for the halcyon days of Laurel Canyon itself. There is major Earth Mother energy in McDormand’s performance in “Laurel Canyon,” which sees the Oscar-winning actress as relaxed as she’s ever been. There is something intrinsically poignant about watching this lonely, middle-aged woman still aching to live out the wild dreams of her youth, which is to say nothing of Jane’s complicated and somewhat contentious relationship with her straight-and-narrow adult son, Sam, played by a subdued Christian Bale. “Laurel Canyon” doesn’t always get the love it deserves within the context of McDormand’s broader body of work, partly because it’s a deliberately low-key affair more interested in character than plot or actorly grandstanding. And yet, as always, McDormand’s turn here offers proof that few modern performers can bare their soul quite like she can. – NL
“Friends With Money” (2006)
What a joy it must be to act in a Nicole Holofcener film. How wonderful it must feel, as a performer, to place yourself in the hands of a great director, and know that your performance will be enhanced via smart, cutting comic dialogue, not to mention the efforts of an ensemble that’s just as up to the task as you are. Holofcener has the market cornered on witty, urbane studies of upper-middle-class women and their anxieties, and there’s an argument to be made that “Friends with Money” is her most probing sociological study to date. McDormand plays Jane, a fashion designer who cherishes fancy dinners and glasses of wine with her gal pals (played by Jennifer Aniston, Joan Cusack, and Catherine Keener, all of whom are excellent) when she’s not fretting over unresolved questions related to her husband’s sexuality. Jane is someone who’s sick and tired of being a doormat, which results in an amusing but ultimately bracing scene wherein she suffers a mini-meltdown in a fabric store when a couple thoughtlessly cuts in line in front of her. The character flirts with some Big Karen energy in this moment – she does ask to speak to the manager, after all – but because McDormand is one of our most openhearted actresses, the audience never fails to sympathize with Jane’s problems, even if they remain of first-world variety. – NL
“Burn After Reading” (2008)
“Burn After Reading” has become more unfortunately prescient as our country further devolves into a dystopian cesspool run by greed-crazed idiots. The movie is stacked from top to bottom with recognizable movie stars playing absolute scumbags, from George Clooney’s fitness-obsessed sex addict to Brad Pitt’s ill-fated, empty-headed stooge. The closest you come to actually feeling anything for one of the characters in this movie is thanks to McDormand; frankly, it’s impossible for this actress to play an unlikeable character. Here, McDormand plays Linda Litzke, a gym employee who hates her body and compulsively trawls depressing dating sites, assuming that either a new lover or a better, slimmer physical frame will fill the gaping void in her soul. There is not a shred of anything resembling vanity in McDormand’s fearless turn, here and to her credit, every time we start to sympathize with Linda, she reminds us what an absolutely awful person she is at her core. The scenes Linda shares with her boss, played by the masterful Richard Jenkins, are tragic, as it’s suggested that Jenkins’ lonely middle-management type is the only individual in this terrible world who sees Linda for who she could be, if not who she is. “Burn After Reading” sees McDormand placing an abundance of trust in the brothers, resulting in a high-wire gamble of coldblooded comedy that pays off in spades. – NL
“Moonrise Kingdom” (2012)
Like many of Wes Anderson’s mother figures, Laura Bishop in “Moonrise Kingdom” lives a life of quiet suffering. Her daughter, Suzy, detests her and is exhibiting her very adolescent rebellion by absconding into the wilderness with a nerdy, pure-hearted scout named Sam (Jared Gilman). The two are in love, or so they’ve told themselves. Laura is decidedly not in love with her own husband, Walt (played by a more-glum-than-usual Bill Murray), a point that is underlined by the resentful, charged interactions that the two actors share, which are comprised of typically deadpan Andersonian legalese. McDormand breaks your heart in “Moonrise Kingdom,” particularly in scenes like the one in which her teenaged daughter observes her, from a distance, pensively sharing a cigarette with the town’s heartsick police chief, Captain Sharp (a moving Bruce Willis), with whom she is carrying on an affair. Some of Anderson’s later films feature so many moving narrative pieces that it can feel as though the actors don’t always have room to breathe, and while “Moonrise Kingdom” might be the “Rushmore” director’s fussiest movie, McDormand also works overtime to give her character a heart and soul. All the adult characters in “Moonrise Kingdom” exude the director’s preferred mood of wistful disaffection, plus a yearning for what could have been, but none do so more persuasively than McDormand, who clearly had such success with Anderson that she’s gone on to feature in two of his three subsequent pictures. – NL
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017)
Some of us feel that Martin McDonagh’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” is a film that doesn’t really know what it’s saying. Whatever the broader tonal issues with “Three Billboards” may be, if the movie works at all, it’s thanks to the valiant efforts of its gifted cast. McDormand, who is the grieving heart of this wonky black comedy, plays Mildred Hayes: a working-class woman living in Ebbing, Missouri, and attempting to juggle the mourning her daughter’s senseless murder with the fatigue that comes from attempting to bring corrupt law enforcement officials to justice. This movie’s cop politics really don’t hold up in a post-#DefundthePolice world, but McDormand provides emotional authenticity where the script might fall short. She makes Mildred a flawed and believable human being: someone who has imperfect reactions, suffers from mood swings, and is just doing her best to maintain strength through an unthinkable situation. Not many actresses could sell a scene where they have to deliver an overwritten monologue about the absence of God and the inherent meaninglessness of existence to a CGI deer. Then again, Frances McDormand is not just any actress. – NL
“Nomadland” (2020)
In the opening scene of “Nomadland,” Frances McDormand finds a coat. It’s the smallest, quietest, and (at that point) unexplained beat, but she turns that simple moment into the most affecting and evocative act; we don’t know anything about this woman yet, but she’s just told us everything. McDormand is an actor who thrives in complicated dialogue, and you have to if you’re going to work with the Coens and Martin McDonagh. Yet the most powerful moments in her most recent film are entirely wordless – minute-long monologues cannot tell all the stories McDormand tells, in her face and her eyes, when, for example, she’s going through a stack of old pictures. Throughout her career, McDormand has worked in all sorts of keys and tempos; here, she dials down and blends, so real and so present that she meshes smoothly alongside the non-actors in the cast. The alchemy of this casting had to be just right since the wrong actor might overplay these scenes and out the amateurs, or drain away too much of their personality and end up condescending to the material. Frances McDormand, as usual, was the right actor for the job. – Jason Bailey
Honorable Mention:
As we said in our introduction, Frances McDormand is someone whose filmography is stacked with so many great performances, that it was ultimately a shame to relegate some of these films listed below to the “honorable mention” category. In any case, here are our favorite McDormand turns that almost made the cut:
Alan Parker’s “Mississippi Burning,” where McDormand is nothing less than heartbreaking in a somewhat underwritten role as the movie’s obligatory abused/neglected wife. McDormand is also a riot in the ’90s cult movie “Darkman,” where she acquits herself with gusto to the gonzo comic-book world imagined by director Sam Raimi – who, as many cinephiles already no doubt know, has enjoyed a working relationship with Frances’ husband Joel Coen, including the 1986 horror-comedy “Crimewave,” in which McDormand has a cameo as a nun.
McDormand is also a small but crucial part of the sprawling human tapestry at the center of Robert Altman’s massively influential “Short Cuts,” playing an unhappily married woman who is getting it on, behind her husband’s back, with a two-timing cop played by Tim Robbins (man, casting directors sure do love to cast McDormand as an unfaithful wife, don’t they?). McDormand gamely played a pair secretaries for the Coens in both “Miller’s Crossing” and “The Hudsucker Proxy,” and she even got a chance to act for the legendary director John Boorman in the understated drama, “Beyond Rangoon.” McDormand also shares some tense, simmering scenes with Edward Norton in the seminal legal thriller “Primal Fear,” and her work that same year in John Sayles’ exceptional, slow-burning contemporary Western “Lone Star” was even more impressive.
McDormand proved to be wonderful in the sunny, Nancy Meyers-directed rom-com “Something Gotta Give,” where she was the gay feminist sibling of Diane Keaton’s central love interest (in case anyone was wondering, McDormand can do light comedy in her sleep). She was also one of the more believable components of Paolo Sorrentino’s irreverent punk fantasia “This Must Be The Place,” where she played the firefighter wife of Sean Penn’s reclusive, mansion-dwelling former rock god. The erstwhile Marge Gunderson has also proved, over the years, that she can enliven even the dreariest of tentpole action flicks: see, for instance, her respective turns in both Karyn Kusama’s dreary sci-fi dud “Aeon Flux,” and also Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” which squanders grade-A character actors like John Malkovich and John Turturro in a numbingly assaultive “narrative” that’s designed to do nothing but obliterate your senses.
In the last few years, McDormand has become a member of Wes Anderson’s constantly-expanding repertory company: she was a bright spot of the director’s lovely animated adventure “Isle of Dogs,” where she played a chipper language translator, and next, she’ll step into the director’s world of fanciful make-believe once more as Lucinda Krementz, a journalist profiling assorted student uprisings in 1960’s Paris in the upcoming “The French Dispatch” (which is still, for now, without a release date). As of writing this, McDormand is slated to play what could end up being the most rewarding role of her career: we refer to the role of Lady Macbeth, in husband Joel Coen’s upcoming, A24-produced solo feature, “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” If McDormand ends up crushing the part as many of us hope/know she will, perhaps we can put the question of “who is the greatest living actress” to bed once and for all.
“Nomadland” is currently doing the festival rounds, and will see a release in the U.S. on December 4 through Searchlight Pictures.