Celebrating McDormand

I have been a huge Frances McDormand fan ever since 1984's Blood Simple, one of my favorite films of all-time. Her most famous role, of course, was as Sheriff Marge Gunderson in 1996's Fargo, a performance that earned her an Oscar for best actress. She has received three other Oscar nominations, for her brilliantly moving understated performance in 1988's Mississippi Burning, and then for Almost Famous (2000) and North Country (2004).

Other than her much lauded television appearance in 2014's Olive Kitteridge, and her overlooked job in Moonrise Kingdom in 2012, McDormand hasn’t done that much of late to get all that excited about. That might be about to change, however.

I’m not saying she’s a slam dunk for a best actress Oscar nomination for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Minnesota, but from the looks of the trailer below I think she certainly has to be in the running. She plays the mother of girl who was raped and murdered and after a couple of months, when she doesn’t see any progress made toward solving the case, she makes over three billboards leading into town with controversial messages criticizing the town’s respected police chief (played by Woody Harrelson).

Three Billboards began filming in Sylva, N.C., last May and is expected to be released through Fox Searchlight sometime in the fall. It is written and directed by Martin McDonagh, who made another one of my favorite thrillers, In Bruges (2008).