10 Underrated Frances McDormand Movies You Need To See

Frances McDormand has established herself as one of the finest actors of her generation, and she has a few great movies which don’t get enough attention. While most people will be familiar with McDormand’s performances in movies like Fargo and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, she has been making great movies for decades, so she has some underappreciated hits.

McDormand is equally adept at comedy and drama, and some of her finest performances come when she is able to produce a blend of both. She is one of an elite few who have earned three Academy Awards for acting, putting her in the same rarefied air as legends such as Katharine Hepburn and Jack Nicholson. Given some of her recent movies, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see her adding to that total in the years to come. Despite all her high-profile success, McDormand still has some underrated movies.

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Related Ranking Every Frances McDormand Character In A Coen Brothers Movie

Frances McDormand has played major roles in seven of her husband’s movies, including Coen brothers classics like Fargo and Blood Simple.

10 The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

Doris Crane

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Director Joel Coen Release Date November 16, 2001 Cast Billy Bob Thornton , Frances McDormand , Michael Badalucco , James Gandolfini , Katherine Borowitz , Jon Polito , Scarlett Johansson , Richard Jenkins

Frances McDormand has worked with her husband Joel Coen many times. The Man Who Wasn’t There features McDormand as a barber’s wife who has an affair, leading the barber to engage in a criminal conspiracy starting with blackmail and escalating quickly to manslaughter. Although some aspects of the plot share common threads with Fargo, The Man Who Wasn’t There is inspired by classics of film noir, giving it a completely different atmosphere.

The Man Who Wasn’t There
shows the Coen brothers having fun with their own version of a film noir story.

The Man Who Wasn’t There shows the Coen brothers having fun with their own version of a film noir story. The plot, the cinematography and the dialogue borrow heavily from that period, but there are enough original touches to make the plot feel vital and interesting without being too derivative. Billy Bob Thornton is excellent as the barber at the center of it all.

9 City By The Sea (2002)

Michelle

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City by the Sea starts Robert De Niro as a cop whose estranged son is suspected of murder, and he is conflicted between his family ties and his responsibility to his job. It isn’t one of De Niro’s best movies, but City by the Sea still showcases his talents while telling an interesting story about love and honor. Frances McDormand plays De Niro’s girlfriend, who doesn’t know about his son until he is accused of murder.

It isn’t one of De Niro’s best movies, but
City by the Sea
still showcases his talents while telling an interesting story about love and honor.

McDormand plays a secondary character in City by the Sea, but she is captivating in the time she is on screen. While De Niro’s cop has enough to deal with, McDormand’s B-plot is just as interesting. She is devastated by the news that her boyfriend has been lying to her for years, but she still feels a sense of duty to stand by his side at his most difficult moment. McDormand has always been able to make smaller roles feel bigger than they are.

8 Hail, Caesar! (2016)

C. C. Calhoun

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Director Ethan Coen , Joel Coen Release Date February 5, 2016 Cast Josh Brolin , Channing Tatum , Tilda Swinton , George Clooney , Scarlett Johansson , Frances McDormand , Jonah Hill , Ralph Fiennes

Hail, Caesar follows a studio fixer in Old Hollywood as he tries to keep a long list of pampered actors out of trouble. Josh Brolin is superb as Eddie Mannix, but the dense plot dips in and out of several stories across Los Angeles. The result often feels like a collection of loosely interconnected sketches with little to hold them together. While this can make the story a little hard to grasp, it also delivers plenty of laughs.

Frances McDormand has a small but memorable role as a film editor, an overworked cog in the Hollywood machine who very nearly dies at her desk.

Hail, Caesar has a great cast, with some actors playing versions of themselves that might have flourished in Hollywood in a different era. George Clooney plays a huge movie star who wants to think of himself as a man of substance, and Channing Tatum plays a handsome actor who plays dumb for his fans. Frances McDormand has a small but memorable role as a film editor, an overworked cog in the Hollywood machine who very nearly dies at her desk.

7 The French Dispatch (2021)

Lucinda Krementz

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Director Wes Anderson Release Date October 22, 2021 Cast Owen Wilson , Timothée Chalamet , Bill Murray , Tilda Swinton , Lea Seydoux , Stephen Park , Benicio Del Toro , Adrien Brody

Frances McDormand has joined Wes Anderson’s list of regular performers, and her role in The French Dispatch could represent the pinnacle of their collaboration. The French Dispatch is an anthology movie, with each section telling a different story from a fictional magazine in a fictional French town. The sections use different storytelling styles and filmmaking techniques to mimic the writing styles of each contributing author.

Frances McDormand has joined Wes Anderson’s list of regular performers, and her role in
The French Dispatch
could represent the pinnacle of their collaboration.

McDormand plays Lucinda Krementz, a journalist who gets a little too close to some student protests, inspired by France’s May 68 unrest. She and Timothée Chalamet make an unlikely couple, as Krementz loses her objectivity by starting a relationship with the subject of her article. The French Dispatch is about art and the role of artists. McDormand’s character shows that sometimes living is more important than observing from the sidelines, even if it comes at a great cost.

6 The Good Dinosaur (2015)

Momma

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Director Peter Sohn Release Date November 25, 2015 Cast Bill Hader , Neil Patrick Harris , Lucas Neff , John Lithgow , Frances McDormand , Judy Greer

The Good Dinosaur was Pixar’s first true box office flop, but it doesn’t deserve some of the hate it gets. It certainly isn’t among Pixar’s best movies, although this is partly because The Good Dinosaur is a victim of the studio’s high standards. There is still a lot to like about the story of a young Apatosaurus striking up an unlikely friendship with a young feral human.

Frances McDormand plays Arlo’s mother. It’s a small role, but one that could have been expanded upon in a sequel.

The Good Dinosaur is one of Pixar’s most visually striking movies, with remarkably detailed landscapes throughout, which create an immersive sense of the world. There are also some great jokes along Arlo and Spot’s journey to find their families again. Frances McDormand plays Arlo’s mother. It’s a small role, but one that could have been expanded upon in a sequel if The Good Dinosaur’s box office had lived up to expectations.

5 Short Cuts (1993)

Betty Weathers

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Robert Altman’s movies are often recognizable by their large ensemble casts, and Short Cuts takes things to a new level. The film tells several short stories, some interconnected and some seemingly independent, using a cast of dozens of great actors. Stars include Robert Downey Jr., Julianne Moore and Jennifer Jason Leigh, to name just a few. Each segment is based on a short story or poem by Raymond Carver.

Altman’s ambitious project could easily have become an overstuffed mess in the hands of a less capable director, but he presents a stunning group portrait.

Frances McDormand plays a woman in the process of divorcing her husband who has an affair with a married man. She is able to convey a lot of emotion with the simplest of glances, which makes her the perfect star for Short Cuts. Altman’s ambitious project could easily have become an overstuffed mess in the hands of a less capable director, but he presents a stunning group portrait, filled with both humor and tragedy.

4 Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Mrs. Bishop

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Director Wes Anderson Release Date June 21, 2012 Cast Bill Murray , Kara Hayward , Bruce Willis , Jason Schwartzman , Edward Norton

Moonrise Kingdom is one of Wes Anderson’s best movies, although it doesn’t always get as much love as others like The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Royal Tenenbaums. The story follows two children who elope together, much to the consternation of their parents, the police, and pretty much everyone else in their insular community. Moonrise Kingdom is a sweet, romantic tale, but Anderson’s humor still packs a punch.

Moonrise Kingdom
is a sweet, romantic tale, but Anderson’s humor still packs a punch.

Moonrise Kingdom features a great ensemble cast, including Bruce Willis, Ed Norton and Bill Murray all on top form. Frances McDormand plays Mrs. Bishop, the mother of one of the two young lovers. She and Murray strike up a great dynamic as two stressed-out parents who try to find their daughter despite being bogged down by their three sons. Mrs. Bishop marches around her house with a megaphone in a desperate attempt to corral her children.

3 Burn After Reading (2008)

Linda Litzke

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Director Ethan Coen , Joel Coen Release Date September 5, 2008 Cast George Clooney , Frances McDormand , Brad Pitt , John Malkovich , Tilda Swinton , Richard Jenkins

Frances McDormand so often plays snarky, world-weary comedic characters, but Burn After Reading shows that she has a more impressive range. She plays a high-strung gym employee who stumbles upon a file of memoirs which she and her co-worker mistake as top-secret government intelligence. Their attempts to blackmail the CIA analyst who wrote the memoirs is a hilarious misadventure. McDormand and Brad Pitt are wonderful together as two dimwitted would-be criminals.

Burn After Reading
may not be up there with the very best Coen brothers movies, but it’s still underrated within their filmography.

Burn After Reading may not be up there with the very best Coen brothers movies like Fargo and No Country for Old Men, but it’s still underrated within their filmography. The dark crime caper benefits from good performances all around, with John Malkovich as an irate ex-government employee and George Clooney as a serial philanderer. Burn After Reading also has one of the funniest death scenes ever filmed, when Brad Pitt’s inept gym bro dips his toe into some espionage.

2 Almost Famous (2000)

Elaine Miller

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Director Cameron Crowe Release Date September 15, 2000 Cast Billy Crudup , Frances McDormand , Kate Hudson , Jason Lee , Patrick Fugit , Zooey Deschanel

Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical comedy-drama follows a teenager who gets whisked away on tour with a rock band in the 1970s while he writes an article for Rolling Stone. While Almost Famous luxuriates in the appeal of this fantasy, it also shows a darker side. Almost Famous is an aspirational story about chasing dreams and pursuing passion, but it’s real enough to avoid being simple fluff.

While
Almost Famous
luxuriates in the appeal of its rock-and-roll fantasy, it also shows a darker side.

Frances McDormand plays the mother of the young journalist, desperate to protect him from the evil influence of rock and roll, as she sees it, but constantly unable to have any real impact on his decision-making. McDormand milks this tension for both comedy and drama, which suits the tone of Almost Famous perfectly. She is a delight whenever she comes into view, although her presence is often felt but not seen, as her character persistently calls her son while he is doing drugs and having near-death experiences on the road.

1 Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day (2008)

Miss Pettigrew

As the title suggests, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day takes place over the course of 24 hours. Based on the 1938 novel by Winifred Watson, the movie stars Frances McDormand as a middle-aged governess whose prickly personality makes it impossible to hold down a job. She becomes the perfect assistant to Delysia Lafosse, a flighty American singer played by Amy Adams. McDormand and Adams bounce off each other wonderfully.

Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day
is rich in period details, but it manages to extract the essential human comedy from the story.

Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day is rich in period details, but it manages to extract the essential human comedy from the story. The dissonance between Delysia’s messy love life and Miss Pettigrew’s reserved nature creates a timeless comedic tension. Eventually, both women learn a thing or two from the other, and the story’s affectionate portrait of female friendship is a joy. McDormand’s gradual transformation throughout the movie constitutes one of her underrated but superb performances.

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