I’m going to need a little time to figure how the Left Banke’s “Walk Away Renee” relates to Martin McDonaugh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Fox Searchlight, sometime this fall). But it’s obvious Frances McDormand is going to be a Best Actress contender — tough-talking, grief-struck mom puts a pair of Trump Country lawmen (Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell) through hell because they’re more concerned with giving black guys a hard time than finding the person who raped and murdered her daughter. 

 McDormand’s last big score was in HBO’s Olive Kitteridge; her most acclaimed screen performances have been in Moonrise Kingdom, Burn After Reading, North Country, Almost Famous and — her crowning glory — Brainerd police chief Marge Gunderson in Fargo, which opened 21 years ago. 

On 10.21.16 an HE tipster who’d attended a Three Billboards research screening called it “an incredibly smart, dark comedy with a great script.”