The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (The Coen Bros)

[Watashi]

[Ezee E]

Oof, I haven't been this let down by the Coens in a long, long time.

While I'm happy they got to put together a small anthology of whatever they wanted, and their style is there in bundles, it doesn't make for a good whole. The Buster Scruggs piece itself may be a gateway short for someone who doesn't know anything about the Coens, but all the other ones are pretty weak. I couldn't imagine that this was originally a miniseries.

[transmogrifier]

Oof, I haven't been this let down by the Coens in a long, long time.

I take it you didn't watch Hail, Ceasar?

[Watashi]

No such thing as being let down by a Coen Bros. film.

[Ezee E]

I take it you didn't watch Hail, Ceasar?

Had some good moments, but I did forget that.

[MadMan]

See I really enjoyed Hail, Caesar!

[Skitch]

Agree with trans on Hail Caesar. Coens make really good films, but they can be hit and miss for me. Even if the filmmaking is excellent, sometimes I really dislike a story choice. I have no consistency with them.

[Pop Trash]

This is sitting really well with me. When I took a step back to think about what transpired, "Meal Ticket" might be one of the most depressing things I've ever seen. Combines the critique of art and commerce from Inside Llewyn Davis with the memorable off-screen death(s) from No Country for Old Men.

Michael Koresky's piece in Film Comment is a spicy read:
https://www.filmcomment.com/article/...on-of-animals/

[Grouchy]

Very good, occassionally great Fantasy Western. I was a bit taken aback by the tone at first but it quickly sank in and I enjoyed it a lot. An atypical film for an atypical filmography. "Meal Ticket" and "The Gal Who Got Rattled" were my favorite stories, with the first one being unusually creepy. Its final scenes will take some time to be forgotten.

[Irish]

This movie is the Coens too in love with their own set-ups and their own voices. I found it shockingly bad.

[Ezee E]

This movie is the Coens too in love with their own set-ups and their own voices. I found it shockingly bad.

This is basically how I felt as I think of it more.

Ethan Coen, I think it was him, wrote a collection of short stories, which is very similar. Not very good, but, since it's a different type of medium, it's worth checking out.

[Pop Trash]

This movie is the Coens too in love with their own set-ups and their own voices. I found it shockingly bad.

I found the two stars this now has on match-cut to be total fucking bullshit.

[Skitch]

I found the two stars this now has on match-cut to be total fucking bullshit.

This seems to be a love it or hate it affair, but from my one friend's review irl theres a good chance my score will up it.

[Dukefrukem]

Dunno, overall I rather enjoyed this as a whole, which is more than I can say about most of the Coen's recent work.

1st story I really loved the 4th wall breaking and the constant narration. Music was an absolute delight.

2nd story was rather predictable. "pan shot" was so Coen but made me giggle.

3rd story was a bit dry and intentionally tedious to end on a big note. A little bit of a downer coming off the previous two entries.

4th story was satisfying

5th I felt like could be it's own full length movie

6th felt very QT, but my least favorite.

Overall, I wish that the first story was a full length movie.

[Skitch]

Yep this was sweet.

[Wryan]

Quite enjoyed this.

[Peng]

Feels counterintuitive to rate/rank this, since each story is elevated by being part of, and contributes to, the whole cumulative ethos of Coens' fatalistic worldview, and there is a canny structure in each one's placement in the film's arc. But 1) I can't help myself and 2) at least each story has to work on its own on some level. So here goes, in ascending order of preference:

6) Meal Ticket - 5/10

I love the ending conceptually, espeically Neeson's chilling faint smile as he's ambling towards the wagon (and then a perfect cut). But man is it a one-note slog to get there, no matter how fine both performances are. The majority of the story is such a singularly purposeful delivery system to both theme and ending that it lacks any nuance along the way, and for the ending to land harder.

5) Near Algodones - 7/10

Darkly enjoyable, with one damn almost delightfully perverse thing after another. And then it just ends. With how light it is (not a complaint), this feels like it needs a more heightened or stressed ending for the tale to be memorable.

4) The Mortal Remains - 7.5/10

Works so well as a last story that its slightly misshapen structure doesn't bother me much. Good banter, haunting ending, and perfect final shot to close out the whole film.

3) All Gold Canyon - 7.5/10

Minor but involving "process cinema", with an arrestingly grumpy performance and the best cinematography out of all the stories. Might be my favorite ending hook too, where it reverses our expectation but not its ethos.

2) The Gal Who Got Rattled - 8/10

Most "complete" story, the only one that could support expansion into a feature film. Rich and fully developed, it's the gentlest expression of the film's worldview, thus also the most heartrending and devastating. Have to say though that the ending feels so foreshadowed to me that it becomes a little distracting to wait for the other horrible shoe to drop. If this is rectified on rewatch, it might shoot up to be my favorite.

1) The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - 8/10

Likewise, this would be my uncontested favorite by far if not for the ending. It is not weak, exactly, but after the high-octane, extremely black (musical) comedy, fourth-wall-breaking fun for most of the running time, with Tim Blake Nelson as the perfect encapsulation of both the cheerful psychopath and Coens' statement of purpose, the just decent ending comes off a little deflating. A rewatch of adjusted expectation might rectify this as well, though.

More than any other Coens, this has the highest chance of climbing up on rewatch, with how intricately their worldview and attitude are fragmented into six stories, each one a slightly different angle. Even with an occasional dud (or more, depending on your perspective), it is always fascinating to see the Coens' unforgiving universe, with a rare sliver of hope sometimes, operates in the western genre, in which the six tales help enrich each other and the film as a whole so well. 7.5/10

[Skitch]

Now that its had a few days to settle...

I'm not going to rank each short. I enjoyed each one for different reasons. If I'm going to critique the film as a whole...I feel the shorts should have been in a different order. I'm not sure what way, but maybe not end with the one they did. Nothing against that one, I enjoyed it, but felt weird one to end on. I really like the first one, and got the impression that Buster Scruggs would be at least a background character for each of the stories, and I was disappointed that was not the case. I feel it wouldve been more interesting if he had been our story teller throughout. These are just nitpicks though. #panshot

[MadMan]

I like this so far, but I don't love it. I wonder if seeing this on the big screen would have been better.

[Grouchy]

I really like the first one, and got the impression that Buster Scruggs would be at least a background character for each of the stories, and I was disappointed that was not the case.

I was expecting this as well.

[StanleyK]

This is very good, but like every anthology movie it suffers from the fact that some segments are obviously better than others. Here I'd say the James Franco and Liam Neeson parts were the clearly weaker ones, along with maybe the last one. Best one is by far the Buster Scruggs segment. In fact, not knowing it was an anthology beforehand, I was quite surprised and disappointed when it ended.

[transmogrifier]

Here's the thing with anthology films: make the individual segments too disparate in tone/subject matter/theme and you wonder why they bothered sticking them together in the first place; make them too similar, and it becomes a bit monotonous. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is firmly in the latter camp, too in love with the same one-note joke (i.e., bitterly ironic death and/or violence) to really be anything worthwhile as a cohesive film, but it has isolated moments of excellence that make it worth persevering with, kind of like mindlessly following a YouTube playlist, really. I mean, the third act segment in "The Gal that Got Rattled" (don't want to say too much, because it is better to just experience it yourself) is up there with the best constructed individual scene in the Coen filmography, Buster Scruggs' ballad is pretty catchy, the shadow on the gold vein is an awesome way to introduce impending danger etc. But then you have the relentlessly dour "Meal Ticket" that exists only for the cynical ending...

So... yeah. Not a true comeback after the flabby, boring Hail, Ceasar!, but interesting enough in spots.

[Dead & Messed Up]

It's funny, but I found "The Girl Who Got Rattled" the most frustrating, since it comes fourth in the film, and by that point the film's boner for irony/cynicism/death as a story-ender ("Buster," "Algodones," "Meal") had so firmly established itself that as soon as the film started developing the hesitant romance between the two leads, I just got bummed out. Obviously by that point the dramatic irony of waiting for the story to rug-pull the heroes is established, so I'm not saying I was one step ahead of the film (oh I'm so clever I figured out this story might O. Henry my ass). Just that by that point it started to feel more contrived and a bit more shameless. In that one, figuratively, they pet the dog extra before they shoot it in the face, and I wasn't crazy on that.

Mostly liked this, though, with special love to "Buster," "Mortal Remains," and my very favorite, "All Gold Canyon," which is just a fantastic achievement of visual storytelling. Hell, you don't even need a lot of the Waits grumbles that you get ("shot clean through!", oh, thanks for that). Watching Waits work methodically, sort out the math and geometry. I'm a sucker for that kind of storytelling, where we feel like we're discovering in tandem with the protagonist.

[Irish]

Waits is the best thing in the film. I just saw him in "Old Man and the Gun," where he has a supporting part, and he tells some extremely weird stories. (I'm pretty sure all of his dialogue was improvised in that one.)

[Spinal]

This has its moments, but it feels overall pretty lightweight to me. If Roma was an argument in favor of Netflix and their role in making a great director's personal work widely accessible, then this feels like the counter argument. I'm not going to say I didn't ultimately enjoy it for what it's worth. But it lacks the driving purpose of most of the Coens' work. It just feels like something to pass the time while you're waiting for new episodes of Glow.