![]() The chatty, macabre “Mortal” invites listening to the banter of five very different travelers on a stagecoach. The acting in “Gal” (Zoe Kazan and Bill Heck) is so spot-on that its ending is as poignant as any 2018 movie’s. Ultimately I settle on “The Gal Who Got Rattled” and “Mortal Remains,” the last two stories in the movie. ![]() On black-cloud days, the brutal “Meal Ticket” (Liam Neeson) will seem the most cynical parable ever told about the entertainment industry. On lighter days, I suggest the prospector’s story featuring Tom Waits, “All Gold Canyon,” part Disney-movie-parody and part triumph-of-the-individual-will. You will see Oregon Trail drives, stagecoaches, prospecting, mining towns, Indian raids, travelling entertainers, deserts and big skies, and plenty of guns and corpses.Īs for which of these stories is the best, take your pick. Oh but there are more Western movie tropes, many more, as the Coens go through as many of them as possible. Meanwhile, the second story that follows, “Near Algodones” (starring James Franco and Stephen Root), features hangings, Indians, cattle-thieves, and a robbery of a bank that is in the middle of nowhere. The opening eponymous story, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” offers singalongs and showdowns, as a white-clad cowboy, Buster Scruggs himself (Tim Blake Nelson), proves how tough and smiley a movie cowboy can be. And they are all Westerns of a kind, riffing on old ideas, combining to create something new. Yet Buster Scruggs should be a breeze to watch for any mature viewer.Īll of the six stories have their relative strengths. Pause the movie if you must.)Īlready, as you can see, this is a complex work with more creative fodder than any critic can handle at once. (Do not neglect, then, to read the elegant ending paragraphs of each story. The Coens thus merge text and film, allowing you to read the end of each story as each film ends. As each of the short films ends, the text of the book dissolves onto it. ![]() On screen, as each short film begins and ends, the Coens feature the book. The short films are held together by a visual conceit: the viewer is, in a sense, reading a faux-book of short stories said to be published in the 1870s. Released in 2018, it is one of the best films of last year. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, streaming on Netflix, is a Western anthology film composed of six stories or short films. And here, they have used it to create a work of emotionally wide-ranging wonder. For at least a moment, they have resurrected an underused film structure with amazing potential. They have created one of the best anthology films ever made. I have been waiting long, so long, for someone to do it well. Starring: Tim Blake Nelson, James France, Liam Neeson, Tom Waits, Zoe Kazan, Brendan Glesson (and a cast of many more) Written and directed by: Joel and Ethan Coen
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