The Balled of Buster Scruggs (2018)

The Balled of Buster Scruggs asks the question, what if Roy Rodgers were incredibly violent? Or rather that is what it's first segment, also titled "The Balled of Buster Scruggs" asks as this newest Coen Brothers film is as an anthology of short western stories. So this is a retro genera picture done in a retro format, perfect for the Coen's. The brothers enjoy playing amongst the western conventions and types, giving them their own signature twists. The tone, and to a lesser extend the quality is varied, ranging from the Loony Toons craziness of Tim Blake Nelson's Buster Scruggs, to "Meal Ticket", which goes rather dark and features Liam Neeson as a traveling impresario and Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley from the Harry Potter films) as a limbless artist who can recite Shakespeare, The Bible, and Lincoln by hart. Tom Waits is a wonderfully grizzled old prospector in "All Gold Canyon", "The Mortal Remains" boasts a great small cast and some very enjoyable dialogue, while James Franco in "Near Algodones" anchors the films weakest segment, which still features an enjoyable turn by Stephen Root as an isolated banker. By far my favorite of the six vignettes is "The Gal Who Got Rattled" featuring Zoe Kazan, it is so old fashioned and sweet it could almost have been done as an episode of the vintage TV series Wagon Train, which was also a western anthology program. This is really one of the best films of the year, every once in a while a movie comes around that scratches an itch you didn't know needed scratching until you've seen it. I really hope that the films producer NetFlix gets to do more anthology work with the Coen's, I'd love to get something like this every few years from them. ****