Starring: Liam Neeson, James Franco, Tim Blake Nelson. “Buster Scruggs” involves classical moviemaking techniques (large crowds spacious and complicated physical elements against real scenery) along with copious digital effects (pistol shots to the head or, more winsomely, the ghost of Scruggs floating up to heaven, strumming a harp). Ranging from absurd to profound, these Western vignettes from the Coen brothers follow the adventures of outlaws and settlers on the American frontier. The pathos are heavy yet earned here, and here alone.įrom the looks of it, the Coens enjoyed a sizable budget for this project. Six tales of life and violence in the Old West, following a singing gunslinger, a bank robber, a traveling impresario, an. With innocents such as these, you know things won’t be working out in Coen Territory.
(The Coens, who wrote, directed and edited, filmed the anthology in Nebraska and New Mexico.) Zoe Kazan pierces the heart as a young woman lovestruck by a sweet, sincere fellow traveler (Bill Heck).
#BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS SERIES#
This isn’t one of the brothers’ top-drawer films because there are too many dull stories and characters we don’t latch onto - just a series of Buster shrugs.Only “The Gal Who Got Rattled” feels fully formed and interestingly shaded, following a wagon train heading west. All the tales have in common to be set in the 19th-century American West, and somehow death is.
#BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS MOVIE#
The movie is composed of six separate stories oscillating between comedy and drama. The production required from classic desert landscapes to evergreen mountain scenery. But setting the mood has never been the Coens’ problem. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was filmed in New Mexico, Colorado, and Nebraska. The folksy music by Carter Burwell is twangy and tuneful, too. The Coen brothers explore mythic absurdity and mortality on the Western frontier in a six-part anthology film that sees them juggling tonesfrom Looney Toons slapstick to bone-chilling morbidity and back againwith the veterans’ deft touch. It’s also nice to take in the lush Old West scenery that looks epic even when the story is tumbleweed-dry. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Annapurna Pictures, distributed by Netflix, 133 minutes, 2018, R. The final part, “The Mortal Remains,” ends the movie with a fizzle, but it’s always a pleasure to see Tyne Daly, who plays a religious wife with secrets. Its an anthology that consists of six segments. What sells it is how simultaneously spooky and sweet big-eyed Kazan is. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a 2018 Western comedy written, directed, and produced by the Coen Brothers. Zoe Kazan plays a young woman on a wagon train who’s promised to be married to a man she’s never met. But the next portion, “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” has real drive and direction. And, in another boring scene, Harry Melling (Dudley from “Harry Potter”) plays a limbless traveling actor.Īt this point, you might be tempted to head back East. Tom Waits actually is doing Will Ferrell’s “I’m the prospector!” bit as he searches for a nugget of gold in them thar hills. THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS is the new film by the Joel and Ethan Coen the creators of FARGO, THE BIG LEBOWSKI and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. James Franco plays a bank robber in a section that could be a scrapped “SNL” sketch. Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson), the clean-cut, white-clad singing cowboy who ambles into view atop a white horse at the beginning of the Coen brothers’ new Western anthology film, The Ballad.
This tale comes closest to the blood-and-yuks style that Coen fans eat up.įrom there, the storytelling becomes a little shoddy, pardner. The first - and best - chapter is an almost-musical about the title character, a singin’ gunslinger (Tim Blake Nelson) whose sense of humor is as sharp as his shootin’. But “Buster Scruggs” is mostly unengaging. You’d think with viewers’ short attention spans and love of binge-watching, it would be the perfect format for today. “Buster Scruggs” is episodic - appropriate for its Netflix home - so we follow a few Wild West characters for 20 minutes or so, and then we’re handed a whole stack of new ones. With “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” directors Ethan and Joel Coen venture to the frontier once more, after “True Grit” and “No Country for Old Men.” But this time, there’s only a little grit in this very slow country.
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