A Balada de Buster Scruggs

Finally a movie that feels genuine start to finish and a movie that entertains. You are never sure where it starts and where it will end,all the characters immediately feel real without wasting any time. And perhaps most importantly, this is a movie that does not insult your intelligence like almost all other movies do.

I was fortunate enough to see this at the LFF with the Coen brothers present. During their introduction they mentioned how they wrote each chapter as a series of shorts over 25 years, and it certainly felt like this both in good ways and bad. Each story was completely different from the one either side of it and none were short of originality. Stories unfolded in the way only a Coen brother's film could - a style that I have always admired.

What was slightly disappointing was its lack of continuity. Each of the stories are completely contained and the final short was one of the most disappointing for me ending in quite an anticlimax. I understand these shorts are independent of one another but had they intersected in some way I think there could have been a much more satisfying conclusion. But the subversion of that expectation I also admire, my brain was just full of the interesting situations that could have unfolded had these characters come into contact with each other - as per a Tarantino film. It could also have ended with a different short as the 5th story for me (and the gold panning segment) was arguably the best.

Aside from the story itself the film has great visuals, some amazing one liners and incredible acting performances - especially considering the lengths actors went to in order to get into character for just a 20 minutes segment of a film. Overall expect 6 Coen brothers shorts sewn together with the thinest fabric imaginable and a time at the cinema like you haven't had all year.

Beautifully observed vignettes which give believable insights into the lives of early settlers to the Wild West. Ironic, tragic and sometimes comic, each one is entertaining in its own way and serves as a reminder of the harshness of the time.

When they remade TRUE GRIT, the Coen Brothers clearly thought there weren't enough John Ford westerns -- I agree with them -- so they offered the audience one. With THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS they clearly think there aren't enough movies offering the strengths of the classic B and short westerns: open vistas, lone prospectors, wagon trains, bank robbers, cattle rustlers, gunslinging, moralizing singing cowboys who wander the barren west, strumming their "Radio King" guitars for their horses, and five people inside a stage yarning to each other. So they stuck together half a dozen stories, got their usual assortment of top talent and offered them to us. I am extremely grateful.

Their cinematographer, Bruno Delbonnel, offers us a variety of lighting. I was most impressed by his choices for "The Girl Who Got Rattled", which is staged like posters for WESTWARD THE WOMEN and lit like the covers for Louis Lamour paperbacks in the 1960s. There's an air of artificiality that pervades the movie. That's common enough for the Coens, who like to mock their dead cinematic peers, but. like HAIL, CAESAR shows their fondness for their subject.

How do you rate a movie that is very well done, but you just don't connect with it at all? I love the Coen brothers, and I watched this with an open heart. Not every Coen brothers movie knocks it out of the park, but all of them are at least smart and interesting. The same holds true for this one, though I'm sorry to say that I found myself bored throughout most of it.

Six stories is a lot to process in one sitting. The problem for me was that I would be watching one of the segments, trying to understand its significance or find something to appreciate story-wise, and then we moved on to the next tale.

There was nothing wrong with it and I would consider watching it again some time with a fresh perspective. This movie did seem to have a grasp on itself and I trust that the Coens knew what they were doing. It was very unique and beautifully shot, but I think this one ranks low on the Coen's filmography. And if this wasn't a Coen brothers movie, I would probably be more dismissive of it.