The
Ballad of Buster Scruggs 7/10
I
didn't even know this movie was a thing that was happening let alone
available on Netflix because I would've easily seen this in theaters.
This Cohen Brothers movie The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs is a series of
six shorts films that are not really connected but tied together by
being in a book. Some stories seem longer than others and while none
of them are bad the longest one was the least interesting to me which
is why I didn't rate this higher.
The
Ballad of Buster Scruggs
This
one stars Tim Blake Nelson as Buster Scruggs. He is a cheerful ass
cowboy that is riding his horse through canyons and into a town just
singing his heart out. I didn't know if the whole movie was gonna be
like this but I wouldn't have been mad if it were. This was by far my
favorite story in the film. He is super nice and polite but explains
that he is an outlaw. He heads into a bar where he is turned down for
a drink because of how he looks and gets into it with another patron.
It was one of the funniest death scenes I'd seen in a long time and I
rewound it and cracked up even harder. After singing about killing
dude the dead guys brother shows up and challenges Buster to a duel
and ends up having every finger shot off one by one. Buster is then
challenged to a duel by another guy that shows up playing a
harmonica. I loved the weirdness of this short story and would watch
an entire series based on this guy.
James
Franco is a cowboy that robs this bank that is near nothing but a
well and dirt. He tries to rob the bank but the guy escapes. The
cowboy steals a bunch of money but after heading outside is shot at
by the banker covered in pots and pans. The dude is bulletproof! He
knocks the cowboy out who then wakes up seated on a horse with a
noose around his neck. Before he is hanged some natives show up and
kill all the would be hangers but leave him tied up still. He is
eventually saved only to be taken to be hung somewhere else! I liked
this short, intense little tale.
There
had to be a sad ass story and by god this one is it. It stars Liam
Neeson and Harry Melling as a traveling act. Liam is the caretaker
for this guy that has no arms or legs that tells beautiful stories in
small towns. The crowds get smaller and they make less money as time
goes on but the guy has enough money to sleep with prostitutes in the
same room as the kid. It's creepy and gross. He has to take care of
the kid in every way because he is their meal ticket but grows weary
of it and does the most dickish of thing in the history of dicking. I
liked this story but holy shit it was sad. I also didn't know that
the kid was the same one that was the mean chubby one from the Harry
Potter films.
This
one stars Tom Waits as a panhandler searching for gold. He arrives at
this beautiful land and begins to immediately tear it up looking for
what he calls Mr. Pocket which is a large area of gold. I mean he
jacks the place up. One day he finds the gold and immediately is shot
in the back by this young guy who then lights a smoke and chills.
Just when he goes to move the body, surprise, bitch!, the old man is
alive and super pissed off about having to do all that hard work and
then shot in the back. He ends up killing the kid and getting the
gold. I was so not sure which way this story was going.
This
one is about a woman named Alice Longabaugh played by Zoe Kazan. She
leaves with her brother on a caravan for Oregon and it is not even a
definite thing that the jobs and life they are traveling to even
really exist. Along the way he ends up dying and one of the handlers
falls for Alice and proposes marriage. The way he does it is so not
romantic but super logical. It is how I'm afraid I would propose. It
makes sense for Alice because she really does not have options. There
is also this side issue with a dog she has that belonged to her
brother that is annoying as hell. One day on the trail the dog finds
Alice and then some natives find them. One of the other handlers
hands her a gun and tells her if they are overrun he will shoot her
and them himself or she can shoot herself. After the attack that
seems like a lost he ends up winning but finds that Alice has shot
herself dead. This was not a bad story but felt very long and was my
least favorite.
This
one I liked for the strangeness of it all. Five passengers are in a
stagecoach. This Englishman, an Irish dude, a trapper who does I
swear a three minute monologue without stopping, a lady who has not
sen her husband in years, and a French guy are all traveling. They
have various odd conversations and at one point the lady gets upset
and can not breathe. They want the driver to stop but the French guy
lets them know that the driver never stops. The English guy looks out
and sees the driver just whipping the shit out of the horses. The
scenery gets progressively darker as they travel at crazy speeds. The
stagecoach stops at this crazy ass hotel and by this point they all
begin to realize what's going on and accept it. This was my second
favorite story. I think I just like singing in the middle of films.
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