The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

As you probably know if you have been following me for a while, I'm not the biggest fan of westerns, which is why I decided to pass The Ballad of Buster Scruggs when it released. Yes, even though the Coen brothers made it. And the cast is stellar. It's been popping out in my Netflix homepage quite often lately so I decided to give it a shot.

It is a western anthology that features six stories taking place in the Old West: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs follows a cheerful and singing gunslinger (Tim Blake Nelson); Near Algodones follows a nameless cowboy (James Franco) who gets caught in a bank robbery; Meal Ticket follows an impresario (Liam Neeson) and his armless and legless young artist (Harry Melling) who travel from town to town to recite classics; All Gold Canyon follows an elderly prospector (Tom Waits) at a remote creek; The Gal Who Got Rattled follows the journey of a young woman (Zoe Kazan) on a westward-bound wagon train; The Mortal Remains follows the five passengers of a stagecoach.

These are six stories that have very little in common as they don't share the plot, characters nor have the same tone —while the first is purely comedic relief, the stories get more serious and darker as the film moves forward. And yet The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is the most compelling, fun and thought-provoking anthology I've seen as each story has its unique take on death, which came in many forms in the Wild West, while dealing with human frailty, morality, vanity, overconfidence, and duplicity.

In addition, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is filled with compelling characters. They don't have a lot of depth nor development as time does not allow that, but they immediately feel real, they are likeable and sympathetic, and interesting to follow around —I found myself invested in all of them.

The acting is also great. Everyone does a wonderful job, from James Franco to Liam Neeson to Zoe Kazan but there are a few standouts: Tim Blake Nelson is brilliant as the titular character, Buster Scruggs; Stephen Root is very mesmerizing as a bank teller in the second story; Tom Waits absolutely nails the role of a gold prospector.

Netflix

The screenplay is also filled with brilliant dialogue, especially in the final vignette as the five characters discuss different philosophical topics. In addition, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs has gorgeous, jaw-dropping cinematography that transports you to the setting of the film, the Old West.  The scenery is also on point and the costumes are great. The score is phenomenal, and the songs from the first story are very catchy and enjoyable.

Ultimately, this is a film that blends action, comedy, drama and romance incredibly well, that keeps you interested and engaged in spite of the stories being completely different from one another. What I would change something about it? Well, maybe as I've liked the characters to connect as they do in Tarantino's movies.

The Old Man & the Gun (2018)

I haven't seen enough of his films to consider Robert Redford as one of my favourite actors, but I really like him. So of course I had to see The Old Man & the Gun, a heist movie starring Redford in his alleged last performance before retirement. 

The film tells the true but fictionalized story of Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford) and follows him after his audacious escape from San Quentin at the age of 70 as he continues robbing banks with the help of two other old men, Teddy Green (Danny Glover), and Waller (Tom Waits), falls in love with Jewel (Sissy Spacek), and is pursued by rookie detective John Hunt (Casey Affleck).

The biggest issue I had with The Old Man & the Gun was the plot. It is simply too thin —nearly non-existent, to be honest— to support the running time, hence the film is filled with unnecessary things such as John Hunt's life subplot —it is only distracting. Frankly, I don't understand the need to give Hunt a family since he wasn't married nor had kids, while in the film he is in an interracial marriage. The "issue" isn't even addressed so I don't really get the point— and scenes that add nothing and ends up being tedious and unengaging. It does, however, work as some sort of meditation on life and what it means to find joy in the small things, and I think it's the kind of story that makes for a fitting farewell.

The characters are a little disappointing too. Without much of a plot, the film needed solid characters but unfortunately, they are nearly as shallow as the plot. Most have a nice characterization and development, but the relationships between them aren't developed very well and because of it, they don't feel genuine. The romance between Tucker and Jewel being the only exception because Redford and Spacek have amazing chemistry.

Fox Searchlight Pictures

The acting arguably is the best bit of The Old Man & the Gun. Robert Redford gives yet another charming performance as he brings to the screen another likeable character. Sissy Spacek steals the show as Jewel, giving a very charismatic and moving performance. Danny Glover and Tom Waits do a nice job as Tucker's partners. Elisabeth Moss, who makes a short appearance as Tucker's daughter, also does a good job. The only false note is Casey Affleck who is basically playing himself and mumbling his way through the movie —if it wasn't for the subtitles, I would have missed most of the stuff that came out of his mouth.

Overall, The Old Man & the Gun was quite disappointing. While the ending is wonderful and the acting more than solid, the story is just too slow and dull. Definitely not the farewell an actor such as Robert Redford deserves.

I Like Coppola in June, How About You?

A number of new and notable titles snuck onto Instant this month. Among those are a handful of films directed by Francis Ford Coppola, an important filmmaker by any standard and one who obviously needs no introduction. What makes these titles worth noting is that they join Tucker (also reviewed) and The Conversation to form a solid collection of the director's least heralded, but most interesting, work. The one exception is the indispensable Apocalypse Now (1979), second only to The Godfathers I and II in the director's ouevre and arguably the greatest war film ever made--even if calling it merely a war film fails to account for its greatness as a film, period. There's simply no movie that better depicts the darker corners of man's soul, particularly as filtered through the psychedelic fog that permeated the conflict in Vietnam. With its basis in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the film elegantly channels a literary sensibility into one that's uniquely cinematic, creating a dramatic and powerful journey upriver that's as much existential meditation as war drama.

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