{"id":42692,"date":"2026-09-19T07:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T11:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=42692"},"modified":"2026-09-19T08:45:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T12:45:13","slug":"the-ballad-of-buster-scruggs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=42692","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Ballad of Buster Scruggs&#8221; (2018) A Film By Joel &amp; Ethan Coen \/ Z-View"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2026\/z091926review_bscruggs.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"741\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong><i>The Ballad of Buster Scruggs <\/i>(2018)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Director: <strong>Joel Coen, Ethan Coen<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Screenplay: <strong>Joel Coen, Ethan Coen<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Stars:\u00a0<strong> Tim Blake Nelson, Clancy Brown, Tyne Daly, James Franco, Stephen Root, Brendan Gleeson, Bill Heck, Grainger Hines, Zoe Kazan, Harry Melling, Liam Neeson, Jonjo O&#8217;Neill, Chelcie Ross, Saul Rubinek and Tom Waits<\/strong><strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Tagline: <em>How the West Was Won (more or less)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>The Plot&#8230;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The Ballad of Buster Scrugs<\/em> is actually six tales from the post-Civil War west.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>&#8220;The Ballad of Buster Scruggs&#8221; &#8211;\u00a0<\/em>Buster Scruggs, dressed in white from head to toe, is the fastest gun in the west.\u00a0 He has a wonderful singing voice as well.\u00a0 Buster drifts from town to town never looking for trouble.\u00a0 Trouble is, it always finds him.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>&#8220;Near Algodones&#8221;\u00a0<\/em>&#8211; A small bank stands isolated on the prairie.\u00a0 A lone cowboy decides the bank is easy pickins.\u00a0 That decision is going to lead to a series of unexpected events that culminate with the biggest surprise of all.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>&#8220;Meal Ticket&#8221;\u00a0<\/em>&#8211; An older man and a young armless and legless man named Harrison travel from frontier town to frontier town in a showman&#8217;s wagon. Harrison is a skilled orator.\u00a0 In each town, Harrison recites poetry and dramatic readings for donations.\u00a0 It is a hard life.\u00a0 Maybe there is an easier way to make a living.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>&#8220;All Gold Canyon&#8221;<\/em> &#8211; An old weathered prospector has traveled deep into the frontier. Despite years of prospecting failure, he is determined to strike gold.\u00a0 And when he does, what could go wrong?<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>&#8220;The Gal Who Got Rattled&#8221;\u00a0<\/em>&#8211; Alice Longabaugh and her brother Gilbert are part of a wagon train headed to Oregon. There Gilbert says he has a business opportunity waiting.\u00a0 Based on Gilbert&#8217;s past business success Alice has her doubts.\u00a0 When Gilbert takes ill and suddenly dies, Alice is left alone.\u00a0 Things take a turn for the best when Billy, the second lead on the wagon train, proposes marriage.\u00a0 Billy is a decent, honest man who had shown an interest in Alice from the journey&#8217;s start.\u00a0 Alice thinks that things might turn out for the best.\u00a0 She just needs to have faith.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>&#8220;The Mortal Remains&#8221;\u00a0<\/em>&#8211; As a stagecoach barrels along, it&#8217;s five passengers get to know each other.\u00a0 The travelers include two bounty hunters, a trapper, a religious woman, and a Frenchman.\u00a0 The group appears to have nothing in common.\u00a0 But they do.\u00a0 Oh, do they ever.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Thoughts (beware of spoilers)\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>The Ballad of Buster Scruggs<\/em> was nominated for three <em>Academy Awards<\/em>&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Nominee<\/em> for <em>Best Adapted Screenplay<\/em> <strong>&#8211; Joel Coen, Ethan Coen<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><em>Nominee<\/em> for <em>Best Achievement in Costume Design<\/em> <strong>&#8211; Mary Zophres<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><em>Nominee<\/em> for <em>Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song)<\/em> <strong>&#8211; David Rawlings, Gillian Welch<\/strong>; for\u00a0 &#8220;<em>When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings&#8221;<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Tim Blake Nelson did his own singing and guitar playing.\u00a0 He had to learn to play guitar for the film.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>&#8220;All Gold Canyon&#8221;<\/em> is based on a story by Jack London. <em>&#8220;The Gal Who Got Rattled&#8221;<\/em> inspired by a story by Stewart Edward White.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In <em>&#8220;Near Algodones&#8221; <\/em>the bank teller says he gets deposits from Val Verde. Val Verde sounds like a South American country but is a fictional location.\u00a0 Val Verde was a location used in <em>Die Hard, Predator<\/em>\u00a0and <em>Commando<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>&#8220;The Ballad of Buster Scruggs&#8221;\u00a0<\/em>is my favorite of the six segments.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a worthy send-up of singing cowboys and early western troupes.\u00a0 A full-length Buster Scruggs prequel would be a blast.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>&#8220;Near Algodones&#8221;\u00a0<\/em>has surprising changes in tone.\u00a0 I ike it!\u00a0 We go from traditional western to comedy (&#8220;Pan-shot!&#8221;) to drama to action to suspense to traditional western to suspense to comedy (&#8220;First time?&#8221;) to romance to surprise!<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Meal Ticket&#8221;<\/em> &#8211; has an ending that is unexpected and shocking.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All Gold Canyon&#8221; &#8211; I didn&#8217;t recognize Tom Waits who has a nearly one person showcase.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>&#8220;The Girl Who Got Rattled&#8221;<\/em> &#8211; is the closest of the six stories to be a traditional western.\u00a0 But it&#8217;s not really.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>&#8220;The Mortal Remains&#8221;<\/em> &#8211; As the story unfolds, you might see it before the characters in the tale.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Many anthology movies falter when their stories vary in quality.\u00a0 <em>The Ballad of Buster Scruggs<\/em> doesn&#8217;t suffer in that respect.\u00a0 Each tale is entertaining.<\/p>\n<p>It was cool how each segment is presented as part of an old book of short western stories.\u00a0 The art that accompanied each segment was perfect as well.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: inherit; color: initial;\"><strong><i>The Ballad of Buster Scruggs <\/i>(2018)<\/strong> rates 4 of 5 stars.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/logo\/zview_b.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"100\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2026\/z091926review_bscruggs2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"277\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen Stars:\u00a0 Tim Blake Nelson,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,63,54,65,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-humor","category-movies","category-trivia","category-z-view"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42692"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42848,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42692\/revisions\/42848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}