The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) review

The Coens take on the "Old West" with six vignettes, each running roughly twenty minutes long, with the title bit having Mr. Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) singing and shooting up dirty-looking mongrels, that is until he meets his match (and then he becomes an angel!). It basically covers all the brothers' moods, from 'goofy' and 'ironic' ("Scruggs," "Near Algodones," "All Gold Canyon") to somewhat more 'serious' and 'meditative' ("The Gal Who Got Rattled," "The Mortal Remains"), with the two closing shorts slowing it down but conveying less than intended (having their only female lead, played by Zoe Kazan, shoot herself in the head doesn't exactly say much about the role of women in America during that time). The section I'm personally enamored by is "Meal Ticket," which deftly combines black humor and actual satire: a father (Liam Neeson), travelling around with his armless and legless actor son (Harry Melling) - who performs speeches and recites poems for "entertainment" - throws him in a river when he realizes people would rather watch a chicken do basic arithmetic. It's a cutting statement about the preferences of audiences and how the bar for "taste" can always go lower.