Sometimes, All It Takes Is a Good Movie 🎬

The Coen Brothers struck again.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs absolutely rocks.
Just watched it (on Netflix)—pure treat.

Released in 2018, this American Western black-comedy anthology was written, directed, produced, and edited by the indefatigable Coen Brothers. The cast alone is a roll call: Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Liam Neeson… and that’s before the frontier itself becomes a character.

Some vignettes are quietly unsettling. Others are laugh-out-loud absurd. Often, they’re both at once—classic Coens: humor with a loaded revolver under the table.

Joel Coen later mentioned the shoot was physically brutal: exposed exterior sets, merciless weather, and endless travel across wide-open locations. The long wagon train in “The Gal Who Got Rattled” was especially punishing—coordinating oxen teams for timing and direction turned into a frontier-grade logistical nightmare.

Note to self:
If I ever direct a movie—no oxen teams.
Just bulls. 🐂

My personal top five Coen films still stand:

• Fargo

• Blood Simple

• No Country for Old Men

• The Big Lebowski

• Burn After Reading

I probably need to rewatch True Grit. I wasn’t quite as dazzled as most—but Coen films have a funny habit of aging better than our first impressions.

Sometimes, all it takes is a good movie to reset the compass.

Carpe Diem.