Every Coen Brothers Movie Ranked Worst To Best

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs suffers in much the same way as any other movie anthology, in that it never lives up to its strongest moments. Complete with six separate short tales delivered with the Coen Brothers' typical blend of dark humour and smart writing, as a whole the film doesn't quite keep itself up.

That being said, the titular Ballad of Buster Scruggs (starring Tim Blake Nelson and Clancy Brown) is a segment that just oozes the Coen Brothers' style, playing out like a micro western which perhaps would have been better as a feature-length film. It's funny, it's beautifully shot...and it's kind of all downhill from there.

Though each segment has something to offer, from Liam Neeson turning up as an ageing street performer to Tom Waits' hardened prospector heading out to dig for gold, the film isn't fully able to keep us consistently engaged over its six short stories. The cast is great, the cinematography striking, but overall the shorts are too inconsistent (and often maddeningly slow) for the movie to rank any higher than this.