THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS
Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET
MOVIE PREMIERE: This Coen Brothers movie, a made-for-Netflix Western, was envisioned as a six-part anthology series, then refashioned as a movie so that it could be (and, last Friday, was) released in theaters as a movie, thus qualifying for Oscars and other film awards. I don’t care how it got here – I just know that from the very first frame, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs charmed me silly. Tim Blake Nelson, who showed off his singing and comedy chops in the Coen Brothers’ masterful O Brother Where Art Thou?, has the title role of a warbling gunslinger – and from the moment he starts singing the Sons of the Pioneers' “Cool Clear Water” on horseback, I was all in for whatever came next. The cast is varied and talented, the stories playfully unpredictable, the cinematic imagination always, always in evidence. What a treat.