The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - "All the Meanness in the Used-to-Be."

As I reach the end of the Coen filmography (as a duo, and hopefully not the true end), I have started to consider my Coen fandom. Before I started this rewatch, I would have put them up there with my favorite filmmakers of all time, and that’s still the case. But the tail end of things did give me a little doubt, and that’s bullshit. My love of the majority of their filmography put my expectations far too high. So when I see something like Hail, Caesar! and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, I come away liking them and even appreciating how others can find them to be masterpieces, but I’m disappointed that I didn’t love the films.

This is obviously my own problem and no fault of the Coens. With Scruggs specifically, I think my issue was how much I loved True Grit upon this most recent re-watch. That movie just gets better every time I watch it. The first time I watched Scruggs, I don’t think I was expecting another True Grit, but the episodic nature of it threw me, and the Netflix release of it bothered me, as well. I’ve gotten more accepting of streaming releases, but there’s still this ‘90s kid in me that thinks of them as direct-to-video releases that are inherently lesser than theatrical releases.

Ignoring the streaming aspect (though I still think it’s bullshit that this doesn’t have a physical release), the episodic formula made this feel more like a limited series than a movie. I prefer longer stories from the Coens, not vignettes. Of course, all of this depends on how much you like the vignettes.

For the most part, I enjoyed them all. The titular “Scruggs” is my favorite just for the morbid fun (nothing beats the Kurgan shooting himself in the face three times) of it all. And I could watch a whole movie of Tim Blake Nelson singing and murdering his way through the Old West. The James Franco segment is better than just the meme it spawned. I’ll take Stephen Root yelling “Pan shot!” over “First time?” every time. And the Tom Waits prospector segment is simply beautiful. 

While my favorite segments feature plenty of death and misery, I still find them mostly fun. The other three segments bum me out. The wagon train segment is fine, and I appreciate how shitty it presents the reality of the world (and it confirms that Grandma Turner from True Grit is still kicking, or was, if it takes place before). But that ending is a bit of a gut punch. “The Mortal Remains” is my least favorite segment. I just don’t enjoy Sartre-type shit, even though all the acting and dialogue is top-notch. I especially enjoyed Harris from Major League (Chelcie Ross) as a fur trapper even goofier than the dentist with the bear hide from True Grit. 

Those two segments are downers, but nothing compares to “Meal Ticket,” with Liam Neeson and Harry Melling. Nothing in the entire Coen filmography bums me out as much as this segment. It’s to the point that if I ever watch this again, I plan on skipping this part. And that’s my biggest “issue” with the film; it bums me out. It’s just not something I want to return to, whereas films like Llewyn Davis, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, The Big Lebowski, Fargo, True Grit, No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, and The Man Who Wasn’t There create worlds I want to revisit and spend time in, year after year, even if they contain some terrible things, as well. And I truly cannot explain what it is about those movies compared to the others that click with me, but I’ve seen some wildly different rankings of their films all over the internet, so I know I’m not alone. When one person’s bottom film can be another’s favorite, then you know you’re dealing with some of the best filmmakers of all time.

Eddington - "Just Don't Make Me Think. Post It."

I like all of Ari Aster’s movies, but I have never wanted to watch any of them a second time, until Eddington. Aster’s work is unnerving and often unpleasant to watch (by design, I believe). He is capable of striking a tone in his work that I don’t want to revisit even though I can appreciate how effective it is. When I saw the first trailer for his Covid film, Eddington, I assumed it would be more of the same: fascinating and thought-provoking, but the recreation of the shitshow the world devolved into at the time (and still) would be miserable to sit through. But a funny thing happened as the credits rolled on Eddington: I wanted to immediately watch it again.

So what, right? A movie doesn’t have to be rewatchable to be good, but for someone like me, it’s a big deal. If a film creates a story or world that I want to visit again and again, then the filmmakers have done something right. 

It’s not that the world of Eddington is one I want to live in. For one thing, we all lived through that world and continue to do so. But it’s such an amusing (slight) exaggeration of that time that it makes me feel a little better about the world, even though that does not seem to be the goal of the film. It’s just nice to have this document that sums up our world better than I ever could. 

What first drew me into Eddington is the nonstop barrage of shit that comes at Joaquin Phoenix, a lot of which is his own doing. So many things are going on, like a mask mandate, and a tumultuous history with the mayor (Pedro Pascal), and a QAnon-type cult leader (Austin Butler) recruiting his wife (Emma Stone), and the Black Lives Matter movement, and the constant conflict with the Native American police, and the data center a shadowy corporation wants to build, and fucking social media, and fuck! Before anyone can even get all the details of the newest issue, another one pops up. It’s whac-a-mole, but with human suffering and mental illness. 

Phoenix’s character and performance holds it all together, even though he can’t hold anything together. He never really explodes when you think he might, and he has this oddly laid back line delivery that always feels accurately defeated. He can’t seem to finish his thoughts and sentences without drifting into other thoughts and sentences. He is very much the personification of doomscrolling. It’s a snippet about one issue, then it’s off to the next before you can even form a thought about the previous one. Most of the other characters are the opposite, but no less troubled. They are laser-focused on one issue and blind to all others. 

This has been happening for a long time, but the pandemic seemed to fasttrack our psychological demise as a species. Aster’s ability to recreate this isn’t all that impressive. It’s not that hard to throw a bunch of crazy shit at a character, especially when a lot of it really happened. What makes Eddington special is that it’s a fun watch. 

Though I am guilty of doomscrolling and feeling overwhelmed by the world at large like anyone else, I feel like I’ve done a decent job of being mindful of it from time to time and stepping away from it. Watching movies and writing meandering articles about them helps. And being a parent and no longer dealing with any kind of shutdown or anything has kept me distracted enough to think the world has reached some form of normal, or at least I’ve been conditioned enough to find it normal. 

So when I see this version of 2020 boiled down into one fucked-up small town that can also serve as a reminder of the country’s fucked up history with the native population, it’s oddly funny and comforting. Yeah, shit’s bad, but it’s not Eddington bad. And like Ed Tom tells Wendell in No Country for Old Men about laughing at a gruesome story: “That’s all right. I laugh myself sometimes. Ain’t a whole lot else you can do.”

Finding the humor in Eddington is the key to enjoying it. There is no real message to the film; at least, I didn’t come away with a message aside from: we’re fucked. If you go into this wanting to find your opinions on all the polarizing issues of the time vindicated, then you’ll end up more annoyed than entertained. Everyone comes across as a bit crazy here, and yes, just calling everyone crazy is a false equivalency. But if you’re looking honestly at the world in a condensed form like a movie, then people, even if they are mostly right, are going to look crazy. 

This movie is not a condemnation of mask mandates or BLM protests or QAnon conspiracy theories, but it’s not an endorsement of them, either. Any major social issue is going to be two-sided, and each side will have people who take things too far. Of course, there are degrees to this. A person wearing a mask for a Zoom meeting is taking things too far, but it’s not hurting anyone; but a person who decides to take a rifle to a protest in the hopes of possibly legally shooting someone sure as fuck is. 

Eddington isn’t about which side is worse or “right” or anything like that. We have our algorithms to feed us content to tell us we’re right. This is a movie that looks at that boiling point in our history and says, “Fuck it, let’s at least have a little fun with this.” Let’s have some silly, stupid people yell at each other and make a mess of their world, and let’s finish it all off with a big action set piece.

At one point, Phoenix tells an underling, “Just don’t make me think. Post it.” It’s a great line that sums up social media, and the internet in general, but it also encapsulated my viewing experience. Whether it’s trying to or not, Eddington didn’t make me think about any of the specific issues it portrays. It just gave me the world at large, and at that distance, it became entertaining instead of disheartening. I never would have pegged Aster as the filmmaker to accomplish that, but he did, and I plan on watching Eddington a third time soon.  

Random Thoughts

I feel like this whole article consisted of my random thoughts, but I’ll add a few strays here, I guess.

“My job is to sit down and listen, which is what I plan to do after making this speech, which I have no right to make!” As a white dude liberal, this one hit home, but I still find it to be the funniest line in the movie. 

Deirdre O’Connell never-ending drone of conspiracy theories makes her a human doomscroll.

Is it lame to use the term “doomscroll”? I’ve only recently used it a few times, and if I’m using a relatively new word, then it probably means it’s lame.

The spelling errors on the campaign materials was a nice touch.

Always nice to Clifton Collins, Jr., even if he is a Covid monster in this.

This makes for a good double feature with Lone Star. I’ve been meaning to watch it for years, and then I stumbled across it on Tubi literally a couple days after watching this. I’m surprised it’s not brought up more as an inspiration or at least a very similar film.

I take that back: after Googling “Eddington Lone Star” a few articles popped connecting the two. Anyway, if you liked this movie at all, you should check out Lone Star.

Marty Supreme - "I Have a Purpose. You Don't."

There was a lot of baggage I had to get over to enjoy Marty Supreme (in theaters this Christmas), and I suspect others will, too. It stars Timothée Chalamet. It’s another hectic nonstop insanity movie from one of the directors of Uncut Gems (Josh Safdie of the Safdie Brothers). And it’s about ping pong. But let me break down why this is actually one of the best films of the year, depending on how much you can handle these aspects of it.

First: Chalamet. The name alone can inspire an eye-roll, even if you don’t know who he is. Then you find out he’s young, dating a Kardashian (technically a Jenner, I think), is an unfairly good actor, etc. In other words, he’s the DiCaprio of today, or the Pattinson. But it’s always been stupid to hate actors like this sight unseen. I’m guilty of hating DiCaprio in my youth, and I certainly found the Twilight nonsense with Pattinson annoying in my twenties, but both of those guys are amazing actors who got handcuffed to an early popular film or series but proved themselves over the years. 

Chalamet doesn’t have the annoying movie or series tied to him; he just seems to be one of those young actors who became a “thing” out of nowhere. But he’s actually been acting since his early teens, and he’s great. Roles in Dune and Bones and All convinced me he was good, but it was his work as Bob Dylan in last year’s A Complete Unknown that turned me into a fan. And he’s even better in Marty Supreme. 

Marty Supreme is about a ping pong player named, you guessed it, Marty, who is solely devoted to becoming a world champion in the 1950s. It’s one of those stories that’s so specific it seems like it has to be based on a true story, but it’s not (it is slightly inspired by real life ping pong champion Marty Reisman, but that’s used more as a jumping off point than as a full story). While there is plenty of ping pong playing in the film, the actual focus is on the insane determination of Marty and his ability to use people to get what he wants. 

Marty is a pathological liar. He scams everyone. People don’t matter to him. As he tells the mother of his unborn child, “I have a purpose. You don’t.” He should be the most unlikeable protagonist in recent memory, but somehow he’s not, and it’s because of Chalamet’s performance. Typically, a character like this makes me think, “Why does anyone put up with this guy?” And it takes me out of the movie. But Chalamet’s confidence and genuine belief in himself makes you want things to work out for him, even while acknowledging he’s a terrible person. It’s strange, and I can’t explain it aside from realizing Chalamet just has the natural charisma to make this character, and entire movie, work.

Beyond the ping pong and the Chalamet, my biggest concern with this was that it would be another Uncut Gems. To be clear, I liked that movie, but I get secondhand anxiety when I watch a character continually lie and/or make terrible decisions. It made the entire movie an uncomfortable watch for me. Marty Supreme is similar in that Marty lies a lot and does plenty of terrible things, but there’s a lightness to it that makes it more funny than tense. I don’t want to spoil anything, but there are a number of insane moments that made me laugh even when I rewatched it. In Uncut Gems, I was constantly worried about something terrible happening, so it was unpleasant. In Marty Supreme, I was looking forward to seeing the next crazy thing. And as for worrying about something terrible happening to Marty, I didn’t care because he would deserve it. 

This all sounds like I wanted to hate this, but that truly was not the case. Sure, I hoped I didn’t love it because I don’t look forward to recommending the “ping pong movie” to people for the next month. But I always want to like everything I watch; it’s just that Marty Supreme had a few red flags for me. Thankfully, my imagined issues were forgotten within the film’s first minutes. So if you’ve seen previews for this and wondered what was with the ping pong movie, do yourself a favor and give it a chance. 

Random Thoughts (SPOILERS)

There are two movies this year I expected to like, not love, and assumed I would never watch again: Eddington and this. I like all of Aster’s movies, but that’s the only one I’ve rewatched. And this is the only Safdie-directed movie I have rewatched. I don’t know if they’re changing or I am, but I dig it. 

I’m okay with just liking this because it’s a funny, wild ride, but I can’t help but apply some meaning to it all. There’s the determination character study factor, but the fatherhood thing stuck with me the most, perhaps because I just rewatched One Battle After Another and had a similar takeaway. Marty never seems to have a legitimate emotional response (aside from anger) throughout the film until he sees his son for the first time. And the fact that the fertilized egg transitions into a ping pong ball (and the fertilization process is shown during the credits) at the beginning probably means something. It’s not that the movie is saying having kids is more important than your dreams (although for most people, it is); I took it more to mean that having children can change you, and in this case it might make a very egotistical character start to think about someone other than himself. One Battle is similar, but it gives two responses as Bob gives up the revolution for a child while Perfidia shuns the implication of motherhood and embraces the revolution. 

I need to stay off of Letterboxd reviews. I read about the “I am a vampire” line before I watched it. I still love that insane moment, but it would have been so much funnier if I hadn’t kind of already known about it.

The music is great. 80s music during the 50s works. But the score has some great moments, too. I especially enjoyed when it would become John Carpenter-esque at times during tournaments and whatnot.

The best use of sperm fertilizing an egg during the opening credits since Look Who’s Talking.

“I’m going to do to Kletski what Auschwitz couldn’t. Okay? I’m going to finish the job.” Holy fucking shit. That’s the line and delivery that sold me for the rest of the film. 

“Put your money where your mouth is.”

“Why don’t I put my penis where your mouth is?”

Every time Moses the dog showed up again cracked me up. You would assume that a missing dog wouldn't factor into the plot that much, but I'm glad it did.

The bathtub scene might be the hardest I've laughed at a movie this year.

Glad to see the homeless guy with the great voice is still kicking. Like with most of the casting, I have no fucking idea why he's in this, but still nice to see him.

I bet Mr. Wonderful and David Mamet had some very chill conversations between takes.

Hail, Caesar! - "Would That It Were So Simple."

 

When I started working through the entire Coen filmography, I immediately regretted it. Not because it’s too many movies, some of which I don’t have strong opinions of (though that is also the case), but because the end was going to coincide with screener season. Every year, I think I’m going to stay on top of the nearly two hundred screeners I get sent for the IFJA Awards, and every year I end up in a fugue state, churning through endless awards fodder, unable to allow myself time to watch anything else, much less write about it. It’s a weakness, and I’ll likely never get over it. This is just to say I’m still going to get through all of these movies, just later than I would like, but what else is new for me?

It’s fitting that the first movie I write about after awards exhaustion is Hail, Caesar!, the Coens’ love letter to old Hollywood. This was their excuse to make a snippet of their favorite genres from childhood; a time when there were simply types of movies. Here’s the new Western, and the costume drama, and the song and dance picture, and the Biblical epic, etc. Whereas now I’m watching documentaries about Hamlet being performed within Grand Theft Auto Online and Timothée Chalamet ping pong movies set in the 1950s with music from the 1980s and co-stars like Mr. Wonderful, Abel Ferrara, and the homeless dude with the great voice from a few years ago (for the record, I liked both movies). These were simpler times.

But I didn’t grow up in those times. My nostalgia is all about Ninja Turtles, Indiana Jones, and Darth Vader, not Fred Astaire and Clark Gable. Because of that, I simply enjoy this one and consider it a lesser Coen film. In fact, it was only one of two of their films I didn’t own on physical media until I bought it in anticipation of this article (the other is Scruggs, which has not been released on physical media since it's a Netflix movie). I get why some consider this an underrated masterpiece, but it doesn’t hit the same way for me. For instance, I know that the Channing Tatum scene is amazing, but it doesn’t hold a candle to literally any moment from Miller’s Crossing for me. 

Perhaps it’s the same issue I’ve been writing about for the past few movies in their filmography: straight comedy. This is a very silly movie, and I’m particular about Coen silliness. I love all the wacky shit in Raising Arizona, but Scarlett Johansson complaining about a “fish ass” in a New York accent doesn’t do much for me. 

This is all sounding too negative. I do like this movie, and I like it more with each rewatch. Clooney is doing great dumbass work. The Kurgan and the Highlander are in this! Dolph Lundgren has a silent cameo. Brolin is perfect, and that scene with him listening to Clooney’s Communist ramblings as he grows increasingly enraged is hilarious. And Alden Ehrenreich steals the show. His catastrophic first scene in the costume drama with Ralph Fiennes is funny on so many levels.

But like his character says, or can’t say: “Would that it were so simple.” Simply put, this should be one of my favorite Coen Brothers movies, but instead I often forget it exists. As the Coens drift further and further away from their classic collaborations, perhaps I’ll look back on this as their final masterpiece before splitting up. (I know Scruggs came after this, but as I’ll get into next time, that felt less like a movie to me and more like a streaming experiment.) Still, after sifting through the best cinema has to offer this year, it is nice to step back in time to a simpler, sillier time, and Hail, Caesar! is perfect for that.

2025 IFJA Awards

“Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s grim, genre-defying ode to horror through a lens of historical racism and music, emerged as the top winner in the annual awards from the Indiana Film Journalists Association. 

In addition to Best Picture, it also won Best Original Screenplay, Best Ensemble Acting, Best Musical Score, Best Cinematography and Best Editing.

“One Battle After Another” took Runner-Up for Best Film and won five awards in total: Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Paul Thomas Anderson, Best Supporting Performance for Benicio del Toro, and Chase Infiniti for both the Breakout of the Year and the Edward Johnson-Ott Hoosier Award.

Timothée Chalamet won Best Lead Performance for “Marty Supreme.” Best Animated Film went to “K-Pop Demon Hunters” and “No Other Choice” won Best Foreign Language Film. “Good Boy” was honored for Original Vision. Will Patton won Best Vocal / Motion-Capture Performance for his narration of “Train Dreams.”

IFJA members issued this statement for the Edward Johnson-Ott Hoosier Award, which goes to a film, filmmaker or performer with strong Indiana ties:

 

“Few young actresses have burst onto the scene with such audacious confidence and soulful grounding as Chase Infiniti. Born and raised in Indianapolis, Infiniti held our rapt attention in ‘One Battle After Another’ even while sharing the screen with some of the most celebrated actors working in film today. She is the first performer to win the Hoosier Award in its 17-year history, and we eagerly await her next steps as an artist.”

“The Tenderness Tour,” directed by Andie Redwine (a previous Hoosier Award winner), was named Best Documentary Film for its poignant yet unconventional portrait of disability activist and IFJA member Richard Propes. The IFJA issued the following statement regarding the film’s win:

“The IFJA held in-depth conversations about whether a documentary about one of its members should be eligible for its awards. While acknowledging the potential perception of bias, the group collectively decided the film merited selection for its exploration of the important topic of medical debt and its depiction of Hoosier locales and people usually left unseen. Richard Propes was the primary subject of an outstanding documentary but did not have a role in its production or creative choices. He abstained from discussing the film in awards deliberation or voting in the documentary category.”

Eight other films were voted Finalists for Best Film. Along with the winner and runner-up, they represent the IFJA’s selection as the Top 10 movies of the year. 

Here is the complete list of winners and runners-up:

Best Picture

Winner: Sinners

Runner-up: One Battle After Another

 

Other Best Film Finalists / Top 10 Films: (listed alphabetically)

Bob Trevino Likes It

Hamnet

The Life of Chuck

Marty Supreme

No Other Choice

Train Dreams

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Weapons

Best Animated Film

Winner: K-Pop Demon Hunters

Runner-up: The Legend of Hei 2

 

Best Foreign Language Film

Winner: No Other Choice

Runner-up: Sentimental Value

 

Best Documentary Film

Winner: The Tenderness Tour

Runner-up: Orwell: 2+2=5

 

Best Original Screenplay

Winner: Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”

Runner-up: Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie, “Marty Supreme”

 

Best Adapted Screenplay

Winner: Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”

Runner-up: Mike Flanagan, “The Life of Chuck”

 

Best Director

Winner: Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”

Runner-up: Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”

 

Best Lead Performance

Winner: Timothée Chalamet, “Marty Supreme”

Runner-up: Jessie Buckley, “Hamnet”

 

Best Supporting Performance

Winner: Benicio del Toro, “One Battle After Another”

Runner-up: Amy Madigan, “Weapons”

 

Best Vocal / Motion-Capture Performance

Winner: Will Patton, “Train Dreams”

Runner-up: Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “The Fantastic Four: First Steps”

 

Best Ensemble Acting

Winner: Sinners

Runner-up: One Battle After Another

 

Best Musical Score

Winner: Ludwig Göransson, “Sinners”

Runner-up: Jonny Greenwood, “One Battle After Another”

 

Breakout of the Year

Winner: Chase Infiniti (performer), “One Battle After Another”

Runner-up: Miles Caton (performer), “Sinners”

 

Best Cinematography

Winner: Autumn Donald Arkapaw, “Sinners”

Runner-up: Michael Bauman, “One Battle After Another”

 

Best Editing

Winner: Michael P. Shawver, “Sinners”

Runner-up: Andy Jurgensen, “One Battle After Another”

 

Best Stunt / Movement Choreography

Winner: Wade Eastwood (second-unit director / stunt coordinator), “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning”

Runner-up: Brian Machleit (stunt coordinator), “One Battle After Another”

Best Special Effects

Winner: Dennis Berardi, Ayo Burgess and Ivan Busquets (visual effects supervisors) and José Granell (miniatures / models supervisor), “Frankenstein”

Runner-up: Michael Ralla, Espen Nordahl and Guido Wolter (visual effects supervisors) and Donnie Dean (special effects coordinator), “Sinners”

 

Original Vision Award

Winner: Good Boy

Runner-up: The Testament of Ann Lee

 

The Edward Johnson-Ott Hoosier Award*

Chase Infiniti, “One Battle After Another”

*As a special honor, no runner-up is named for the Hoosier Award. It honors founding IFJA member and longtime NUVO Newsweekly critic Edward Johnson-Ott.

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About IFJA: Established in 2009 by a dedicated group of Indiana journalists, the Indiana Film Journalists Association endeavors to promote quality film criticism in the Hoosier state and support Indiana’s film industry.

 

For more information, visit http://indianafilmjournalists.com.