The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: Minor-key melodramas

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R for strong violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.7.18

Anthology films — also known by the far niftier term “portmanteau films,” with interior short subjects usually linked by genre, author, premise or even star — have been mini-fads at various points in cinema history.

Having unwisely left the wagon train in search of her wayward little dog, Alice
Longabaugh (Zoe Kazan) is terrified to discover that she and her sole companion have
been spotted by a band of angry Native American warriors.

They became something of a vogue during the 1940s, starting with 1942’s Tales of Manhattan. That was followed by 1943’s occult-laden Flesh and Fantasy; 1945’s deliciously spooky Dead of Night; 1948’s Quartet, with its four Somerset Maugham stories; 1950’s Trio and 1951’s Encore (Maugham again); and 1952’s O. Henry’s Full House.

Occasional one-offs notwithstanding, portmanteau films didn’t become popular again until 1968’s The Illustrated Man — with its selection of Ray Bradbury tales — led to a series of horror entries: The House that Dripped Blood, Asylum and Tales from the Crypt, ad infinitum to this day.

High-tone entries included 1989’s New York Stories, with segments directed by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen; and 1995’s Four Rooms, with Roald Dahl short stories loosely adapted by directors Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.

This brings us to Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which gathers half a dozen short concepts they’ve had kicking around for the past quarter-century. The tales are linked by their setting in the American West, which rarely has looked more vicious; and by a clever framing device that “lifts” each yarn from the pages of a vintage hardcover book, complete with gorgeous color illustrations whose captions — in each case — give a dramatic clue to what we’re about to see.

As always is the case with portmanteau films, the contents vary from excellent to good to not such a much. But since we’re dealing with the Coen brothers, even the lesser entries are worth viewing for tone, acting, cheeky directing, and Bruno Delbonnel’s lush cinematography.

The segments also have a few things in common: a darkly comic, even macabre tone; unexpected bursts of gruesome violence; and — in most cases — an atmosphere of grim despair.

Hello, My Name Is Doris: A woman worth knowing

Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.1.16

Sally Field remains cute as a bug: as personable and effervescent as she was back in 1965, when she debuted as television’s Gidget.

Decked out in a wildly inappropriate, hot-neon-yellow '80s-era jumpsuit in order to "fit in"
with the modern millennial nightclub crowd, Doris (Sally Field, center) does her best to
impress John (Max Greenfield, third from left) and the rest of their hipster entourage.

The difference, all these years later, is that she also has matured into a deceptively powerful actress. Too many people take the bubbly exterior for granted — the signature cheerfulness — and then act surprised when Field unleashes impressive layers of pathos or expressive intensity.

We shouldn’t be surprised; her dramatic chops have been well established ever since Norma Rae and Places in the Heart, and subsequently well exercised in Steel Magnolias, a well-remembered guest appearance on TV’s E.R., and 2013’s Oscar-nominated supporting role in Lincoln.

Given the right material, Field can be a force of nature ... and Hello, My Name Is Doris definitely is the right material.

Director Michael Showalter’s bittersweet dramedy has been expanded from Doris and the Intern, an 8-minute short by then film student Laura Terruso, who shared her work with Showalter while he was teaching at her alma mater, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Obviously impressed, he and Terruso began a scripting collaboration that has resulted in this feature film: a clever and sensitive expansion of what began as little more than a droll comedy.

(Terruso’s short is readily available for online viewing: an opportunity I strongly encourage ... but only after you’ve seen this feature.)

We meet Doris Miller (Field), a “woman of a certain age,” during her all-time worst personal crisis. Her mother has just died, after having been “monitored” full-time by Doris, who put her own life on hold in the process. We get hints that Mom was something of a shut-in with a “clutter habit,” both traits having been absorbed, more or less, by Doris.

With Mom barely in the grave, Doris’ insensitive brother Todd (Stephen Root) and his mean-spirited wife Cynthia (Wendi McLendon-Covey, the pluperfect shrew) are anxious for Doris to sell the Staten Island house in which she was raised, and has spent all that effort as a full-time caregiver. Todd and Cynthia wish to reap the financial windfall.

Doris panics at the thought: What Cynthia dismisses as the home’s mountains of junk, Doris regards as a “museum” of accumulated memories shared with her late mother. As with most hoarders, Doris simply refuses to acknowledge any sort of problem.

More to the point, she’s suddenly adrift — answerable to nobody but herself — and utterly baffled by how to put that first self-indulgent foot forward.