Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)

Cast: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Lorella Cravotta, Serge Merlin, Jamel Debbouze, Clotilde Mollet, Claire Maurier, Isabelle Nanty, Dominique Pinon, Artus de Penguern, Yolande Moreau, Urbain Canceller, Maurice Bénichou, Michel Robin. Screenplay: Guillaume Laurant, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Cinematography: Bruno Delbonnel. Production design: Aline Bonetto. Film editing: Hervé Schneid. Music: Yann Tiersen.

Amélie is a charming film, but I have to admit that I'm immune to its charms, finding it a bit self-conscious and much too aggressive in thrusting them upon us. It was a huge international hit, however, and remains a favorite of a lot of people whose taste I trust. Chacun à son goût.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2018)

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Tim Blake Nelson in the title segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Buster Scruggs: Tim Blake Nelson
The Kid: Willie Watson
Curly Joe: Clancy Brown
Curly Joe's Brother: Danny McCarthy
Frenchman: David Krumholtz

Near Algodones

James Franco in the "Near Algodones" segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Cowboy: James Franco
Teller: Stephen Root
Posse Leader: Ralph Ineson
Drover: Jesse Luken

Meal Ticket

Liam Neeson in the "Meal Ticket" segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Impresario: Liam Neeson 

Artist: Harry Melling 

Bawd: Jiji Hise 

Chicken Impresario: Paul Rae

All Gold Canyon

Tom Waits in the "All Gold Canyon" segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Prospector: Tom Waits
Young Man: Sam Dillon


The Gal Who Got Rattled

Grainger Hines in "The Gal Who Got Rattled" segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Billy Knapp: Bill Heck
Alice Longabaugh: Zoe Kazan
Mr. Arthur: Grainger Hines
Gilbert Longabaugh: Jefferson Mays


The Mortal Remains

Jonjo O'Neill and Brendan Gleeson in "The Mortal Remains" segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Englishman: Jonjo O'Neill
Irishman: Brendan Gleeson
Frenchman: Saul Rubinek
Lady: Tyne Daly
Trapper: Chelcie Ross

Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
"All Gold Canyon" segment based on a story by Jack London, "The Gal Who Got Rattled" segment based on a story by Stewart Edward White
Cinematography: Bruno Delbonnel
Production design: Jess Gonchor
Film editing: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Music: Carter Burwell

Are the Coen brothers the most "American" of filmmakers? That thought occurred to me once before in commenting on No Country for Old Men (2007) and the way it and others among their major movies seemed to form "an American collage." And the six short films collected into The Ballad of Buster Scruggs only reinforce the idea: Not only are the six set in the central period of the American myth, the Old West, but they also evoke major American writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner, as well as the two chroniclers of the vanishing American wilderness cited as sources for the segments "All Gold Canyon" and "The Gal Who Got Rattled," Jack London and Stewart Edward White. It's a very "literary" film whose characters often don't just talk, they orate, in florid 19th-century diction. And it's a film based in that very American folk genre, the tall tale. Those who task the Coens with cynicism and coldness will find ammunition in all of these short films for their argument: Every good deed or noble intention in these stories gets thwarted or maimed. There's probably no crueler story on film than the "Meal Ticket" segment. And yet, we treasure Poe and Twain and Faulkner for their frequent heartlessness, praising their ironic vision. Is it that we expect more warmth from our movies than from our literature? As a genre, the anthology film has gone out of favor, largely because so many of them are uneven in quality, and while it's easy to rank the segments of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs -- I would put "The Gal Who Got Rattled" at the top and "Near Algodones" at the bottom -- the Coens have a unifying vision that makes each segment play off of the others, the way short stories in an anthology by Alice Munro or George Saunders set up reverberations among themselves.

Darkest Hour (Joe Wright, 2017)

Gary Oldman and Ben Mendelsohn in Darkest Hour 

Winston Churchill: Gary Oldman
Clementine Churchill: Kristin Scott Thomas
King George VI: Ben Mendelsohn
Elizabeth Layton: Lily James
Neville Chamberlain: Ronald Pickup
Viscount Halifax: Stephen Dillane
Sir John Simon: Nicholas Jones
Anthony Eden: Samuel West
Clement Atlee: David Schofield

Director: Joe Wright
Screenplay: Anthony McCarten
Cinematography: Bruno Delbonnel
Production design: Sarah Greenwood
Film editing: Valerio Bonelli
Music: Dario Marianelli

Joe Wright's Darkest Hour starts off well as a story of backstage power plays in the runup to World War II, after Neville Chamberlain's attempts at making peace with Hitler had so notably failed. If it had stayed on this level, we might have had an absorbing drama about the way history gets shaped in secrecy, with backbiting and one-upmanship as the forces that drive the world. But instead, we have to have yet another take on Winston Churchill, and not a particularly novel one at that. Gary Oldman's Oscar-winning performance carries the movie much further than it deserves to be carried after the biopic clichés begin to fly. The most egregiously bogus moment comes near the end, when Churchill decides to ditch the car that's taking him to Westminster to deliver the decisive "never surrender" speech that puts the kibosh on Chamberlain and Halifax's desire to initiate peace talks after the disaster at Calais and the rescue from Dunkirk. So Winston, cigar protruding, descends into the Underground to talk to The British People and to get their advice on whether Britain should talk or fight. It's a badly written scene that even includes Churchill inventing that old joke about how all babies look like him. In addition to the working-class folks, there is a token black man, representing the Empire. They all assure him that they will fight them on the beaches and in the streets, and Churchill is so emboldened that he goes and tells Parliament just that. My objection is not that the scene never happened, but that the filmmakers' imaginations were so constricted that they had to invent this implausible scene to explain Churchill's overcoming his doubts and fears. Churchill was a more complicated man, and the politics surrounding him so much more intricate and fierce, than this feeble fiction suggests.