The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (the Coen brothers, 2018)

Well, even the Coens have got on the Netflix wagon. Then again, as evidenced by a number of remakes of other people's work like True Grit, they've always been pragmatic.
And they clearly love westerns with a passion, as this anthology reinforces. A six-shooter with stories ranging from the ridiculously skilled singing gunman to the wagon train beset by Injuns, with diversions to the tales of a grizzled, determined prospector and an exploited travelling performer, culminating in a supernaturally-tinged stagecoach-set finale, the style correspondingly veers from end to end with references across the whole panoply of the genre. The cast is a mix of character actor heavyweights and Coen regulars and a lot of is great fun, albeit fun constantly haunted by the omnipresence of death. It's not their most perfectly realised work by far, with too much time given to one segment and too little to another (James Franco's hapless bank robber in particular) but a smorgasbord of treats all the same.

7/10