The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs

(MA15+) ★★★★½

Director: Joel & Ethan Coen.

Cast: Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Stephen Root, Liam Neeson, Harry Melling, Tom Waits, Zoe Kazan, Bill Heck, Grainger Hines, Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson, Jonjo O’Neill, Saul Rubinek, Chelcie Ross.

Service: Netflix

The likeness was uncanny.

The Coen Brothers rarely do the expected.

Over more than three decades they've bounced from gangsters to stoners, from Odyssean journeys to inept spy games, from Ealing remakes to New York folk singers. Trying to predict what they would do next is a fool's game.

But even if you were so inclined as to play the game and guess what the Coens have up their sleeve, "straight-to-Netflix Western anthology" would have been at long odds. Yet here we are.

The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs is six tales, unconnected except for their western settings. The titular tale is a dark take on the singing cowboy trope, with Nelson as the eponymous warbling gunslinger, Near Algodones sees a hapless bandit (Franco) try to rob a seemingly unprotected bank in the middle of nowhere, Meal Ticket is an unsettlingly bleak story of a travelling limbless actor (Melling) and his carer (Neeson), All Gold Canyon is an emotional rollercoaster regarding a grizzled prospector (Waits) and his quest for gold, The Gal Who Got Rattled is a wagon train romance that takes an unexpected turn, and The Mortal Remains sees a stagecoach of strangers share a ride to the next town.

As you would expect with the Coens, each segment is gorgeously written, with the lyrical qualities of the dialogue really singing in the mouths of an all-round talented cast. Nelson, who gets to deliver his eloquent verbiage directly to camera for the most part, particularly revels in the writing, while the final segment rolls along entirely (and to great effect) on the strength of its words as there is no action.

And then there's All Gold Canyon and Meal Ticket which have next-to-no dialogue in them at all. It's a testament to their incredible skills as writers that the Coens are equally at home with the word tap turned on or off.

The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs also wonderfully captures that hint of the absurd that creeps into their filmic realities. It's perhaps best exemplified in Near Algodones where the strange occurrences pile-up hilariously, and in the eponymous story, which is flat-out funny and silly in classic Coen fashion. Five-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (who worked with the Coens on Inside Llewyn Davis) helps to nudge that reality into a heightened place, while simultaneously giving each tale its own look. At the same time the costume and set design, with a few CG flourishes, help make this one of the best looking films of the year.

The only thing missing for mine is a link between the stories, in particular some kind of thematic connection to take this to the next level. Maybe it's already there and will reveal itself on further viewings, much like the philosophical intricacies of The Big Lebowski or the metaphorical and metaphysical ideas nestled in Barton Fink. But for now, this is just six (excellent) narratives that stop and start and stand alone.

Everyone will have their favourite narrative and while it's a tough decision, I'll take All Gold Canyon. Waits' fantastic performance and the story's ups and downs making it the most gripping of the six, but there's not a weak link in the chain. It almost makes up for the fact Waits hasn't made an album in seven years.

As previously stated, it's near-impossible to guess what the Coens will do next. One can only hope that it's as good as The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

(M) ★★

Director: David Yates.

Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Jude Law, Johnny Depp, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Zoë Kravitz, Callum Turner, Carmen Ejogo, Claudia Kim, William Nadylam, Kevin Guthrie, Brontis Jodorowsky.

Jacob shunned suitcases - he was a bucket man now.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was a decent-enough return to the magical mind of JK Rowling. Set 70 years before Harry Potter's exploits, it showed a bigger and broader Wizarding World that was fascinating but didn't quite pack the punch of Voldemort and his henchmen.

Now we have the second in the supposedly five-film Fantastic Beasts saga and, to put it bluntly, it's a hot mess. The Crimes Of Grindelwald suffers from an excess of ideas but no solid narrative to hold them together. It struggles to keep its story and characters rolling along in a sensible fashion, and ultimately whimpers its way to an unsatisfactory climax. The whole thing is a shambles.

The plot, such as it is, sees hero Newt Scamander (Redmayne) banned from leaving England due to the events of the first film. However he's desperate to find American witch and love interest Tina Goldstein (Waterston), who happens to be in Paris hunting Credence Barebone (Miller), who is believed to have survived his supposed death in New York.

Meanwhile Gellert Grindelwald (Depp) is loose and also hunting Credence, as is a mysterious black wizard (Nadylam). Then there's a bunch of British Ministry of Magic agents hunting Grindelwald, but Albus Dumbledore (Law) wants Newt to get to Grindelwald first.

There are a couple of subplots in there that either add nothing or are sadly underplayed (such as the stories of Leta Lestrange, Yusuf Kama, Nicolas Flamel, and Nagini, or anything involving Grindelwald's supporters or the people he is enticing to his supposed revolution). These side stories chew up way too much screen time, with Lestrange and Kama the worst offenders, or they don't get another.

Who and why are people flocking to Grindelwald? Where does the discontent come from? This is the key question in this film and it gets forgotten amid a bunch of bad plotting. So bad are these side-stories that we get a huge exposition-laden section stuffed with flashbacks to explain WTF is going on with these subplots right before the big finale. It adds nothing but slows proceedings down to a crawl, leaving you wondering why it all went down like it did and what the point was.

This overstuffed narrative also means we lose track of the key characters in the edit and struggle to keep a focus on whatever it is we're supposed to be focused on. Newt and Tina, who are fascinating creations, are effectively sidelined in the story until Newt suddenly knows where to go to find the answer to the question that everyone wants to know, just out of nowhere, exactly as someone else suddenly does the same thing. This kind of nonsensical plotting is commonplace in the film.

Some of the spectacle is good - the opening jailbreak is exciting - while Newt and Tina are interesting. The relationship between Jacob (Fogler) and Queenie (Sudol) is equally intriguing, especially the way it folds into Grindelwald's crusade, but it's badly handled.

The biggest highlight is Law as Dumbledore. It's early days, and there's stiff competition, but he's quickly shaping up to be my favourite of the three actors playing the learned wizard. He has the right mix of warmth and wisdom in the role and is a delight to watch.

As for the whole film, it's the worst of the franchise. The Crimes Of Grindelwald has lost the magic, and with three movies to go, it's going to be interesting to see if Yates, Rowling and co. can find it again.

The Girl In The Spider's Web

(MA15+) ★★

Director: Fede Álvarez.

Cast: Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, LaKeith Stanfield, Christopher Convery, Sylvia Hoeks, Stephen Merchant, Vicky Krieps, Claes Bang, Synnøve Macody Lund, Cameron Britton.

"Yeah, but at least I killed the spider."

The film versions of the Millennium books have been hit and miss. The Swedish film trilogy, which made a star out of Noomi Rapace, started brilliantly with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but the second and third films were disappointments.

David Fincher's Dragon Tattoo was also excellent, but this American "soft-reboot" follows the downward trend of the Swedish films. There are new actors and a new director on board, and even a new author (Stieg Larsson's passing in 2004 didn't stop his publishers from continuing the series with writer David Lagercrantz in his place), but the results feel old and tired, despite the fresh start.

The film opens with hacker Lisbeth Salander (Foy) continuing her passion for seeking vengeance on men who hurt women. But in between her missions of retribution, she takes on a job from a remorseful programmer (Merchant), who implores her to steal a cyberweapon he has created for the US Government.

Her subsequent theft of the weapon - dubbed Firewall - puts her in the crosshairs of numerous government agencies, as well as someone from her own dark past.

NOTE: This trailer contains some pretty major spoilers.

Foy's Salander is a good one, certainly on par with Rapace's and Rooney Mara's, but she's stuck in a film that is sadly lacking heart and soul. It's stylish, but it's missing something beneath that. Some deeper thematic layers would have helped, as well as some emotion.

Salander is such a distant person that it's understandable the film comes off as cold. But where her connection with journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Gudnason) and her own failings and frailties helped melt the ice in Dragon Tattoo, there is no such thawing here. A lack of connection puts the entire film emotionally out of reach; so much so that by the end you won't really care who lives or dies.

As mentioned, Spider's Web is stylish, but often at the expense of reason - the film too often goes for "what looks good" over "what makes sense". Salander's apartment is a good example of this, as are some key moments in the first half.

This lack of a grounding in reality shines through in Salander's hacking powers, which border on the supernatural, to the point of being ridiculous. While admittedly cool in places - what she can do to someone else's car with her phone is pretty rad - it moves the story further and further from the reality of the world it's set in.

It all boils down to style over substance. Throw in a so-so supporting cast, and it leaves you with little to recommend beyond a couple of cool moments and another great performance from Foy in her breakout year.

Bohemian Rhapsody

(M) ★★★½

Director: Brian Singer & Dexter Fletcher.

Cast: Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joseph Mazzello, Aidan Gillen, Tom Hollander, Mike Myers, Aaron McCusker.

"We had the best time at your party/the wife and I thank you very much."

Bands bust their arses to make albums, not greatest hits compilations. But when people look back at an act's career, an entire oeuvre of records is usually distilled into a collection of the best and biggest songs.

The same is true of musical biopics. The methodology (in most cases) in these movies is "all killer, no filler" - just give us the hits. As such, it's the nature of the beast that things get re-organised, re-arranged and omitted to summarise and celebrate a back catalogue.

With that in mind, Bohemian Rhapsody is an excellent summary and celebration of one of rock music's finest back catalogues. Yes, the story is streamlined and ironed into something more fitting of a typical Hollywood narrative, but that's what happens with films "based" on real events. From Argo to The Imitation Game to The Greatest Showman, there are varying degrees of truth in all true stories.

Bohemian Rhapsody is an approximation of the Queen story, and it's a thoroughly entertaining and surprisingly exultant one at that. It follows Freddie Mercury (Malek), Brian May (Lee), Roger Taylor (Hardy) and John Deacon (Mazzello) from their early club shows under the name Smile to their triumphant Live Aid set at Wembley Stadium in 1985, which is generally regarded as one of the greatest performances of all time.

Along the way we see them compose such all-time classics as Bohemian Rhapsody, We Will Rock You, and Another One Bites The Dust. We see them rock their way around the world. But we also watch Mercury as he rises and falls, grappling with his identity, his sexuality, the contradictions of his nature, and, finally, the sad realisation that he's not long for this world.

It's futile and pointless to complain about what's not in the film, although I've probably been guilty of that in past. The real question is whether what's in the film works or not. And for the most part, it does.

There are some typically naff biopic bits - people say bizarrely portentous and foreboding things, incredible events are condensed into impossibly tight time frames, and there are some terribly exposition-heavy sequences to fill in the gaps in the narrative and set up the next scene. It all dials up the melodrama more than is actually necessary.

But when it's on song - which is often - the film sings sweetly. The actors playing the four members of Queen (Malek, Lee, Hardy, and Mazzello) have great chemistry and do a decent-enough job of looking like they're really playing and singing. The atmosphere around the band is largely one of fun and humour, which elevates much of the film.

The stand-out is Malek, and while it's doubtful he's doing a large amount of the singing, he certainly replicates Mercury's moves and is an effective showman. His performance is also genuinely good, covering the highs and lows to ensure Mercury comes off as a real person and not a caricature.

Much of this comes down to the writing too. Mercury's sexuality treads a fine line between overwhelming the story and being underplayed, but it works well. The screenplay ensures the Queen frontman isn't defined by just one aspect of his story, making for a well-rounded character.

Considering what became of Mercury, the film is surprisingly buoyant. It doesn't shy away from the heavy stuff, which is where the emotion of Bohemian Rhapsody comes from, but the general tone is one of celebration. This comes through in the multitude of musical moments, the songwriting 'eureka' instances, the band banter, and, best of all, the magnificent recreation of (most of) Queen's incredible Live Aid performance, which provides an incredibly moving coda to the film.

It's worth noting that the context given to this triumphant gig is fabricated, but it's a great example of how things can be moulded to say more than the truth did. Live Aid becomes the perfect way to memorialise the band and elevate Mercury to legend status.

We can bitch and whine about what's not in Bohemian Rhapsody and what got changed, or we can sit back and enjoy the music and the way the film honours Mercury, Queen, and their incredible legacy. I would much prefer to do the latter.