Weekend Films

We watched two films with Alasdair on Friday and Saturday evenings. It’s not always easy to choose a film which suits all three of us. James and Alasdair are not keen on “chick flicks” although I don’t mind them from time to time as they provide light relief. I’m not keen on war films and documentaries (although there have been exceptions to this over the years.) James will watch a French film with me from time to time but not usually on a Saturday night, when he finds them too much like hard work. And literary or historical dramas don’t elicit much enthusiasm from either James or Ally. James has a strange dislike of murder mysteries which has ruled out a lot of television programmes over the years such as Inspector Morse. Although he has made exceptions and has often been pleasantly surprised. And also, we like to watch a film that none of us has already seen, which rules out films that Ally has already watched online.
On the other hand, we all like a comedy (although these can be very hit or miss), and we all like action adventure films and thrillers, and we are always willing to try something that has been recommended to us.
So on Friday evening I flicked through some films that I have recorded recently and came across World War Z. This film, starring Brad Pitt, was released in 2013 and for some reason we have never got round to watching it. Its opening scenes were filmed in Glasgow in the summer of 2011, blocking off George Square and causing great excitement among the populace. It was actually quite good; a fairly typical zombie film but we loved the all too brief Glasgow scenes (it was meant to be Philadelphia) and it was suitably entertaining.
On Saturday evening Ally and I set off to pick up our curry from East Kilbride, and when we came back James smugly told us that he had already chosen a film for us to watch; The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, released in 2018. This had been recommended to him by Ewan. I had never heard of it but when I realised that it was a Coen Brothers film I felt apprehensive. I tend to either love or hate Coen brothers films and they can be a bit too off the wall for me. For example I loved Fargo, but I hated No Country for Old Men. Well, I’m glad to say that we all enjoyed The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. It consisted of six vignettes about life in the Wild West, and they varied from slightly strange to very strange. But they were all fascinating, almost too intensely so, and their humour was very dark. The first one, about musical Buster Scruggs himself, was really bizarre, but my favourite was All Gold Canyon, which was the most upbeat of the stories. I do like at least some note of hope at the end of a tale.