Coen Brothers recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 1984 · Film

Blood Simple recap

Blood Simple (1984) follows a Texas bar owner who hires a private detective to kill his wife and her lover, a double-cross that leaves no one sure who did what. Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya) learns that his wife Abby (Frances McDormand) is sleeping with his bartender Ray (John Getz). He pays the sleazy investigator Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) $10,000 to kill them both. Visser instead fakes photos of their deaths, collects the money, and shoots Marty with Abby's own pistol, but leaves his lighter behind. Ray finds the body and the gun, assumes Abby did it, and cleans up the scene; when he discovers Marty still breathing, he buries him alive in a field. Each character now holds a wrong idea of what happened. Joel and Ethan Coen wrote and made it together, Joel credited as director. As the brothers' debut feature, it is the first film in their career.

How Blood Simple ends

Blood Simple ends with Abby shooting Visser through a bathroom door, never knowing who he is. Visser realises Marty kept one of the doctored photos in his safe and that his lighter is missing. When Ray opens the safe and goes to warn Abby, Visser shoots him from across the street. In the dark apartment, Abby pins Visser's hand to a windowsill with a knife, then fires through the door. Believing she has shot Marty, she says she is not afraid of him, and the dying Visser laughs. A director's cut followed in 2001.

Post-credits scenes

No. Blood Simple has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 02 · 1987 · Film

Raising Arizona recap

Raising Arizona (1987) follows an ex-con and his police officer wife who steal one of a furniture tycoon's quintuplets to start a family. H.I. "Hi" McDunnough (Nicolas Cage) is a repeat convenience store robber who marries Edwina "Ed" (Holly Hunter), the officer who took his mugshots. Ed is infertile and Hi's record rules out adoption, so they take a baby from Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson), reasoning he has more than he can handle. Their new family life is disrupted by Hi's escaped prison friends Gale and Evelle Snoats (John Goodman and William Forsythe), by his foreman Glen (Sam McMurray), who guesses the truth, and by Leonard Smalls (Randall "Tex" Cobb), a biker bounty hunter who offers to recover the child. The Coens wrote, directed and produced it. Their second feature, it follows Blood Simple and turns from noir to broad comedy.

How Raising Arizona ends

Raising Arizona ends with Hi and Ed returning the baby and Hi dreaming of the future. The Snoats brothers steal the child and rob a bank, then lose him to Smalls, whom Hi kills by pulling the pin on one of his own grenades. Back at the Arizona house, Nathan catches the couple, hears them out, and lets them go, urging them to sleep on their talk of divorce. That night Hi dreams of Gale and Evelle returning to prison, of the boy growing into a football star, and of an old couple surrounded by family.

Post-credits scenes

No. Raising Arizona has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 03 · 1990 · Film

Miller's Crossing recap

Miller's Crossing (1990) follows the cool adviser to a Prohibition-era Irish boss who plays two rival gangs against each other during a mob war. Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) serves Leo O'Bannon (Albert Finney), who runs an unnamed city in 1929. Leo protects the bookie Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro), brother of his girlfriend Verna (Marcia Gay Harden), though Bernie is cheating the Italian boss Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito) on fixed fights. Tom, secretly sleeping with Verna, tells Leo so and is thrown out, then goes to work for Caspar. Ordered to kill Bernie in the woods at Miller's Crossing, Tom lets him go, and Caspar's enforcer Eddie Dane (J. E. Freeman) starts to suspect him. Joel and Ethan Coen wrote and made the film, their third feature after Raising Arizona. They wrote Barton Fink while stuck on this script.

How Miller's Crossing ends

Miller's Crossing ends with Leo back in charge and Tom refusing to rejoin him. Bernie had killed the Dane's lover Mink and left the body at the crossing, so Tom survives the check, then uses Mink's absence to make Caspar suspect the Dane; Caspar kills him. Tom sets up a meeting where Bernie shoots Caspar, then kills Bernie himself. At Bernie's funeral, Verna snubs Tom and Leo says she has agreed to marry him. Leo offers Tom his old job, Tom turns it down, and watches Leo walk away through the trees.

Post-credits scenes

No. Miller's Crossing has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 04 · 1991 · Film

Barton Fink recap

Barton Fink (1991) follows a New York playwright hired to write a wrestling picture in Hollywood in 1941, who cannot get past the first page. Barton Fink (John Turturro) talks about writing for the common man and checks into the decaying Hotel Earle, where the walls peel in the heat. His neighbour, the friendly insurance salesman Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), offers him company. Studio boss Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner) wants the script fast. Barton seeks help from the drunken novelist W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney) and his secretary Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis), who admits she wrote much of Mayhew's work. Audrey spends the night with Barton, and he wakes to find her murdered beside him; Charlie gets rid of the body. Detectives later tell Barton that Charlie is a serial killer, Karl "Madman" Mundt. The Coens wrote it while stuck on Miller's Crossing. Their fourth feature, it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

How Barton Fink ends

Barton Fink ends with Barton on a beach holding a box Charlie left him, unopened. Charlie returns as the hotel burns, kills the detectives with a shotgun and hints he has visited Barton's family, who no longer answer the phone. Barton finishes the script in one rush, but Lipnick, now in a colonel's uniform, rejects it and keeps him under contract while refusing to produce anything he writes. On the beach Barton meets a woman who looks like the one in the painting in his room, and she strikes the same pose.

Post-credits scenes

No. Barton Fink has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 05 · 1994 · Film

The Hudsucker Proxy recap

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) follows a naive mailroom clerk installed as president of a giant company by a board member who expects him to sink its stock. Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins), fresh from business college in Muncie, starts in the Hudsucker Industries mailroom in late 1958, the day founder Waring Hudsucker (Charles Durning) jumps from the top floor. Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman) plans to buy control cheaply and picks Norville as a fool to scare off investors. Reporter Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) goes undercover as his secretary to expose him. Norville's one idea, a drawing of a circle he describes as for kids, becomes the hula hoop, and its success turns him arrogant. Clock keeper Moses (Bill Cobbs) narrates. The Coens wrote it with Sam Raimi, who also ran the second unit. Their fifth feature, it follows Barton Fink.

How The Hudsucker Proxy ends

The Hudsucker Proxy ends with time stopped as Norville falls from the skyscraper on New Year's Eve. Mussburger has him declared insane, and a janitor locks him out on the ledge. Moses jams the great clock, and Hudsucker appears as an angel and tells Norville to read the Blue Letter in his pocket, which leaves the founder's shares to his successor as president: Norville. He lands safely and makes up with Amy. Mussburger ends up in an asylum, and Norville shows a new circle for kids, the frisbee.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Hudsucker Proxy has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 06 · 1996 · Film

Fargo recap

Fargo (1996) follows a debt-ridden car salesman who has his wife kidnapped for ransom, and the pregnant police chief who unravels the scheme. Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) hires two criminals, the talkative Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and the silent Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare), to snatch his wife Jean in 1987. When a state trooper stops them near Brainerd, Gaear kills him and two passing witnesses. Brainerd police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), seven months pregnant, follows the trail from the roadside to a motel and to Jerry's dealership. Jerry's father-in-law Wade Gustafson (Harve Presnell) insists on delivering the ransom himself. Joel and Ethan Coen wrote, produced and edited it. Their sixth feature, it follows The Hudsucker Proxy and won Oscars for McDormand and for its screenplay.

How Fargo ends

Fargo ends with Marge arresting Gaear at the cabin and Jerry caught at a motel in North Dakota. Wade is killed at the ransom drop, and Carl buries most of the million dollars in the snow. At the cabin, Gaear has killed Jean and then kills Carl with an axe after an argument over the car. Marge finds him feeding Carl's body into a woodchipper and shoots him in the leg. At home she and her husband Norm talk about his duck painting going on a stamp and wait for their baby. The FX series Fargo, from 2014, borrows its setting and tone.

Post-credits scenes

No. Fargo has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 07 · 1998 · Film

The Big Lebowski recap

The Big Lebowski (1998) follows a Los Angeles slacker who is mistaken for a millionaire with the same name and drawn into a kidnapping scheme. Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) has his rug ruined by thugs collecting a debt owed by the wife of the other Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston), a wheelchair-using philanthropist. Seeking a new rug, the Dude is hired to deliver ransom for the young wife, Bunny, who has gone missing. His bowling partner Walter Sobchak (John Goodman), an angry Vietnam veteran, wrecks the handover, and the briefcase vanishes along with the Dude's car. Pornographer Jackie Treehorn, a gang of German nihilists, the artist Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore) and a rival bowler, Jesus Quintana (John Turturro), all pull at him. Donny (Steve Buscemi) tags along, and a cowboy called the Stranger (Sam Elliott) narrates. The Coens wrote and made it as their seventh feature, after Fargo.

How The Big Lebowski ends

The Big Lebowski ends with the Dude still bowling and Maude pregnant with his child. Bunny was never kidnapped; she went out of town, and the rich Lebowski took the chance to steal from his charity, sending a briefcase with no money. The nihilists confront the Dude and Walter outside the bowling alley, and Donny dies of a heart attack. Walter scatters his ashes from a coffee can, and the wind blows them over the Dude. The Stranger closes the film. John Turturro's spin-off, The Jesus Rolls, came out in 2019.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Big Lebowski has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 08 · 2000 · Film

O Brother, Where Art Thou? recap

In 1930s Mississippi, the talkative Everett McGill escapes a chain gang with Pete and Delmar, promising them a share of buried loot before a valley is flooded for a dam. A blind prophet on a railway handcar tells them they will find treasure, but not the one they seek. They pick up a young guitarist, Tommy Johnson, who sold his soul to the devil, and record a song for cash as the Soggy Bottom Boys; unknown to them, it becomes a radio hit. They ride with the bank robber Baby Face Nelson, wake to find Pete apparently turned into a toad by three river sirens, and are beaten by a one-eyed Bible salesman. Everett's real goal is to stop his wife Penny from remarrying, and he admits there is no treasure. A governor's race between Pappy O'Daniel and reformer Homer Stokes runs alongside them. It opens the Coen Brothers' Idiot Trilogy, three films in which George Clooney plays a fool.

How O Brother, Where Art Thou? ends

The three are pardoned, saved from hanging by the valley flood, and Everett wins back Penny. At Homer Stokes's Klan rally they rescue Tommy, then perform as the Soggy Bottom Boys at Pappy's campaign dinner. Stokes reveals himself as the Klansman and is run out, and Pappy pardons the three. Sheriff Cooley still means to hang them at the valley, but the flood released by the new dam washes everything away. Everett hands Penny the ring he went back for, and she says it is the wrong one; the right ring was in the cabin, now under the lake.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 09 · 2001 · Film

The Man Who Wasn't There recap

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) follows a silent small-town barber in 1949 whose attempt at blackmail sets off a chain of deaths. Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) cuts hair in Santa Rosa, California, in the shop of his brother-in-law Frank. His wife Doris (Frances McDormand) keeps the books at a department store and, Ed suspects, sleeps with its manager, "Big Dave" Brewster (James Gandolfini). When a customer, Creighton Tolliver (Jon Polito), pitches a dry cleaning business that needs $10,000, Ed anonymously blackmails Big Dave for the money. Big Dave works out who sent the note and attacks Ed, who stabs him to death with a cigar knife. The police arrest Doris instead, and Ed hires the expensive lawyer Freddy Riedenschneider (Tony Shalhoub). Ed also takes an interest in the piano playing of a teenager, Birdy Abundas (Scarlett Johansson). Shot in black and white, it is the Coens' ninth feature, following O Brother, Where Art Thou?

How The Man Who Wasn't There ends

The Man Who Wasn't There ends with Ed executed for a murder he did not commit. Doris hangs herself on the first day of her trial, and the autopsy shows she was pregnant though she and Ed had not slept together for years. After a car crash with Birdy, Ed wakes up under arrest: Tolliver's body has turned up, and the police decide Ed killed him. His trial ends in a mistrial, he is sentenced to death, and he writes his story for a magazine. Walking to the electric chair, he hopes to meet Doris again.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Man Who Wasn't There has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 10 · 2003 · Film

Intolerable Cruelty recap

Miles Massey, a top Los Angeles divorce lawyer and inventor of the Massey prenup, which no one has ever broken, is bored with winning. He represents Rex Rexroth, a real estate developer caught on video cheating by the private investigator Gus Petch, hired by Rex's wife Marylin, a beautiful woman who marries rich men and divorces them for money. Miles is attracted to Marylin, but in court he calls a Swiss concierge who testifies she asked for help finding a rich, foolish man to marry; she gets nothing. Marylin then marries an oil tycoon, Howard D. Doyle, and makes a show of insisting on the Massey prenup, which he tears up. They soon divorce and she becomes rich. At a lawyers' convention in Las Vegas, Miles falls for her and marries her, without a prenup, then learns Doyle was a soap actor paid to play the part. It is the second film in the Coen Brothers' Idiot Trilogy, with Clooney again as a vain man outwitted.

How Intolerable Cruelty ends

Miles signs away his assets, Marylin tears up the prenup, and they stay married. Fearing he will lose everything, Miles hires an asthmatic hitman, Wheezy Joe, to kill Marylin; then Rex dies and leaves her his fortune, so Miles tries to call it off. Marylin offers Joe more to kill Miles instead, but Joe mistakes his gun for his inhaler and shoots himself. Miles gives up his assets in a new contract, and Marylin rips it up. Gus becomes the host of a TV show about divorce videos.

No. 11 · 2004 · Film

The Ladykillers recap

The Ladykillers (2004) follows a fake professor and his crew of misfits who rent a widow's cellar to tunnel into a riverboat casino vault. "Professor" Goldthwaite Higginson Dorr (Tom Hanks) asks Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall) to let his early music ensemble practise in her Mississippi root cellar. The band is really a heist team: demolitions man Garth Pancake (J. K. Simmons), casino janitor Gawain McSam (Marlon Wayans), the tunnelling General (Tzi Ma) and the dim football player Lump (Ryan Hurst). They dig at night and dump the dirt on a passing garbage barge. Gawain loses his job, Garth blows off his own finger, and Mrs. Munson keeps interrupting. They still reach the vault and take the money. The Coens remade the 1955 Ealing comedy of the same name, sharing directing credit for the first time. Their eleventh feature, it follows Intolerable Cruelty.

How The Ladykillers ends

The Ladykillers ends with the whole gang dead on the garbage barge and Mrs. Munson keeping the money. She discovers the theft and demands they return it and come to church, so they decide to kill her. Gawain cannot do it and is shot in a fight with Garth, the General strangles Garth, then chokes on his own cigarette and falls down the stairs. Lump shoots himself by accident, and a falling piece of stone knocks Dorr off the bridge. The police tell Mrs. Munson to keep the cash, and she gives it to Bob Jones University.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Ladykillers has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 12 · 2007 · Film

No Country for Old Men recap

In West Texas in 1980, the welder and Vietnam veteran Llewelyn Moss finds the scene of a drug deal gone wrong, a pickup full of dead men, and two million dollars, which he takes. He comes back at night with water for a dying man and is chased off by the cartel, who identify his truck. He sends his wife Carla Jean to her mother's. The killer Anton Chigurh, who flips coins to decide who lives, is hired to find the money and tracks Moss through a transponder in the case. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, near retirement, follows a trail of bodies. Carson Wells, a hired man sent to recover the cash, offers Moss protection and is killed by Chigurh. Moss is wounded in a gunfight and hides in Mexico, then arranges to meet Carla Jean in El Paso. It is the Coens' twelfth feature, adapted from Cormac McCarthy's novel, and won them the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director.

How No Country for Old Men ends

Moss is killed offscreen, Chigurh walks away from a car crash, and Bell retires. Mexicans kill Moss at a motel before Bell gets there. Chigurh comes back that night for the money. After her mother's funeral, Carla Jean finds Chigurh waiting, refuses to call his coin toss, and is implied to be killed. Driving away, Chigurh is hit by a car, breaks his arm, buys a boy's shirt for a sling, and limps off. Bell, retired, tells his wife about two dreams of his late father.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 13 · 2008 · Film

Burn After Reading recap

CIA analyst Osborne Cox quits when he is demoted for his drinking and starts writing a memoir. His wife Katie, who is having an affair with Harry Pfarrer, a married Treasury marshal, copies Osborne's files onto a disc while planning a divorce. Her lawyer's assistant leaves the disc at a gym, where employees Linda Litzke, who wants money for cosmetic surgery, and Chad Feldheimer, a cheerful dimwit, decide it is secret intelligence. They try to blackmail Osborne for a reward, then offer it to the Russian embassy. Linda dates men she meets online, including Harry, who is paranoid that he is being followed. Chad sneaks into the Cox house to find more files and hides in a wardrobe when Harry comes in. Harry, who has carried a gun for twenty years without firing it, panics and shoots him. Osborne is thrown out by Katie and goes after the person he thinks is behind it. The last of the Coen Brothers' Idiot Trilogy, Clooney's Harry is another fool.

How Burn After Reading ends

Chad and Ted die, Osborne is shot by the CIA, and the agency covers it all up. Linda's gym manager Ted breaks into the Cox house and is killed by Osborne with a hatchet. A CIA officer shoots Osborne, who falls into a coma. Harry tries to flee to Venezuela and is detained. Linda agrees to stay quiet in return for the agency paying for her surgery. At headquarters, a CIA director and an officer cannot say what any of it meant, and resolve not to do it again.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 14 · 2009 · Film

A Serious Man recap

A Serious Man (2009) follows a Minnesota physics professor in 1967 whose life falls apart as he looks to his Jewish faith for answers. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is up for tenure when his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) asks for a religious divorce so she can marry the smooth widower Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). Larry's jobless brother Arthur (Richard Kind) lives on the couch filling a notebook with a mathematical theory of everything. A failing student leaves an envelope of cash in his office, and the boy's father threatens to sue whatever Larry does. Anonymous letters urge the tenure committee to reject him. Moved out to a motel, Larry consults one rabbi after another and gets parables instead of answers, while his son Danny prepares for his bar mitzvah and owes money for marijuana. A Yiddish folk tale serves as prologue. Joel and Ethan Coen wrote and made it as their fourteenth feature, after Burn After Reading.

How A Serious Man ends

A Serious Man ends with two warnings arriving at once. Sy dies in a car crash, and Larry pays for the funeral. At Danny's bar mitzvah, Judith tells Larry that Sy wrote the letters to the tenure committee, and the department head hints that tenure is coming. Then a $3,000 legal bill for Arthur arrives, and Larry changes the student's grade from F to C minus. At that moment his doctor calls asking to see him about his chest X-ray, and at Danny's school a tornado bears down as the teacher fumbles to open the shelter.

Post-credits scenes

No. A Serious Man has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 15 · 2010 · Film

True Grit recap

True Grit (2010) follows a 14-year-old girl who hires a drunken one-eyed marshal to track her father's killer into Indian Territory. In 1878, Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) arrives in Fort Smith, Arkansas, to settle her father's affairs after the hired hand Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) shot him and fled to join the outlaw gang of "Lucky" Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper). She hires Deputy U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), raising the fee by hard bargaining over horses. Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) wants Chaney for killing a senator and teams up with Cogburn, but Mattie insists on riding along and on Chaney hanging in Arkansas. The three quarrel, split and regroup across the wilderness. The Coens adapted Charles Portis's 1968 novel more faithfully than the 1969 John Wayne film. Their fifteenth feature, it follows A Serious Man and earned ten Oscar nominations.

How True Grit ends

True Grit ends with Mattie, an adult with one arm, burying Cogburn in her family plot. Chaney takes her hostage by a stream; Cogburn charges four of Pepper's men alone, LaBoeuf shoots Pepper from far away, and Mattie kills Chaney with the rifle. The recoil throws her into a pit of rattlesnakes, and Cogburn rides her horse to death and carries her to a doctor, but her bitten arm is amputated. Twenty-five years later she goes to meet him at a Wild West show and finds he died days earlier.

Post-credits scenes

No. True Grit has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 16 · 2013 · Film

Inside Llewyn Davis recap

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) follows a broke folk singer through one week in Greenwich Village in 1961 as he burns through every favour he is owed. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is grieving his former singing partner, Mike Timlin, who killed himself, and his solo album is not selling. He loses the cat of his friends the Gorfeins, learns that Jean Berkey (Carey Mulligan) may be pregnant by him, and takes a quick fee to sing on a novelty single with her husband Jim (Justin Timberlake) and Al Cody (Adam Driver). He rides to Chicago with a jazz musician, Roland Turner (John Goodman), and a silent poet, Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund), to audition for the club owner Bud Grossman (F. Murray Abraham). The story borrows from the memoir of folk singer Dave Van Ronk. Joel and Ethan Coen wrote and made it as their sixteenth feature, after True Grit.

How Inside Llewyn Davis ends

Inside Llewyn Davis ends where it began, with Llewyn beaten in the alley behind the Gaslight. Grossman offers him only a place in a trio, so he hitchhikes home and tries to rejoin the merchant marine, but his sister threw away his papers. Drunk, he heckles a woman singing at the Gaslight. The next night, after his set, he goes outside and her husband beats him for it, while inside a young Bob Dylan starts to play. Llewyn also learns the novelty song may be a hit, though he gave up his royalties, and that the Gorfeins' cat found its own way home.

Post-credits scenes

No. Inside Llewyn Davis has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 17 · 2016 · Film

Hail, Caesar! recap

Hail, Caesar! (2016) follows a 1950s Hollywood studio fixer through a long day of scandals, chief among them the kidnapping of his biggest star mid-production. Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), head of physical production at Capitol Pictures in 1951, hides the pregnancy of the unmarried swimming star DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), soothes the director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) over the miscasting of the cowboy actor Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), and fends off twin gossip columnists (both Tilda Swinton). Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), star of a Roman epic, is drugged and taken by a group of Communist screenwriters, who demand $100,000 and quickly win him over to their cause. Mannix is also weighing a job offer from Lockheed. Michael Gambon narrates, and Channing Tatum plays a dancing sailor star. Joel and Ethan Coen wrote and made it as their seventeenth feature, after Inside Llewyn Davis.

How Hail, Caesar! ends

Hail, Caesar! ends with Mannix turning down Lockheed and staying at the studio. Hobie finds Baird at the writers' beach house and brings him back, while the musical star Burt Gurney rows the ransom out to a Soviet submarine to defect and drops it in the sea. Baird repeats his new politics to Mannix, who slaps him and sends him back to finish the picture. DeeAnna marries the man arranged to foster her child, and Mannix stops a gossip story by threatening to reveal that its source was Gurney.

Post-credits scenes

No. Hail, Caesar! has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 18 · 2018 · Film

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs recap

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) collects six separate stories of the American frontier, presented as chapters in an old illustrated book. In the title story, Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson), a singing gunslinger in white, shoots his way through saloons. In "Near Algodones", a cowboy (James Franco) robs a bank guarded by a teller in pots and pans. "Meal Ticket" follows an impresario (Liam Neeson) touring a limbless young orator (Harry Melling) through shrinking frontier towns. In "All Gold Canyon", a prospector (Tom Waits) digs for a gold vein in a pristine valley. "The Gal Who Got Rattled" sends Alice Longabaugh (Zoe Kazan) west on a wagon train after her brother dies, where its leader Billy Knapp (Bill Heck) proposes. "The Mortal Remains" puts five passengers in a stagecoach with two bounty hunters. Released by Netflix, it is the eighteenth and last feature Joel and Ethan Coen made together, following Hail, Caesar!

How The Ballad of Buster Scruggs ends

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs ends with the stagecoach reaching a hotel with the bounty hunters' corpse, its passengers entering as if into the afterlife. Earlier, Buster is shot by a younger singing cowboy and floats to heaven singing. The bank robber escapes one noose only to hang for another man's rustling. The impresario swaps his orator for a counting chicken, implying he drops the young man off a bridge. The prospector survives a shot in the back and kills his attacker. Alice, believing Mr. Arthur has fallen in a Comanche attack, shoots herself with the pistol he gave her.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 19 · 2021 · Film · optional

The Tragedy of Macbeth recap

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) adapts Shakespeare's play about a Scottish lord who murders his king after three witches promise him the crown. Lord Macbeth (Denzel Washington) and Banquo (Bertie Carvel) meet the witches, all played by Kathryn Hunter, after a victory for King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson). Named Thane of Cawdor as foretold, Macbeth is pushed by Lady Macbeth (Frances McDormand) to kill Duncan as he sleeps in their castle. Crowned, he has Banquo murdered and sees his ghost at a banquet, then orders the slaughter of the family of Macduff (Corey Hawkins). Ross (Alex Hassell) is given a larger, scheming part than in the play. Shot in black and white on stark sets, it was released by A24 and Apple TV+. Joel Coen wrote and directed it alone, the first film either brother made without the other; it opens the Solo films rail after The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

How The Tragedy of Macbeth ends

The Tragedy of Macbeth ends with Macduff beheading Macbeth and Malcolm crowned King of Scotland. Lady Macbeth descends into guilt and dies, here suggested to be at Ross's hand. Malcolm's soldiers carry branches from Birnam Wood to Dunsinane, and Macduff reveals he was not born of woman in the usual way, undoing both of Macbeth's assurances. Departing from Shakespeare, the film shows that Ross has kept Banquo's son Fleance alive and takes him away, and crows rise over the road, pointing to the prophecy of Banquo's line of kings.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Tragedy of Macbeth has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 20 · 2024 · Film · optional

Drive-Away Dolls recap

Drive-Away Dolls (2024) follows two lesbian friends driving from Philadelphia to Florida in a car that secretly carries cargo wanted by criminals. In 1999, free-spirited Jamie (Margaret Qualley) is thrown out by her police officer girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein) and joins her uptight friend Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) on a trip to Tallahassee. A drive-away service gives them a car meant for a gang of crooks, with a briefcase and the severed head of Santos (Pedro Pascal) in the trunk. Jamie wants to stop at every lesbian bar on the route while Marian reads Henry James. Two henchmen, Arliss and Flint, chase them south on orders from the Chief (Colman Domingo). The briefcase holds plaster casts tied to Senator Gary Channel (Matt Damon). Ethan Coen directed it from a script with his wife Tricia Cooke, his first narrative feature without Joel. It follows The Tragedy of Macbeth on the Solo films rail.

How Drive-Away Dolls ends

Drive-Away Dolls ends with Jamie and Marian driving to Massachusetts to marry. The henchmen catch them, but Flint shoots his partners in a quarrel and the women escape. They arrange to sell the last cast to Senator Channel for a million dollars at a lesbian bar. Sukie arrives as a police officer, and when Channel tries to kill them she shoots him; he survives, but the scandal ruins him. The film is the first of a planned trilogy of lesbian B-movies by Coen and Cooke, followed by Honey Don't!

No. 21 · 2025 · Film · optional

Honey Don't! recap

Honey Don't! (2025) follows a private investigator in Bakersfield, California, who looks into a young woman's death and finds a crooked church running drugs. Honey O'Donahue (Margaret Qualley) was supposed to meet Mia Novotny the day after Mia was found stabbed in a crashed car. The clues lead to the Four-Way Temple, whose leader, Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans), sleeps with his young followers and runs a narcotics ring supplied by a group called the French. Homicide detective Marty Metakawich (Charlie Day) keeps asking Honey out; she keeps telling him she likes girls. Instead she starts an affair with MG (Aubrey Plaza), a police officer. When her teenage niece Corinne goes missing, Honey fears she is next. Ethan Coen directed and co-wrote it with Tricia Cooke as the second of their lesbian B-movie trilogy. It follows Drive-Away Dolls and is the most recent title on the Solo films rail.

How Honey Don't! ends

Honey Don't! ends with Honey rescuing Corinne from MG's basement. Devlin is shot dead by Chère, the drug suppliers' contact, after the French lose patience. Honey spots a teacup with Corinne's lipstick at MG's house and realises MG killed Mia; MG stabs her, but Honey scalds her with a kettle and shoots her. In the ambulance, Marty says MG also killed other women and her own father, then asks Honey out again and gets the same reply. At a stoplight, Honey and Chère flirt. A third film in the trilogy is planned.