THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS Galas

Joel and Ethan Coen have crafted another musical yarn, this time as a wildly entertaining anthology of short films based on a fictional book of “Western tales.” So saddle up for these brilliantly bizarre ballads of mortality, brutality and fortune, performed by an ensemble cast of settlers and scoundrels, including Tim Blake Nelson as the titular quick-draw character; James Franco as a bank robber whose luck runs out not once but twice; Liam Neeson as an itinerant roadshow man faced with a tough choice; Tom Waits as a gold prospector who just won’t quit; Zoe Kazan and Bill Heck as settlers on a wagon train whose lives briefly and surprisingly intersect; and Brendan Gleeson as one of several travelers on a stagecoach that is steadily moving towards dark, existential territory — in other words, prime Coen Brothers landscape.