Clint Eastwood

I just started to watch "Unforgiven" and thought it was the worst movie in the world

as an actor his "just sorta...there" persona has been his essence

Firefox wasn't very good

Or late '90s/early'00s dreck like True Crime and Blood Work.

xpost there was a movie about a web browser?

You're right Dan, which is why the "mysterious stranger" character is his best. Once you try fleshing it out or just giving him more dialogue, it falls apart.

I thought Firefox ruled when it came out, but haven't seen it since

I didn't see it until now, wonder what I would have thought of it then

Iirc I definitely slotted it as a kid along with the other military assault aircraft projects, like Blue Thunder and Airwolf.

The film was shot on a $21 million budget, the largest production budget ever for Malpaso.[2] Of that amount, over $20 million was spent on special effects.[3]

Firefox did rule if, like me, you were 12 or so and watched it a lot on HBO. Very much proto-Tom Clancy, or at least the novel it was based on was (was a sequel too, IIRC)

anybody have any strong opinions whether A Perfect World holds up?

I've been watching some of his more recent movies lately, and A Perfect World might have been the best of them. The ending is way drawn out and some of the scenes with the man himself and Laura Dern and Bradley Whitford are superfluous, but pretty much every scene between Costner and the kid is great

I also really liked Changeling. Mystic River was ok, Gran Torino pretty bad. No desire to see American Sniper

'Must think in Russian...Russian...Russian...Russian'

"Heartbreak Ridge" was another 80s 'boy we Americans got a spoilin' for war and get that big L in Vietnam off the books' setup. It's also the beginning of many roles for Clint as the old haggard hard ass.

Like Firefox, I have not seen either one since I was a teenager but I liked them both back then.

Heartbreak Ridge was ... Grenada? Iirc it was one of those more "prestige" riffs on "Rambo," along with "Uncommon Valor" a few years earlier. Man, Ted Kotcheff (90! Still alive!) had a weird career.

It's funny to think of "A Perfect World" as one of his more recent films. Almost 30 years ago! He's had an impressive run, or really, more accurately, several of them.

I mean, for him it is recent but it probably reflects on my age too. I referred to Bruno Mars as a "newer" artist in my class one time a few years ago and my students all laughed at me

Hah, yeah, I think my point was that as far as Clint is concerned, "A Perfect World" was at one point a late career peak, but now it's more like a mid-career peak and the beginning of another imperial phase. Unforgiven, A Perfect World, In the Line of Fire, Madison County (take a breath for a couple of years), Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, the WW2 films, etc. He's been totally hit or miss for many years, but that's largely because he keeps cranking them out. Around 20 films in the last 20 years, half of which he stars in *and* directs!

Actually, ITLOF aside, he only stars in movies he directs.

Yeah, but not every movie he directs. Just about half, I think.

oh I meant after Unforgiven, sorry. I remember an interview then where he made it clear it was his future.

You mean if he acts he only acts in movies he directs, you mean?

He only has threesomes in movies he directs.

by "Eastwood" Eric of course means "Scott."

Whoa Clint's a big fan of Christopher Guest movies and The Hangover pic.twitter.com/224ixkQjMz

— Matt Prigge (@mattprigge) September 8, 2021

White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) was not as great as some of his earlier films like The Outlaw Josie Wales or High Plains Drifter, but it was a pretty good pre-Unforgiven film.

I kind of enjoyed the incessant gay panic humor from the super-straight military guys in Heartbreak Ridge (1986)

Pale Rider (1985) was another great one

I’ve been using my netflix dvd subscription to watch various directors’ films in order, to get a sense of the progression of their style and aesthetic


Eastwood has directed an amazing number of films! Unforgiven (1992) was a pinnacle obviously.

For the most part, I would have been fine with him stopping there.

One of his films that was not on my radar was A Perfect World. I don’t remember reading or hearing about it when it was released in 1993

thought it was a good film about the cinematic past, how law enforcement was irrelevant, how a boy was treated at the hands of a killer

I haven't seen it since it was in theatres. Given how its reputation has grown in recent years, I should probably give it a fresh look; I remember liking it just fine, though I did snicker along with the rest of the sparse matinee crowd at Costner complimenting the boy's penis.

I think I was going and seeing about 4 films a week when Perfect World came out. Most of the new ones in Dublin . Both mainstream and what was showing at the IFC.
So caught that and think I have the end scene in my head. Or definitely one major still.

Think he's been quite good as a director.

Shame about the politics. I just heard he had an immediate reaction to the speech made by Marlon Brandos guest at the Oscars. Cropped up in the Behind The Bastards on John Wayne. I guess he's likely to support the cowboys but did seem a little cynical.
& him funding searches for still captive Vietnam soldiers which I think was fruitless.

Feel like a lot of the talk about him as a director - "in the Hawks school", "the last classicist" - is trying to get a positive spin on him just not making many interesting choices.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sW-PoPy6TAo/TWXFr0f-9lI/AAAAAAAAC5s/4ScDuUZz-gA/s1600/Any+Which+Way+But+Loose+%252763+Chevy-01.jpg