1997 - ABSOLUTE POWER, a film with an incredibly ludicrous storyline

Clint Eastwood, starred, produced and directed this film.  Ace screenwriter William Goldman wrote the screenplay.  Eastwood put together an excellent cast, Laura Linney, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Judy Davis,  Scott Glenn and in his final role E.G. Marshall.  The production design and the photography are at a high standard.  The end result is one of the most ridiculous films ever made.

While breaking into an upscale mansion in Washington D.C., master thief Luther Whitney played by Clint Eastwood,  just happens to stumble into the love nest of the President of the United States played by Gene Hackman.  Apparently the President likes his sex rough, he beats the crap out of the woman.  In order to defend herself the woman pulls out a letter opener which she stabs the President in the arm with.  This brings in a couple of secret service agents who end up killing her.  Next the President's chief of staff who apparently accompanies him on his little sex binges, decides to cover up the murder.

 

And this is just beginning of a ridiculously convoluted plot which involves master thief Whitney getting a conscience and deciding to bring the President to justice.  At the same time Whitney must protect his estranged daughter played by Laura Linney who just happens to be a prosecuting attorney and also avoid being arrested by a police detective played by Ed Harris. and the plot even gets more zany.

 

This film was based on a popular novel and Columbia Pictures supposedly payed millions of dollars for the movie rights so you can't actually blame Eastwood for turning this novel into a film.  Fault a studio that doesn't know a ridiculous story when it's dropped on top of them like a ton of bricks.  This is one of the most convoluted thrillers I can ever recall seeing and I sat through Funeral in Berlin and The Kremlin Letter.  Another classic example of wasting a good cast and talented Hollywood production people.

The running time is 121 minutes and I can't believe anyone who watched this wanted it to be a second longer.

2000 - SPACE COWBOYS, entertaining old guy picture

A Russian space platform whose orbit is decaying is beginning to enter Earth's atmosphere.  It's an older satellite from the 1960's and it just happens to be carry a bunch of nuclear weapons.  We need Clint Eastwood and his gang of old guys to fly into space and deal with it since they are the only ones who can remember how this old equipment works. A rather far fetched plot line.

Before the journey Clint and his gang have to deal with old ageism in the space program and an evil project manager that Clint locked horns with in the past so the team can save the world.

 

I will give credit to Clint Eastwood or whoever cast this film, Space Cowboys has an enjoyable cast of old  guy actors.  Tommy Lee Jones, James Garner and Donald Sutherland are his team from the good old days.  At NASA, William Devane, Marcia Gay Harden, Blair Brown and James Cromwell as the hissable villain make up Clint's ground support.

 

The film has special effects by ILM the George Lucas company and the whole film is photographed and directed in Clint's usual non showy style.  This is what I would call a "comfort food" movie.  The actors do a good enough job to make this rather obvious story entertaining.   The special effects are also good enough to satisfy the space nerds watching the film.  Overall the film has a nice nostalgic feel to it

Written by Ken Kaufman and Howard Klausner, the running time is a rather longish 130 minutes.

2008 - GRAN TORINO, a good film from Clint Eastwood

I was expecting the worst on this film.   Clint Eastwood plays a retired automotive factory worker who's a big bigot.  When a family of Hmong immigrants moves in next door, Eastwood is slowly won over by them and helps their youngest son deal with a gang of Hmong toughs. 

I'm not really the biggest Eastwood fan when it comes to his film making style.  He has never seemed to bring a lot visual interest to the films he directs and it seems like his point and shoot technique of movie making is more suited to a bland 1970's made for TV movie style.

 

However I think this film works fairly well.  I would have to give most of the credit to the writer Nick Schenk who has actually managed to make Eastwood's character and the situations believable.  As a director,  Eastwood did a good job working with his young cast who for the most part had never been in a film before.

 

This film was a pleasant surprise, the running time is 116 minutes.

2016 - SULLY, a hero for our times so they tell us

Good thing we have men like Sully Sullenberger or is it Tom Hanks on the job?  Sully effortlessly lands a plane on the Hudson River saving the lives of the passengers this all occured in about four minutes in real life.  In the movie Sully somehow this is stretched out to about and hour and a half of screen time.

The film was directed by Clint Eastwood in his typical straightforward approach to making movies.  Frankly the movie looks like a TV show most of the time.

Not only does Sully save the passengers he also takes on the mean Federal Government in the persona of the NTSB.  It seems the NTSB wants to hang Sully out to dry by proving he had enough power left in his engines to return to the airport and land the plane properly instead of crashing it into the drink.  But the government is no match for Sully who proves them wrong.  The implication almost comes off that we should take Sully's word for what happens and not investigate plane crashes as thoroughly as possible.  

Still a fairly entertaining film mostly because nice guy actor Tom Hanks holds the film together with another expert performance.  As seems to be the way with these true stories that get turned into movies the post credits scene shows the real life Sully and the passengers getting together for a reunion.  Somehow this just makes me want to see a good documentary on this incident instead of this usual jacked up Hollywood hokum.

96 minutes, written by Todd Komarnicki.

1973 - BREEZY, boring pointless love story

This love story was directed by Clint Eastwood in his typical straightforward (i.e. boring, unimaginative) style.  This is your standard May/December romance between a middle aged real estate agent and a 70's hippie.

 

Eastwood hired old Hollywood pro William Holden who basically has to carry the entire film.  The young hippie girl is played by an actor named Kay Lenz who makes almost no impression.  In fact it's impossible to see what the weary Holden would see in this tiresome ditz.

It's amazing to think that after about 40 years directing films Eastwood's film technique has barely evolved past the level of a silent film.  You could have hired a competent 70's TV director and gotten the same results that Eastwood achieves in this film. 

A waste of time that can take it's place with many of Eastwood's other mediocre films such as The Eiger Sanction. The Gauntlet, Pink Cadillac and Blood Work to name a few of the many.

108 minutes, written by Jo Heims.

1990 - WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART, Eastwood plays Huston

Clint's way in over his head in playing the director John Huston during the filming of The African Queen. 

Obviously attracted to the flamboyant character that John Huston supposedly was, Eastwood gives it a shot imitating Huston's famous drawl and dressing in riding outfits.  John Huston had an estate in Ireland for many years and loved to fox hunt. 

Frankly a film about a Hollywood director who would rather hunt elephants than film The African Queen was going to have an extremely limited appeal to the general public.  White Hunter Black Heart was a big flop.

To film a character study like this you have to be a good actor.  Clint Eastwood is a performer who like John Wayne was good at playing one type of character, himself.  John Huston was probably a more complicated personality than the character Eastwood was trying to interpret in this film.

Probably a film of extremely limited interest to film buffs only. 

110 minutes, screenplay by Peter Viertel, James Bridges and Burt Kennedy.\

2010 - HEREAFTER, drama about the supernatural is mighty low key

Three stories about people interacting with the supernatural.  Matt Damon is a psychic who can't handle his psychic powers.  Some kid in London sees his brother killed and then wants to communicate with him from beyond the grave.  In the third story, a French reporter survives the 2004 tsunami and has a near death experience where she sees ghostly images.

This film was directed by Clint Eastwood and it's so low key and quiet that all the supernatural stuff doesn't have a fighting chance in the film.  It’s  hard to see what the big deal about the afterlife is when the afterlife is so damn laid back and low key.

If you are going to make a film about the supernatural it would be nice if there was actually a little more interaction with the supernatural.  At the very least the humans could have run in to Fatso, Stinky, and Stretch from Casper the Friendly Ghost,  which would have introduced a little action to this film.

Gratuitous tsunami victim picture

Clint Eastwood has been a prolific filmmaker since he started working behind the camera,  32 films since he started directing in 1971.  They have all been of very variable quality.  For every Unforgiven the viewer has to sit through 5 of 6 films like Space Cowboys or Hereafter.

129 minutes, written by Peter Morgan.

2009 - INVICTUS is a good TV movie

You better really like rugby if you watch this film because there is a whole lot of it played towards the end.

Invictus is really about Nelson Mandela assuming the presidency of South Africa he inspires the white guy rugby team to win the world championship and unite the people for the greater good of the nation.

Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon get the job done, they do a good job with their South African accents and they are both very sincere.  Clint Eastwood also gets the job done, he sets up his scene, gets his shots moves on to the next scene gets his shots moves on to the next scene gets his shots, etc.  Not exactly exciting film making but it is serviceable.

 

Invictus is like ordering a hamburger at a restaurant.  A hamburger is a boring thing to order but you know if you order it the restaurant can't really screw it up when they cook it for you.

134 minutes, written by Anthony Peckman.