Million Dollar Baby might open abruptly onto a brightly lit boxing ring, with two men contained in its boundaries and loudly grunting as they…
Clint Eastwood’s latest project Juror #2 is rumored to be his final film after nearly 70 years in the entertainment industry and having directed…
In 1963, John Wayne was just as much the face of the Western genre as he had been since 1939. The Duke’s charisma, one-size-fits-all…
Arguably the most significant acquitting factor and favored defense for his predominantly libertarian cinema, Clint Eastwood’s tendency toward unashamed self-critique and persona deconstruction has…
Clint Eastwood likes inky color patterns, tar-black shadow cutting across battleship grey sterility, and drab, olive-green dress. The actor-director has performed a gradual shift…
The white-hot winning streak that Clint Eastwood was on during the mid-’90s constitutes a seldom touched — at least by his own contemporary standards…
Jonathan Rosenbaum is fond of quoting British critic and curator Michael Witt on Godard; Witt writes that “If Godard… has repeatedly suggested that the…
Clint Eastwood is perhaps as iconic a figure as there is in the last half-century of Hollywood cinema. Gunslinger machismo, a hard-nosed boomer ethos,…
It’s a common misconception of auteurism that once a filmmaker has been so designated, every film by that particular artist suddenly becomes an unimpeachable…
Call him what you want: a legend, heir to true Hollywood classicism, an egocentric industry black sheep, a man of his own mark who…
The 1970s was an important decade for Clint Eastwood; in a remarkably prolific run reminiscent of the classic Hollywood studio masters, the man starred…
Cry Macho is yet another late-career effort from Eastwood deconstructing his own legacy, neither his greatest such effort nor a throwaway piece. Just why does…
For more than five decades now, Clint Eastwood’s longevity as both an A-List Hollywood star and director has been nothing short of astonishing. Sure,…
A Perfect World’s title is contradictory, born from a phrase that implies that life will never really amount to what we want it to —…
Late in Eastwood’s chronicle of Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s emergency water landing of US Air 1549 (dubbed the “Miracle on the Hudson”)—and the investigation…
The life-changing instance of reason defeating desire has been at the center of such great melodramatic moments as the airport climax of Casablancaand the railway…
The first thing you may notice about Jersey Boys is the lighting—or more specifically, the light sources. Set mostly in darkened rooms that look as if…
Just as Woody Allen keeps demonstrating a preference for leaving behind a depressing legacy of quantity over quality, that other favorite Great American Director,…
Clint Eastwood’s old-school approach to filmmaking has never been more inexpressive than in Invictus, a shallow adaptation of John Carlin’s book, Playing the Enemy.…