Million Dollar Baby might open abruptly onto a brightly lit boxing ring, with two men contained in its boundaries and loudly grunting as they vigorously throw their fists at each other, but it’s less a film about the sport of boxing, or the violence contained within the square,…
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 40 features. If that is indeed the case, the film both feels like a summation of a long, storied career and also, quietly, a…
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 philosophy of screen performance, and catalog of classic roles had made him an institution of the screen, the unimpeachable king of the West. Over…
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 dictated the course of his filmmaking career from its very start. Beginning with 1971’s Play Misty for Me and its delirious send-up of Eastwood’s…
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 towards this palette, eschewing the blood-red paint of High Plains Drifter, the magic-hour light of The Outlaw Josey Wales, the seaside ambience of Sudden…
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 — run of canonical classics (Unforgiven and The Bridges of Madison County) and auteurist favorites (Black Hunter, White Heart, and A Perfect World) in…
Jonathan Rosenbaum is fond of quoting British critic and curator Michael Witt on Godard; Witt writes that “If Godard… has repeatedly suggested that the cinema is likely to die more or less when he does, then he has, for a good ten or fifteen years, exploited his own…
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, and, especially in certain cinephile circles, a dedication to artistic self-interrogation are among the numerous qualities practically synonymous with his name and image. But…
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 masterpiece. The original Cahiers writers never made such assumptions, nor Sarris for that matter. What auteurism does posit, and what Pauline Kael never understood,…
Call him what you want: a legend, heir to true Hollywood classicism, an egocentric industry black sheep, a man of his own mark who frequently courts controversy in service of his own politics. Sure, fair; but one thing is irrefutable: few cineastes (and certainly no other actor-turned-director) have…
The 1970s was an important decade for Clint Eastwood; in a remarkably prolific run reminiscent of the classic Hollywood studio masters, the man starred in 15 films in 10 years, directing 6 of them himself. There’s a clear trajectory charting Eastwood’s increasing confidence as a filmmaker, as well…
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 Clint Eastwood — who, in case you weren’t in the know, is now 91 years old and has expressed zero interest in retiring —…
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, he’s had his dry periods like anyone in the business, but he’s always managed to rise back up and eventually win back critical and…
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 — but abbreviated, so as to suggest that the central relationship in Clint Eastwood’s film is a utopian alternative to the injustices of reality. And…
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 that follows—Sully (a white-haired Tom Hanks) turns to his co-pilot (Aaron Eckhart), saying, “We did our job.” That pretty much sums up this simple…
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 station farewell of Brief Encounter, but for this viewer its most powerful incarnation comes towards the end of The Bridges of Madison County, Clint Eastwood’s 1995 tear-jerking…
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 all the air’s been sucked out of them, numerous shot point to light sources in the foreground: table lamps at a nightclub, spotlights shining…
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, also seems intent on putting out as many movies as he possibly can before he heads for the hereafter. The strategy paid…
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. The film spotlights newly-elected Nelson Mandela and his shrewd attempt to unify the nation of South Africa by backing the Springbok rugby team —…
I was driving to see the cinema’s latest love story and stopped at a red light. On an empty street, on a cloudless night, I found myself making a U-turn. It wasn’t just that I sensed the indie I was going to was factory-made. It wasn’t that it…
A Note on Selection and Organization Criteria The films in our canon were categorized according to the year of their U.S. theatrical release and the distributor behind it — except in cases where a.) the time between the film’s international release and its U.S. one exceeded five years, or b.) the film never received any…