RICHARD JEWELL certainly has the makings of a compelling, infuriating cautionary tale about the abuse of power, but Clint Eastwood’s homage to the common man chooses instead to be a screed against ambitious women and government agents at the mercy of their hormones. Everything that ensues after Jewell finds a bomb planted at Centennial Part… Read More »
SULLY
As lean and laconic as its director, Clint Eastwood’s SULLY is a gripping but (mostly) unsentimental retelling of how Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger safely landed his stricken American Airlines plane in the Hudson River after suffering a bird strike on January 15, 2009. To the public, and the lives of the passengers he saved, he was… Read More »
THE CHANGELING
THE CHANGELING, directed and produced by Clint Eastwood, is based on a true story so Kafka-esque that it staggers the imagination. In March of 1928, Christine Collins came home from work to discover her nine-year-old son, Walter, was missing. Her call to the Los Angeles police for help was rebuffed because the boy hadn’t been… Read More »
HEREAFTER
Though the main characters of Clint Eastwoods HEREAFTER have all been profoundly affected by their brushes with the afterlife, the film is about anything but death. Rather, it is how each of them copes here after the experiences that have altered their lives irrevocably. Screenwriter Peter Morgan skillfully weaves together three stories that move inevitably… Read More »
MILLION DOLLAR BABY
MILLION DOLLAR BABY is a perfect film. Director and co-star Clint Eastwood has taken a story about people who live on the margins of life and turned it into a universal story about redemption and respect, and getting them the only way that counts, by being self-administered. The conceit is boxing, which Scrap (Morgan Freeman)… Read More »
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, based on the book of the same name by James Bradley and Ron Powers, begins with the line “Every jackass thinks he knows what war is, especially those who have never been in one.” That may or may not be a swipe at the current administration, but it is definitely the… Read More »
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
The key moment in Clint Eastwood’s LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA is when General Kuribayashi, the commander of the doomed Japanese forces defending the eponymous island from Amercan invasion, stops the summary execution of two soldiers by their immediate commanding officer for having committed the crime of not dying at their post. Kuribayashi, played by Ken Watanabe, tells… Read More »