Welcome to our list setting out Clint Eastwood’s best movies he directed. Here we go… 10. Invictus (2009) This film was under my radar until Matt Damon appeared with an acting nomination at the Academy Awards. Damon has been on the fence for me as an actor. His best performances are always at the helm …
Some of the best things in life come in pairs, and film is no different. No, I don’t mean sequels and/or remakes, because I think we all know how those often turn out. Instead, I mean those actors and directors who very frequently collaborate on films, so much so that it feels odd when the …
Clint Eastwood revisited Harry Callahan three more times, usually whenever his career was in the dumps. If Dirty Harry was a cultural phenomenon and Magnum Force a respectable follow-up, the rest are uninspired cash-ins. The main law Harry enforces in these sequels is the Law of Diminishing Returns. Given Dirty Harry‘s San Francisco setting, something like The …
We first reported on Clint Eastwood taking on the story of Captain Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger last week, an adaptation of Captain Sully’s book accounting for how he emergency landed a passenger plane on the Hudson River after a flock of geese caused an engine accident. Eastwood was a natural to take on the story, but it …
Harry Callahan’s next adventure originated with John Milius, Hollywood’s favorite gun fanatic, surfer and “Zen anarchist.” Milius wrote B Movies for American International Pictures before breaking through with two Westerns, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean and Jeremiah Johnson. His knack for macho action and pulpy, colorful dialogue fit Dirty Harry perfectly; Milius wrote his draft in 21 days, receiving …
Following the success of American Sniper, Clint Eastwood has found his next project, which will once again be a biopic. Eastwood has signed on to direct a movie focusing on airline pilot Captain Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger. Captain Sullenberger rose to prominence in 2009, when he managed to land a plane on the Hudson River following …
Part I. 1971 was an incredibly violent year for movies. That year saw, among others, Tom Laughlin’s Billy Jack, with its half-Indian hero karate-chopping rednecks; William Friedkin’s The French Connection, its dogged cops stymied by well-heeled drug runners; Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, banned for the copycat crimes it reportedly inspired; and Sam Peckinpah’s Straw …
This week brought us another update on the Richard Jewell thriller that would reportedly re-team Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill following their work together on The Wolf of Wall Street. Deadline is reporting that Clint Eastwood is now circling the project. Jewell was a police officer who discovered a backpack with a bomb inside at …
Shortly before becoming the biggest box office draw of 2014, a rare feat for a war movie made for adults in a day and age when movies about superheroes, robots, wizards, and vampires dominate, Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper was also the most talked about and heavily debated movie of the 2014 winter season. It polarized …
If only sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs roam this Earth as Chris Kyle’s (Bradley Cooper) father informs him early on in American Sniper, then Clint Eastwood’s film represents the cross-breed of the hound and sheep – a creation perplexed as to who it is, its identity betwixt and between the protector that it wants to be and …
40. Empire Records Directed by: Allan Moyle Ah, the coming-of-age story. There was no sub-genre more hijacked for a quick buck in the 1990’s. In between the good ones (“Dazed and Confused,” “Boyz in the Hood”), the cheesy ones (“She’s All That,” “She Drives Me Crazy”), and the under-appreciated ones (“The Man in the Moon,” …
After unsuccessful forays into musicals and political biopics with Jersey Boys and J. Edgar, Clint Eastwood returns to more traditionally masculine material usually associated with his filmmaker persona. With American Sniper, he tackles the drama and real-life accounts of Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, but as compelling as the on-the-ground combat is, the real story worth telling is largely ignored for the pyrotechnics.
In the same day that the first images for the film are released, the initial trailer for Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper has been released, showcasing Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in US Military history. Kyle recorded 160 kills during his campaign before writing his best selling memoir of the same name. …
Jersey Boys Directed by Clint Eastwood Written by Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice USA, 2014 American music history has had its fair share of notable moments. The 1950s and 1960s in particular, were an era in which catchy songs and talented performers reigned supreme. One such group was Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. These …
Jersey Boys Directed by Clint Eastwood Written by Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice USA, 2014 You know something has gone horribly wrong when the best scene in your movie is a production number featured in the closing credits. Sadly, no one noticed that the rest of Jersey Boys was bereft of any dramatic conflict, interesting …
Cinema is a kind of uber-art form that’s made up of a multitude of other forms of art including writing, directing, acting, drawing, design, photography and fashion. As such, film is, as all cinema aficionados know, a highly collaborative venture. One of the most consistently fascinating collaborations in cinema is that of the director and …
The Conqueror Written by Oscar Millard Directed by Dick Powell USA, 1956 How bad a film is Howard Hughes notorious disaster, well it only managed to kill John Wayne is all. No not Wayne’s career, Wayne himself. The film was shot on location near St. George, Utah (obviously for its uncanny resemblance to that of …
Westerns may appear as diverse and unruly as the characters they contain, but beneath the ten gallon hats and spurs lie a handful of basic mythologies. This guide selects one movie which epitomizes each legend plus another four outstanding examples, each one given a capsule review and illustrated with a classic movie poster. Click on …
A lone warrior comes across a town held hostage by two competing gang leaders. He meets the keeper of a local inn who explains the situation and warns him to leave as soon as he can. Our rogue, a man with no name, decides instead to play the two sides against each other and make …
Click here to access part 1 In part 1 of this somewhat elongated discussion of the characters inhabiting the world of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, we delved, as best we could, into what made each of the three protagonists tick, Will Munny (Clint Eastwood), Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) and The Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett). We then …
Unforgiven Directed by Clint Eastwood Written by David Webbs Peoples U.S.A., 1992 There are precious few names from the film industry whose names are practically synonymous with the western genre. Some actors and directors have done well with the western, such as James Stewart, Sam Peckinpah, Gene Hackman (whose character in Unforgiven we shall look …
On December 14, 2012, a young man named Adam Lanza broke into a primary school and fatally shot 26 people in the small village of Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Twenty of them were children, aged 6 or 7. On that day, no matter where I went or what I did, I couldn’t stop thinking about the …
December is Tarantino Month here at SOS, and in the week leading up our January month-long theme of westerns, I thought it would be best to whip up an article spotlighting some films that influenced Tarantino’s long awaited take on the western, Django Unchained. For my money, all of the films listed below are essential …