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Favorite Eastwood Movies


AustinMT

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Seeing “The Mule” the other day (and seeing him looking old) made me think about my favorite Eastwood movies.  Not the artistic “best” (like Unforgiven, MIllion Dollar Baby, etc), but the ones I will stop and watch every time if I see they are on TV.  Using that metric, my top 5 are:

5.  Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (young Jeff Bridges was awesome as well)

4.  Kelly’s Heroes (Clint, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Donald Sutherland, WWII, gold —what more could you ask for?)

3.  Dirty Harry (Do you feel lucky, punk?)

2.  Outlaw Josey Wales (Dyin’ ain’t much of a livin’, boy)

1.  The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (really, any of the Man with No Name trilogy, but this one is epic)

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1 hour ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Shocked, shocked I am that no mention of The Bridges Of Madison County has not been listed....

 

 

Eastwood was never afraid to try stuff that was totally different. Sometimes it was jarring to see his character play totally against type. 

BTW, Play Misty for Me was his directorial debut. Yeah, he banged Archer's mom. 

Another weird movie was The Beguiled. Also, Tightrope. 

I tend to ignore all the Sondra Locke movies. 

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12 hours ago, slorch said:

Escape From Alcatraz 

I worked at a tire store when I was a kid and a coworker who went to jail every other weekend loved Clint but declared Escape from Alcatraz complete bullshit. He said he couldn’t even get so much as his nose through that slot they feed and talk to you through 

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44 minutes ago, Richard Kimball said:

Eastwood was never afraid to try stuff that was totally different. Sometimes it was jarring to see his character play totally against type. 

BTW, Play Misty for Me was his directorial debut. Yeah, he banged Archer's mom. 

Another weird movie was The Beguiled. Also, Tightrope. 

I tend to ignore all the Sondra Locke movies. 

Yeah Locke kinda sucked as an actress, but Clint was banging her so .......

Yeah, he's been the type cast good bad guy, but he has made interesting choices, which has made his career that much more interesting. 

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I like his San Francisco area movies. Play Misty for Me in Carmel, Dirty Harry movies. Plus, those that may or may not be from that area but more today timeframe, In the Line of Fire, Space Cowboys, Blood Work, True Crime, Absolute Power, Grand Torino. He's an incredible talent and he's done it all. Him and Redford, I'd pretty much watch any movie they're in.

Edited by Brandywine
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7 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

No love for Firefox?

Right here, boss.  It was an unexpected treat because I was one of the thirty or so people who read the novel, which came out a few years ahead of the film.  I never expected to see the story on film, thought it was pretty well done, and  still timely since the USSR was still rattling sabers.

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1 minute ago, Bama Llama said:

Right here, boss.  It was an unexpected treat because I was one of the thirty or so people who read the novel, which came out a few years ahead of the film.  I never expected to see the story on film, thought it was pretty well done, and  still timely since the USSR was still rattling sabers.

I was one of the 30.

Edited by Onboard 2.0
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You guys may have already seen this but there's a very good Spanish documentary, "Sad Hill Unearthed," on Netflix about the restoration of the cemetery from the climactic scene in Good, Bad and Ugly.  Some amazing shit - there were over 5,000 fake graves in the place.  Almost impossible to click away from that film if one lights on it  while channel surfing.

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2 hours ago, Richard Kimball said:

BTW, Play Misty for Me was his directorial debut. Yeah, he banged Archer's mom.

Jessica Walter gives me the heebie jeebies to this day, even via the voice of an animated character on Archer.  Roberta Flack's career took off on a nice arc when "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was featured prominently in that film, one of the moments not loaded with dread.  That song grabs you by the heart and balls at the same time.  Like that damn song.  Like the old classic tune Misty, too.  But crazy screaming bitches with butcher knives - nossir, don't like em.

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7 minutes ago, Bama Llama said:

Jessica Walter gives me the heebie jeebies to this day, even via the voice of an animated character on Archer.  Roberta Flack's career took off on a nice arc when "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was featured prominently in that film, one of the moments not loaded with dread.  That song grabs you by the heart and balls at the same time.  Like that damn song.  Like the old classic tune Misty, too.  But crazy screaming bitches with butcher knives - nossir, don't like em.

giphy.gif

Yeah, she was really effective as a woman that was hot enough to lure you in and crazy enough to scare the hell out of you. 

Always thought Fatal Attraction was a rip off of Play Misty for Me. 

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Its pretty unreal how's just kept churning out high quality movies as a director, actor, writer? even past the age of 60 and 70. Almost every other big name actor in movie history slowed down a lot at that age in terms of quality and productivity but Eastwood just keeps going and going even into his 80's. He might end up having the greatest career in the history of Hollywood when you factor in both acting and directing.

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I've seen Unforgiven at least 50 times.  It's one of my top 5 movies.  Its rewatchablity is off the charts.  Every performance in it is absolutely fantastic.  There's not a single false note.  The jail scene with Richard Harris, Gene Hackman and Saul Rubinek discussing the shootout at the bar in Dodge is close to cinematic perfection.

After that, I'd say Outlaw Josey Wales and In the Line of Fire.

Edited by Bateshorn
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2 hours ago, Bateshorn said:

I've seen Unforgiven at least 50 times.  It's one of my top 5 movies.  Its rewatchablity is off the charts.  Every performance in it is absolutely fantastic.  There's not a single false note.  The jail scene with Richard Harris, Gene Hackman and Saul Rubinek discussing the shootout at the bar in Dodge is close to cinematic perfection.

After that, I'd say Outlaw Josey Wales and In the Line of Fire.

One of the underlying themes of the movie was that the built up legends of the gun fights as told in Sal Rubinek's books were really just seedy bushwhackings. Then, during the majority of the movie, Little Bill won every fight by getting the drop on someone and beating the shit out of them while someone else held a gun on them or they were tied up. The two people that Eastwood and the kid killed were caught (in one case, literally) with their pants down. 

Then, at the end, William Muny gets drunk, rides into town, goes into a bar totally outgunned, and utters the line, "I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawls at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you done to Ned."

After everything was said and done, at the end of the movie, was the one real gunfight for him to write about. And it was totally true.

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1 hour ago, Richard Kimball said:

One of the underlying themes of the movie was that the built up legends of the gun fights as told in Sal Rubinek's books were really just seedy bushwhackings. Then, during the majority of the movie, Little Bill won every fight by getting the drop on someone and beating the shit out of them while someone else held a gun on them or they were tied up. The two people that Eastwood and the kid killed were caught (in one case, literally) with their pants down. 

Then, at the end, William Muny gets drunk, rides into town, goes into a bar totally outgunned, and utters the line, "I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawls at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you done to Ned."

After everything was said and done, at the end of the movie, was the one real gunfight for him to write about. And it was totally true.

It's such an inspired bit of writing that everyone basically loses their head and shoots wildly or runs except Little Bill, proving his point that most people fall to pieces in that scenario.

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I was at work yesterday talking to a younger coworker. He's an Iraq vet, late 20's. We were talking about some deal he was making and I said he'd have to change his name to Crapgame. All I got from him was confused face.

I went on to explain, you know, Kelly's Heroes.

Who are they?

Kids these days... smh

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On 1/2/2019 at 12:30 PM, Richard Kimball said:

One of the underlying themes of the movie was that the built up legends of the gun fights as told in Sal Rubinek's books were really just seedy bushwhackings. Then, during the majority of the movie, Little Bill won every fight by getting the drop on someone and beating the shit out of them while someone else held a gun on them or they were tied up. The two people that Eastwood and the kid killed were caught (in one case, literally) with their pants down. 

Then, at the end, William Muny gets drunk, rides into town, goes into a bar totally outgunned, and utters the line, "I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawls at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you done to Ned."

After everything was said and done, at the end of the movie, was the one real gunfight for him to write about. And it was totally true.

Unforgiven is his finest work and this is one of the reasons.  The Rubinek character was very important.  He provided a commentary on how Hollywood viewed violence.  William Muny, like Clint Eastwood as an actor, kept getting drawn back to the violence because of the money but in reality, the violence they portrayed was wildly different from reality.  Every scene and every actor in the movie was of profound importance and symbolism yet the movie keeps to two hours.  It tells multiple stories through symbolism and it's brilliant.

Invictus should also get a mention.  Eastwood isn't in it but he directs.  Supposedly, Eastwood had been looking for a movie to portray Morgan Freeman as Mandela but couldn't find the right script.  He had problems keeping his life story to two hours.  He found the script and him and Morgan Freeman flew to South Africa to meet with Mandela.  Without knowing the plot, Mandela said "You found the rugby story, didn't you?"

Heartbreak Ridge still makes me laugh.  Gunny Highway.

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On 12/28/2018 at 8:40 PM, Bama Llama said:

Jessica Walter gives me the heebie jeebies to this day, even via the voice of an animated character on Archer.  Roberta Flack's career took off on a nice arc when "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was featured prominently in that film, one of the moments not loaded with dread.  That song grabs you by the heart and balls at the same time.  Like that damn song.  Like the old classic tune Misty, too.  But crazy screaming bitches with butcher knives - nossir, don't like em.

Donna Mills was a hot piece of ass back in the day, too.

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