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Favorite Eastwood Movies


AustinMT

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49 minutes ago, RPM said:

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

Some college freshmen this year 2018-19 weren't born when "The Emperor's New Groove," "X-Men," "Gladiator," and "Castaway" came out. 

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On 1/2/2019 at 10:12 AM, 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.

Line of Fire was meh, but anybody who doesn't put Unforgiven in their top 5 all time movies, of any genre, better clear on out the back.

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On 1/2/2019 at 10:12 AM, 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.

Agree with this as well.  It's hard for me to believe but Unforgiven is 27 years old.  Every scene and every character is of profound importance in both the superficial story and the symbolism it represents yet there are no wasted minutes.  

It's also aged very well.

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I could even make the argument that Unforgiven is a commentary on American foreign policy.  We romanticize the violence but at the end of the day, it's messy and ugly.  

After Muny represents and the saloon and kills everyone, he tells them all to bury Ned right or he'll kill them all.  A lightning strike hits and in the background, you can see an American flag.  Coincidence?

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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.

I also like how Muny's reply to Bill's "I don't deserve this" of "Deserves got nothing to do with it" recalls Muny's earlier fever-induced dream about killing one guy years before. Muny says to Ned "I saw that guy I shot in the mouth whose teeth came out the back of his head. I don't recall him doing anything to deserve getting shot."

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2 hours ago, High Plains Drifter said:

I also like how Muny's reply to Bill's "I don't deserve this" of "Deserves got nothing to do with it" recalls Muny's earlier fever-induced dream about killing one guy years before. Muny says to Ned "I saw that guy I shot in the mouth whose teeth came out the back of his head. I don't recall him doing anything to deserve getting shot."

Adding on a couple of the other characters: The Schofield Kid and Delilah. The kid believed all the outlaw stuff until he tried to do it, and pretended to be one until he actually became one.

The Schofield Kid : That was the first one.

Will Munny : First one what?

The Schofield Kid : First one I ever killed

.Will Munny : Yeah?

The Schofield Kid : You know how I said I shot five men? It weren't true. That Mexican that come at me with a knife, I just busted his leg with a shovel. I didn't kill him or nothing, neither.

Will Munny : Well, you sure killed the hell outta that fella today.

On the prostitute Delilah, she did one thing, and everything spun out of control. She laughed at the guy for having a small penis, he cuts her up. organized the other prostitutes to get the money to have the two cowboys killed (Delilah never took part in that.) She watches English Bob get beat to hell, William Munny get beat to hell, the guy that cut her and his friend get killed, Ned get killed, and finally her boss, the sheriff and several other men she knew get killed. You could see the anguish in her, knowing that because she laughed at the wrong time, a series of events started that spun out of control, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. 

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16 hours ago, High Plains Drifter said:

Line of Fire was meh, but anybody who doesn't put Unforgiven in their top 5 all time movies, of any genre, better clear on out the back.

this is a bold claim. Going to rip it and watch (never seen) and see how much I agree. 

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2 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

I envy you, getting to see this movie for the first time.

Looking forward to it. Also, I agree with OP that MDB is artistically phenomenal, but holy shit that movie is depressing. Definitely not high on the rewatchability matrix. 

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The mexican standoff from the TGTBTU is my favorite scene in any movie ever. I love the whole thing, but that scene is just incredible.

Outside of that I've found myself rewatching Absolute Power when I come across it. Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Laura Linney... c'mon... that's a helluva cast. And then you have Pedro Cerrano playing a bad guy and Clark Griswald's jackass father-in-law playing the sympathetic old pervert.

I would also throw in In the Line of Fire but I caught on one of the movie channels recently and Malkovich's overacting just killed it for me. 

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Clint is the man.  I'll watch most films he has acted in or directed.  My faves:

Unforgiven

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Outlaw Josey Wales

Dirty Harry

Mystic River

High Plains Drifter

Gran Torino

Tightrope

Heartbreak Ridge

Flags of our Fathers

Pale Rider

In the Line of Fire

 

Edited by Carl Spackler
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7 hours ago, Underdog said:

I'm not big on Westerns but Unforgiven is a hell of a movie. 

Unforgiven is classified as a Western because it's set in the "west" as movies classify that but in reality, it's a metaphor for about five different things.  That's what makes it so brilliant.

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Just watched. I thought Unforgiven was good. It left me wanting a little more. I understand the nostalgia aspect but as an objective first time viewer I think Eastwood movies tend to be a little predictable and cookie cutter. 

The best parts are the emotional struggle displayed with the act of killing and some of the Eastwood lines towards the end. But, I don't know, him walking in and killing everyone at the end seemed a little... Clint Eastwood? A lot of you in here are probably bigger fans of his than I am. I didn't dislike it by any stretch, but certainly not one of the best films I've seen. I think it lacks a little complexity and emotional depth. There isn't any romance and none of the characters change by the end of it - they more so just reveal their true colors. Absolutely well acted and well written, just not a film that I would put in any pantheon of cinema.

And inb4 my taste is called into question - imo it falls short of films like TGTBATU or Butch Cassidy. I struggled to really emotionally connect with any of the characters. 

Also aslo - MDB is a better film imo. To each their own. 

Edited by ztejas
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On 1/9/2019 at 2:19 PM, Richard Kimball said:

 

On the prostitute Delilah, she did one thing, and everything spun out of control. She laughed at the guy for having a small penis, he cuts her up. organized the other prostitutes to get the money to have the two cowboys killed (Delilah never took part in that.) She watches English Bob get beat to hell, William Munny get beat to hell, the guy that cut her and his friend get killed, Ned get killed, and finally her boss, the sheriff and several other men she knew get killed. You could see the anguish in her, knowing that because she laughed at the wrong time, a series of events started that spun out of control, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. 

As I've gotten older, I've really come to appreciate the movies take on aging.  I mean, part of what eventually brings so much death to the town is Munny's inability to retire successfully.  Ultimately, all Little Bill wants to do is retire after somehow surviving the violence of the early West.

I found the violence in the movie unstylized, very unique for a Eastwood film.  It's brutal and sudden.  The only other western I can think of readily that was so direct was Dead Man, which is obviously a completely different movie.

That's why I loved the ending, he set it up as a final shootout, like his previous movies, but ultimately, it's an act of utter evil.  He kills the innkeeper in cold blood, several sworn officers of the law, including one fleeing by shooting him in the back. And there's Saul Rubinek, finally getting his shoot out to write about, and like the media, having a raging boner for it all, despite the depravity.

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20 hours ago, Bateshorn said:

As I've gotten older, I've really come to appreciate the movies take on aging.  I mean, part of what eventually brings so much death to the town is Munny's inability to retire successfully.  Ultimately, all Little Bill wants to do is retire after somehow surviving the violence of the early West.

I found the violence in the movie unstylized, very unique for a Eastwood film.  It's brutal and sudden.  The only other western I can think of readily that was so direct was Dead Man, which is obviously a completely different movie.

That's why I loved the ending, he set it up as a final shootout, like his previous movies, but ultimately, it's an act of utter evil.  He kills the innkeeper in cold blood, several sworn officers of the law, including one fleeing by shooting him in the back. And there's Saul Rubinek, finally getting his shoot out to write about, and like the media, having a raging boner for it all, despite the depravity.

Rubinek and the Scofield Kid were excellent commentaries on the glorification of violence in modern society.

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3 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

No no they're not.  One is a ghost story the other is a kick ass priest reeking vengeance on the bad guys.

Both protagonists are ghosts, both wreak havoc on the bad guys while calling into question whether the "good guys" are actually good.

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1 minute ago, idigTexas said:

Both protagonists are ghosts, both wreak havoc on the bad guys while calling into question whether the "good guys" are actually good.

Pale rider is a ghost ?  The preacher in the mining camp ?

 His good guy has always called into question how good are good guys from his days in his spaghetti westerns.

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