f13.net

Not the best movie Eastwood has done in the last few years, but that isn't saying much considering the quality of his output.  I think it's worth seeing,  if for no other reason than it's probably going to be Eastwood's last performance (or at least his last great performance) in front of a camera.

I thought Eastwood did a great job for the most part.  The racist schtick got a little old after a while though.  That and I thought the actors that played Thao and Sue really sucked.

This movie is also unintentionally hilarious quite often.

Like Wicker Man?

I don't like Clint Eastwood.

:mob:

Agreed.  The editing was problematic, as well.

Get Off My Lawn!, The Movie

I look forward to

Get Off My Lawn! 2: Pull Up Your Goddamn Pants

I'm not sure how you can't at least like some of Clint's body of work....   I can understand not liking a portion of it.  I don't like the whole gruff cop/Dirty Harry thing, or anything with a fucking monkey.

The Man with No Name?
High Plains Drifter?

Even if you hate the very idea of Westerns,  then Unforgiven should appeal since it's one of the great deconstructions of that genre.

His work as a director has been pretty consistently good.  Mystic River? Million Dollar Baby?  The two Pacific war movies?

Warning: I am a total Eastwood nut.

The Man with No Name trilogy is awesome, especially compared to other westerns at the time. Great characters, great shots, great music, orders of magnitude less corny than it's peers. And Unforgiven is a great rebuttal to those movies.

The first Dirty Harry is outstanding with a great villain, awesome music and really alive with the spirit of the 70s and San Fransico. The later Dirty Harry movies were pretty formulaic but Sudden Impact (number 4) has a pretty unique angle and the "don't make me beg" scene in the garage is the best scene in any of the films.

In The Line if Fire is a superior conventional thriller.

As far as directing goes don't forget things like Bird and White Hunter, Black Heart.

I would also point out that Eastwood has been far more willing than most major male actors to be silly or fallible onscreen. The aforementioned ape movies are a good example, as is Unforgiven.

I haven't seen this film yet, but reading about it made me look up information about the Hmong, so its already helped educate me.

Unforgiven is a classic piece of cinema.  If you spent any time watching westerns, you must watch Unforgiven.

I loved the movie.  It was easily my favorite in several years.  I loved old Clint (reminded me of my Vet patients in the VA hospital I worked in) and I thought Sue and Toad were great.  Sue =  :heart:.

I think what I liked most about it is that it hit me as a modern urban fairy tale.  It wasn't especially realistic but I don't think that what he was going for. 

Generally love Eastwood stuff.  Absolutley concur about Unforgiven but he also starred and directed both The Outlaw Josey Wales and High Plains Drifter are worth watching too. High Plains Drifter is one of my favourite westerns of all time even if it is more than a little dated these days.  Kelly's Heroes is definitely one of my favourite WW2 films but that probably has as much to do with Donald Sutherland being in it.

Still, for every film of his I've liked there's been one or more that wasn't very good.  Not sure I'll go out of my way to see this or The Changeling.

I'm not a big Eastwood fan, but I liked this movie.  Some of the conversations are classic, like the barber shop scenes.  And yes Sue was quite cute  :pedobear:

I finally got around to watching this one.  It was more Ulee's Gold than Dirty Harry, but it was quite good nonetheless.  I would recommend watching it simply because it is a pretty decent acting job by the old man.  And it can be very, very funny.

I was quite satisfied with sitting down and watching a movie full of Clint Eastwood being the awesomest crazy old man EVER.

Toad's line in the barber shop forced me to pause the movie while I got my cackling under control

I liked it. Agreed on Toad and Sue's acting being iffy, but not to the point of me disliking the movie.

I really don't understand how you can not appreciate Clint at least on some level.  There have been a couple films I didn't particularly care for - a couple of the Dirty Harrys.  But overall, if he doesn't get recognized as one of the best things to ever happen to American cinema, there's something wrong.  I know the big criticism is that he doesn't really 'act' in as much as most of his characters are pretty similar.  So I can understand if that character isn't your thing.  But completely writing him off, I think, misses the point of why he's so great.

In a time when The Western format largely died, Clint kept making them by writing his own ticket.  People criticize him for being the same character, but that was his intention.  People wanted that character.  A whole bunch of us still want that character.  It's most definitely a throwback, but a glorious one.  It's the popularity of that character which allowed him to do what he did.  He got to make the movies that he wanted to make.  Nobody gets to do that.  Maybe Kubrick did, but only because he was crazy.   

Great little movie by Eastwood with a lot of pathos and heart and some horrifyingly hilarious cantankerous outbursts that simply no one on earth other than Clint's character could ever get away with. I liked Thao and Sue, the kids acting were naturalistic and believable - but Eastwood believes in giving people breaks and letting a sense of atmosphere set a scene more than wringing gutwrenching performances out of non-actors.

A million miles better than the mawkish crap of Million Dollar Baby and the overwhelming worthiness of Iwo Jima/Flags. I've yet to see Changeling, mind you.

Clint's role in westerns is as delicious as Toshiro Mifune's character in Kurosawa's samurai flicks.  Given that in one case they're playing the same character in the same movie that isn't much of a shock, but both men brought a very different feel to their character despite the mirrored plotlines.

The acting was a bit iffy, but I actually thought it made things a bit more realistic of how those folks would really be.

The original or the remake? Because the remake... Missed the entire point.

I think this would have been a great comedy if he had done a few key scenes differently.

Anyways, I really liked this movie.  But as I've mentioned in the past, I actually grew up around Hmongs myself, so its always cool to see their story/culture getting mainstream recognition.

Quite enjoyed this too. Not amazing but better than mediocre.

Up until Clint Eastwood singing over the end credits. Echoes of William Shatner  :uhrr:

I don't get the hate for him singing the first verse of the song. Shatner did much much worse to your ears.

Oh agreed Shatner was worse, much much worse, but that doesn't make Eastwood's singing good.

Hate is too strong a word for it anyway, I thought it was funny and cringeworthy more than anything.

Think he's supposed to be singing in character.  Not that I think he could actually sing.

The ending of this movie does not have to spoilered after all this time.

I liked this movie quite a bit. The ending did surprise me. And no, that priest had no idea what Clint really planned to do. And then there was the look on the granddaughter's face...

She wouldn't have wanted a shitty Gran Torino.

Love Clint Eastwood... best quote in a movie ever is from one of his westerns (high plains drifter I believe), he is talking to the bandits who are chasing him in the saloon (cast in a shadow) and they tell him they are here to collect his bounty, that its a living and Clint responds casually "Dying aint much of a living".

Anyway, liked the movie, loved the ending, but the car should have been a 70 Barracuda but then the movie would have been called Barracuda and everyone would have expected Ann and Nancy Wilson to make an appearance. :grin:

I think that's The Outlaw Josey Wales.  There's a bunch of great lines from that movie, many of them by the old Indian chief.  That, and spitting tobacco juice on everything....

I say again:  I would kill a man to be able to see The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in a movie theater with a decent sound system....

The week I was moving to LA from Boston they were showing Once Upon a Time in the West at Harvard, the full version. It killed me that I couldn't make it.

The original Italian version or the English dub?  Because the dub's sound is basically horrible in all three movies.

Don't care about the dialogue so much....  the score and music need to sound good.  The cinematography is the big reason for theater screen....  To see Tuco looking for the grave to the Ecstacy of Gold?  Yah.

Seeing The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in a movie theater is what inspired Stephen King to write the gunslinger books.  That says quite a bit.

Italians in that time period didn't record dialogue on set, every language version is dubbed.

Well, depends on what you mean. Practically every film, save documentaries, is dubbed. Sound recorded on set rarely find its way to the master because it's full of background noise and not consistent enough to allow for editing.

They didn't even mic the action in those movies.

According to Bruno Heller on the Rome DVDs, Italians still don't... he mentions that they had trouble with Italian crew that would make a lot of noise while the camera was rolling, which disrupted the British actors who weren't used to it.

Wow, this guy (Eastwood's character) is so much like my old man it was eerie. He's becoming more and more like him as he approaches the age of this character. Sort of ironic considering my mom is Asian.

I liked the girl actress in here, but it was never clear why she gave him such a pass. She saw him as a good guy for some reason.. I guess he turned out to be one, but it wasn't apparent until the end. I mean, I know the movie didn't mean it - but it kind of indirectly suggested that he was good because he was white or something. The shit he'd say was just as offensive as the blacks on the street corner or the Mexicans rolling around harassing that kid, or the Asian gangbangers. Yet, she gave him a pass, when in reality, he was a gigantic asshole "who used to stack gooks like you like sandbags". Probably the only reason he actually turned out OK was because of her friendship. He never would have done what he ended up doing otherwise.

I thought it made sense.  She just saw him for what he was, and just accepted all the stupid racist shit as just how he talked.  I have similar relationships with older people back home (like my grandfather).  They say some of the most offensive shit in the world, and I just laugh and ignore it, because in the end I know these people are actually decent and don't hurt anybody.  They grew up in more racist times, and nothing going to change them at this point.  My grandfather will say some of the most homophobic shit to my uncles (his sons), two of whom are gay, and they'll both just laugh about it and insult him back.  Then he'll laugh about being insulted and grab another beer.  Things are obviously different when you know the person really is just a spiteful racist asshole who does want to cause harm.

Hell, she herself had an old racist grandmother around the house, so you know she she had a certain amount of empathy.  After they went to him to make amends for her brother trying to steal the car, she could empathize with his situation, and tried to reach out to him to be nice.  Whole situation seemed pretty real to me actually.

Like I mentioned with my dad, he can be that way too, I guess (although not nearly as abrasive). But then again, he's my dad.. I know him well. If I was a stranger, I might be offended sometimes.. and certainly wouldn't reach out to him (he's got that same weary scowl Eastwood has. Heh ). Anyways, I guess I'll just chalk it up to the girl being a complex character herself.


Oh, and I love that scene with the black dudes. First, for Eastwood pulling out his finger and making a gun shape, and then for calling the white kid a pussy and not giving him a ride.

Hilarious

Finally saw this last night. The acting outside of Eastwood's was subpar at best but it just didn't matter because he was just so badass in it. Great movie that stands completely on his shoulders.