…”Do I feel lucky?”
We do, that’s a fact. We’ve got so many Clint Eastwood films here in the store we’ve given the man his own shelf on the Wall O’ Cool. Whether he’s The Man With No Name or he’s the .44-Magnum-toting, authority-bucking Harry Callahan, you gotta love Clint.
Dirty Harry is one of my all-time favorite films. Loosely inspired by the Zodiac Killer who terrorized San Francisco in the late ’60s and into the ’70s, this film introduced us to the the ultimate take-no-crap cop: Harry Callahan. The only thing Harry hates more than criminals is, well, everyone else. You definitely do not want to get on the wrong side of Harry’s code of honor.
And then there’s the followup, Magnum Force, in which Harry goes after a rogue group of vigilante cops who are taking the law into their own hands and picking off the bad guys that slip through the system’s cracks. Of course, Harry hates rogue vigilante cops maybe even more than criminals and, well, everyone else. Plus, this is the film that contains one of my favorite quotes ever: “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
One thing I was surprised to discover was just how many Clint Eastwood films he’s directed as well. The Outlaw Josey Wales is just one of those. Josey Wales is essentially The Man With No Name (from his old Spaghetti Western days), only this time around he has a name. After his avenging his family’s murder, Josey Wales is on run as a pack of killers hunts him down. Along the way he picks up a rag-tag group of hangers-on (including long-time girlfriend Sondra Locke, who ended up costarring with him several more times in the ’70s and ’80s) that he feels compelled to protect.
Clint didn’t do another western for 9 years after Josey Wales, not until 1986’s Pale Rider (again directed by himself). As a man known only as “Preacher”, he goes up against an evil mining boss bent on driving the local independent miners out of the area. The boss hires some killers who work for whomever pays, and he pays in gold. On the other hand, Preacher pays in lead.
Up next we’ve got a couple of political thrillers featuring Clint on both sides of the law. In Absolute Power, he plays a career thief named Luther Whitney who witnesses a murder which could spell scandal for the President of the United States and finds himself in a game of cat-and-mouse with local cops and the Secret Service. Also stars Gene Hackman and Ed Harris and is once again directed by Mr. Eastwood.
Speaking of the Secret Service, In The Line Of Fire has our man playing veteran agent Frank Horrigan who has the unfortunate distinction of having been unable to protect JFK on that fateful day in November 1963. Now, many years later, that failure still haunts him as he’s drawn into a plot to kill the current President. The would-be assassin, a former-CIA agent played with creepy brilliance by John Malkovich, taunts him by phone and teases him with clues, giving Horrigan the chance at redemption he so desperately craves.
In True Crime, Clint is Steve Everett, a boozing, skirt-chasing reporter whose job is on the line when he’s assigned to interview a death row inmate in the hours before his scheduled execution. After just a little research, Everett is convinced that an innocent man is about to die and it becomes a race against time. Of course, when you’re a drunk, a bad dad and you’ve slept with the wife of your boss, who’s gonna listen to you? Costars Denis Leary and James Woods.
And to round things out we have Million Dollar Baby, another film directed by Clint, in which he plays trainer Frankie Dunn who is quick to growl “I don’t train girls!” Of course, when the girl is Hilary Swank and won’t quit showing up at the gym, what’s a cranky old guy to do but take her in? Costarring Morgan Freeman as the gym caretaker and non-cranky old guy. Clint Eastwood also composed music for this one. Is there anything he can’t do?
So that wraps up the Clint Eastwood shrine on our Wall O’ Cool. There were some also-rans that didn’t make the cut, like The Bridges Of Madison County, Blood Work, Flags Of Our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima and Space Cowboys, not to mention titles we’re out of right now, like Gran Torino, Unforgiven, High Plains Drifter…. the list really truly goes on and on. Come on in and check it out. We might just make your day.
Unless you’re Julius Caesar, of course. In that case it’d be more like “Hey, watch your back there, dude!”
We’ve got a whole lot of really cool stuff going up on the shelves today, some of it unopened and brand new (old titles, new copies)! Titles like A Beautiful Mind, The Clearing, Cradle 2 The Grave, Michael Clayton, The Craft, A Mighty Heart, Zodiac, Titan A. E., Uncle Buck, Trading Places and a ton more. Lots of not-new stuff going out too, like The Ninth Gate, Great Expectations, The James Bond Collection Volume 1 (seven titles: Dr. No; Goldfinger; The Man With The Golden Gun; The Spy Who Loved Me; License To Kill; Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies), The Trip To Bountiful, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and lots lots more!
Over the weekend I watched a few movies and realized at the end of it that they were all docudramas, movies based on real people and events. Not a huge surprise, as it’s one of my favorite genres. I watched Bonnie And Clyde, Amelia and Monster. The only one I hadn’t seen before was Amelia, starring Hilary Swank as Amelia Erhart, one of the world’s favorite missing persons. It’s a fascinating story and I thought the movie was well done, without attempting to explain or speculate about her disappearance. See it if you get the chance.
We’ve got a shelf on the Wall O’Cool right now dedicated to stories about real people and events:
Breach tells the story of Robert Hanssen, played to creepy perfection by Chris Cooper, who sold secrets to the Russians during his 25-year tenure with the FBI.
In Erin Brockovich, Julia Roberts plays the woman who helped bring down a power company accused of polluting a small town’s water supply.
Party Monster stars Macauley Culkin and Seth Green in very different roles for both of them, as flamboyant “club kids” Michael Alig and James St. James respectively. In the late 80s and early 90s, they hosted insane parties in clubs around New York City, did lots of drugs and ultimately killed one of their roommates.
Frost/Nixon is a fascinating look at the drama around and behind the scenes of David Frost’s post-Watergate interviews with Richard Nixon.
W. is another political biopic that’s fascinating to watch, no matter what your politics are. Chronicling the rise and downward slide of George W. Bush, it’s well worth your time.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is fantastic as Truman Capote in Capote. In 1959, two small-time criminals kill an entire family during a break-in. After their arrest, Truman Capote plans to write a New Yorker article about the crime, but ultimately decides to write the book In Cold Blood instead (a book I read when I was 12 or so and which fueled a life-long interest in true crime novels and movies). It’s interesting to see this movie alongside the film version of the book if you get the chance.
Shattered Glass tells the amazing story of journalist Stephen Glass, a writer for the prestigious The New Republic in the mid-90s. By the end of his time there, it was found that 27 of the 41 articles he’d written for them were partially or completely fabricated. Hayden Christensen is whiny and annoying throughout most of the movie, but this is offset by the story and the rest of the cast, including Chloe Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard, Hank Azaria, Steve Zahn, Rosario Dawson and the adorable Melanie Lynskey.
Bringing up the rear (pun slightly intended) of this collection is The Notorious Bettie Page, the story the number one pin-up girl of the 1950s. Told in flashback style as Bettie waits to testify before a Senate sub-committee investigating the effects of pornographic material on American adolescents and juveniles, it’s equal parts sexy, sad and funny.
Plenty of stuff to see here, folks. And if you get this coupon, it’s all 20% off for a couple more days!