As Clint himself would say in the movie "The Rookie", opinions are like asses; So everyone has one. And taking advantage of the fact that I also have a free ass to give my opinion, I am here with the 3 best Eastwood movies.
Of course, considering Eastwood's performance both in front of and behind the camera, the matter doubles and we will end up choosing 6 films: the Best Clint Eastwood Movies as a Director and Clint Eastwood's Most Recommended Movies as an Actor.
And this despite facing the dichotomous situation of finding Clint on both sides on various occasions. Because directing movies is not a recent vocation. As early as the 70s, Eastwood was directing films, although the prevalence of his recognition as an actor overshadowed that task.
Currently, already with a first-rate cinematographic legacy, the matter deserves a dual vision in the fascinating symmetries on either side of the cameras that shoot each scene. We may find ourselves before the paradigm of creative and artistic reinvention. Because few actors are as pigeonholed from the start as Eastwood in the tough guy role. His serious demeanor and imperturbable face stirred a strange magnetism in his roles as a hardened man from the deserts of the Far West. The same was true when we began to see him as the most feared cop in San Francisco or New York. Then came one of the most fascinating transformations in the history of cinema. Long live Clint Eastwood ...
Top 3 Recommended Clint Eastwood Movies As An Actor
Gran Torino
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:A film that has something of an impossible and at the same time feasible autobiography. Because Walt Kowalski is the quintessential Yankee retiree. A fallen alpha male who enjoys licking old wounds. An American who in another life was Dirty Harry, or a veteran of Vietnam, Afghanistan or Korea and even a Clint Eastwood back from almost everything.
The impenetrable character is given by age, failures, jingoism disenchanted with an Uncle Sam who ignores the old men who helped hold the Stars and Stripes flag. But you always belong to their faction despite defeats and disappointments. Otherwise nothing that has been experienced would make sense when there are only a few years to live.
Until something happens when Kowalski meets young Thao Vang Lor about to steal his Gran Torino. A disconcerting turning point also reaching an incipient disease of the old man that ends up forcing everything to rush inexorably.
Million Dollar Baby
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:It is what has such versatility. We are talking about a film that would surely be among the best of any director. In the first place because it came to break sexist clichés and secondly because it managed to reach that emotional point that makes movies an entertainment with significance, learning, and stimulation.
After having trained and represented the best fighters, Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) runs a gym with the help of Scrap (Freeman), an ex-boxer who is also his only friend. Frankie is a lonely and grim man who has taken refuge in religion for years seeking a redemption that does not come. One day, Maggie Fitzgerald (Swank) enters his gym, a willful girl who wants to box and who is willing to fight hard to get it. Frankie rejects her claiming that he does not train girls and that, in addition, he is too old. But Maggie doesn't give up and kills herself every day in the gym, with the only support of Scrap.
The Bridges of Madison
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:Without being one of my favorites, I understand that it must be rescued as one of the great movies with Eastwood as the protagonist. I have had to talk to fans of this film to get it on the podium ahead of Eastwood classics (yes, I have smoked them all as it will finally be seen, to stay with films from the 90s). The thing is that the vivid memory of so many scenes recounted even today by these movie lovers, forces me to point it out in this last drawer of the podium.
In Madison County, Francesca is a housewife with a monotonous life. She lives with her husband on a farm and spends all her free time doing housework. One day he receives a visit from Robert, a photographer who works for National Geographic and who has come to the area to make a report of the famous covered bridges in the region. Francesca shelters him and, soon, they begin to share moments of complicity. With the stories that the handsome Robert tells her, a whole new world opens up for her. Little by little, passion arises between them, and Francesca will have to choose between her boring routine and her newfound desire for Robert.
Clint Eastwood's Top 3 Recommended Movies as a Director
Mystic River,
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:You might think that this is like football and that you always win with the best. But there are not few cases in which the reunion of stars ends in famous failures. This time Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon all played together with that coordination and symbiosis that only management can achieve. A film that addresses that notion of childhood as the essence of who we are, with the sum of events that can change everything. With fortune or doom due to an innocent decision that rethinks the journey of our lives.
Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn), Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins) and Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon) have grown up together on the streets of Boston. The three have had a great relationship for a long time, mainly due to the fact that they have formed a very special bond due to the many experiences they have shared together. Everything indicated that nothing would alter the course of their friendship under any circumstances, especially taking into account the commitment and dedication that the group continually puts in so that things continue to go as well as in the beginning.
The situation is complicated when Dave is kidnapped by a stranger before the eyes of his comrades, a matter that will significantly mark the course of events during the rest of the plot. His youthful complicity does not resist such a tessitura and their paths end up separating definitively, without anyone being able to remedy it or do anything about it.
The events that they believed buried will come to light again when Jimmy's daughter is murdered and Dave becomes the main suspect.
Beyond life
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:A film in which the direction shines greatly. Because the development of the plot is moving pointing to an unsuspected confluence. But precisely from that sensation of parallel advances that finally meet the magic of the tangential, we are presented with the magic of coincidences and destiny. Something that is very in tune with the development of a disturbing, fantastic and also dramatic plot.
Matt Damon plays one of his best roles. I really consider it that way for an actor who sometimes I see the seams because I am incapable of appreciating variability of registers. Perhaps that is why in this movie his low tone is better suited to a shy medium as befits the protagonist. And perhaps that's also why Clint Eastwood chose him, who is an old dog when it comes to knowing which face fits best depending on which role.
Each protagonist of the three threads brings different aspects to the story. I am left with the twin children over whom a fatal outcome looms that separates them forever. Guys who reach you with that emotion that words cannot reach. Marie, the television presenter who also has her approach to death in such an intense way that she seems to have unduly escaped from its clutches confers that point between fantastic and transcendent. They all come together in George (Damon). Because only he can give them a complete answer or, perhaps, because everything was predestined to develop this way. Fascinating, emotional moments truffle the entire development of the film to end up reaching a final spiritual catharsis.
A perfect world
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:Shortly before Kevin Costner drowned in his own Water World, his friend Clint claimed him to star in a road movie with the only possible destination marked on an old road map: doom. Only the most tormented soul can rediscover life in the eyes of a child, even more so in one of those improvised trips to nowhere (nowhere other than to perdition) ...
There are moments in the movie when you would sell your soul so that whatever Kevin Costner's character has pending could be forgiven. Because in the proximity of this protagonist resides the essence of any sense of loss that today's society can offer us to a lesser extent but with the same alienating feeling ...
Texas, 1963. Butch Haynes (Kevin Costner) is a dangerous and intelligent murderer who has escaped from prison in the company of another inmate. During the escape, the two are forced to take hostage the young Philip (TJ Lowther), an eight-year-old boy who lives with his devoted mother, Jehovah's Witness, and his two sisters. Ranger Red Garnett (Clint Eastwood) and a criminologist (Laura Dern) will hunt down the escapees, while the kidnapping takes on more and more the character of an adventure for the boy.
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