The Mule

The Mule (2018)

Starring Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Peña, Dianne Weist, Taissa Farmiga, Ignacio Serricchio, and Andy Garcia

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Written by Nick Schenk

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: C-

Movie Review - American Sniper

American Sniper (2014)

Starring Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Plain and simple, I just don't think Clint Eastwood as a director creates an atmosphere in which actors can create characters that take us on an emotional journey.  (Granted, I'm several years removed from his heralded Mystic River so that may be an exception to the rule, but I can't recall.)  The same can be said for American Sniper -- the true story of Texan Chris Kyle who joined the Navy SEALs right around 9/11 and became the most accurate sniper in US military history.  Eastwood captures the horrors of war quite well, but when he steps away from the warfront, the esteemed auteur (by others, not me) fails at crafting any modicum of emotional impact.

Bradley Cooper plays Chris Kyle with a hearty (sometimes undecipherable) southern drawl, but don't allow the hickish initial appearance of Kyle make you doubt his intelligence or passion for both his family and his country.  Cooper does a nice job of tackling the authoritative nature of Kyle on the battlefield and, as the film progresses, we do grasp the sense that Cooper's Kyle is slowly mentally deteriorating from the horrors of war that he witnessed.  Unfortunately for Cooper, Eastwood is anything but subtle and Kyle's post-traumatic stress is sometimes a bit too blatant.  

This PTSD aspect of the story isn't aided by the fact that Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall paint Kyle's home life as a by-the-books, paint-by-numbers, stereotype.  Poor Sienna Miller.  After an admittedly amusing meet-cute with Kyle at a bar, her Taya is relegated to crying into a phone begging for her husband to give up his missions and come home.  I don't doubt for a second this happened, nor do I doubt that conversations like this happen every single day with our servicemen and their spouses.  However, Eastwood and Hall just keep hitting the same emotional beats over and over again and the repetition (however truthful) is wearing on the audience's patience.

Yes, I understand that it's perhaps unfair to critique a true story for its lack of originality, but it's the job of the director and screenwriter to make us (a) care for these people, and (b) create a sustainable story that's worth watching.  Eastwood and Hall do a more than adequate job accomplishing this task when Chris Kyle is on the ground in the Middle East, but when the action brings him to his home soil, things fall apart.  When real life shots of Chris Kyle's funeral during the film's credits are the only thing that create an emotional impact, I can't help but think the director is at fault.

Negative critiques aside, this is Eastwood's best work in a while thanks to the incredibly intense war sequences.  With the exception an unfortunate slow motion shot during the film's final skirmish that forced me to stifle a laugh, whenever Bradley Cooper and his fellow actors are placed into combat situations, we can't help but feel viscerally involved with the images.  For this, Eastwood deserves a large amount of credit and proves that he has some chops as a director.  Unfortunately, the staid and tired way he directs the film's other sequences brings this down more notches than Chris Kyle's story deserves to be dropped.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+ 

Movie Review - Jersey Boys

Jersey Boys (2014)

Starring John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Vincent Piazza, MIchael Lomenda, and Christopher Walken

Directed by Clint Eastwood

I grew up listening to the fun 60s pop music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.  The story of how the group formed, became popular, and contentiously began to fall apart is told in director Clint Eastwood's Jersey Boys, an adaptation of the long-running Broadway smash musical.  I've seen the show in New York City and I found it disappointing particularly considering the fantastic songs at the musical's disposal, so I went into the film thinking that it didn't need to do much in order to improve things.

Unfortunately, Eastwood has crafted a lifeless flick without any modicum of fun or excitement.  Bathed in Eastwood's typical muted brownish color palette, the film lacks energy leading to a boring affair.  (Quite honestly, it only comes alive during the film's end credits as a choreographed routine takes place on an obvious soundstage...and even that ends rather awkwardly and uncomfortably with some weird directorial shots.)   It certainly doesn't help that the characters themselves -- however true to life they really are -- are stereotypical Italian American clichés.  On stage, I didn't care for these characterizations either, but at least the broadness of them works a little better where there is a bit more distance between the audience and the actors.  When watching a film, however, we're invited to a more intimate setting and the silly stereotypes are laughable.  John Lloyd Young reprises his Tony-winning role as Frankie Valli, but he lacks the charisma that I assume was apparent on stage to garner him that award.  His Valli is rather emotionless and doesn't carry any gravitas in scenes where emotions are necessary.

Although the Four Seasons' popular tunes don't even make an appearance until the 56-minute mark (a huge detriment here that bogs down the film's opening hour to a near glacial pace), once they arrive, they are presented in a better manner than in the Broadway show -- the film's one check in the plus column.  Here, they seem a little less shoehorned in and take place in more natural settings.  (It should be noted that if anyone is wary of watching a "movie musical," all the songs in this film are set either on stage or in a recording studio or something of that ilk.  The characters never break out into song just because they feel the need to do so.)  That isn't nearly enough to save this flick from disaster, however.  Eastwood is not someone I admire as a director in the slightest and this out-of-the-ordinary departure for him into the realm of movie musicals further exemplifies his stodgy, static, and quite frankly boring style of filmmaking.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - Trouble with the Curve

Trouble with the Curve (2012)

Starring Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman, Matthew Lillard, and Robert Patrick

Directed by Robert Lorenz

No one will ever mistake me for a Clint Eastwood fan.  As a director, I think he's as boring as they come.  As an actor, I think he can't exude any emotion beyond gruffness.  Although he didn't direct Trouble with the Curve, this 2012 flick didn't do anything to change my opinion on the guy.

It should come as no surprise that Eastwood is playing a grizzled old man.  In this instance, he's Gus, a long-time baseball scout for the Atlanta Braves, who finds himself heading to check out a southern high school hitting prospect.  However, Gus isn't a young guy anymore and he discovers that his eyesight is making it very difficult for him to see both the pitches and the hitter's reaction to them.  Gus's boss and friend Pete (John Goodman) gets in touch with Mickey (Amy Adams), Gus's daughter, and convinces her to help her father make the best of what may very well be his last scouting trip.  Mickey is an aspiring attorney who is gunning for a partner position, but she obliges Pete despite the fact that her relationship with her father is somewhat strained thanks to him placing work before family through most of her childhood.  It should come as no surprise that despite the tension between father and daughter, by the film's end, resolutions are made.

The biggest issue with Trouble with the Curve is that it's simply too generic to really love or hate it.  There's not a thing in it that's horrible, but there's nothing in it that deserves acclaim either.  Eastwood is playing the same role he plays in everything.  Amy Adams is burdened with a character that is forced to change her allegiances and feelings towards her father on a dime simply to assist the storytelling.  Shockingly, Justin Timberlake is actually one of the better aspects of the film even though he's just playing a token love interest.  Granted, he isn't given much to do, but he shouldn't be embarrassed by his switch as of late to acting.

Ultimately, though, the film just doesn't provide any spark or substance beyond anything we've seen before.  It's perfectly okay, but it's just okay.  There's nothing recommendable about it, but nothing that I can say to steadfastly try and persuade you not to watch it either.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - Play Misty for Me

Play Misty for Me (1971)

Starring Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter, and Donna Mills

Directed by Clint Eastwood

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

Play Misty for Me is one of those movies I heard about long ago and just never got around to watching.  Thrillers have always been my favorite genre -- they may not necessarily be the most cinematically deep, but they have always provided me with a lot of enjoyment (hence the Hitchcock Festival on this blog a few years back).  For some reason of another, I had heard of this 1971 Clint Eastwood-starring flick and when I saw in pop up streaming on Netflix, I instantly added it, finally getting around to watching it the other day.

Loyal readers know that I am no fan of Clint Eastwood's directorial oeuvre.  I find him annoyingly heavy-handed, not all that innovative in his by-the-book techniques, and -- perhaps worst of all -- boring.  When I saw Clint Eastwood's name pop up as the director of this, I immediately began to worry I was in for a rough ride.  However, while it's amazing to me that Eastwood has two Best Director Oscars on his mantel, he proves to be adequate enough at the helm of this -- his first directorial venture.  Yes, it reeks of late 1960s/early 1970s cinema -- groovy music montages and all (including an incredibly awkward and uncomfortable sex scene in a California forest set to Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face") -- but it's an enjoyable little flick, albeit a bit too long (but that just shows that Eastwood has always had a problem in the editing department).

A precursor of sorts to Fatal Attraction, Play Misty for Me is a tale of a one-night stand gone horribly awry.  Dave (Eastwood) is a California disc jockey whose smooth voice coupled with smooth jazz has him rising in the ranks on the local airwaves.  One night after work, Dave heads to a local bar where he meets a woman named Evelyn (Jessica Walter, best known to me for her work in Arrested Development) and proceeds to have what he thinks will be a one night only roll in the hay.  Little does Dave know that Evelyn is a tiny bit off her rocker and won't stand for the fact that Dave's former girlfriend and "the one who got away" Tobie (Donna Mills) has just moved back into town.

While there's no boiling of rabbits, the comparison to Fatal Attraction is quite apt.  While that 1980s Glenn Close-starrer is a better film, Play Misty for Me is a pleasant enough genre flick that works despite overstaying its welcome and being and a bit too obvious for its own good.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - J. Edgar

J. Edgar (2011)

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas, and Judi Dench

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Oh, Clint Eastwood.  I'm gonna call you "Old Reliable" now seeing as how I can always count on your movies to be a total and utter bore.  J. Edgar lived up to that lofty (or lowly) expectation.  While it was perhaps slightly more interesting than Hereafter and Invictus thanks to its subject matter alone, Eastwood's flick just feels dark and heavy at every single turn from the acting to the brooding set design to the uninspired stuffy direction.  Somehow, though, despite the hefty feel of everything in the flick, there's an utter emptiness in terms of dramatic tension.

The saving grace of the film is that Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black jump back and forth through time to various stages of the FBI creator J. Edgar Hoover's career and there's at least a bit of fun trying to pinpoint where in the timeline we are based off of the make-up caked onto Leonardo DiCaprio.  (It should be noted that a couple reviews I read panned the make-up in this flick, but I thought it was fine and sometimes quite good.)  However, the remainder of the flick's story much of which is composed of a ridiculously written romance between Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his secret paramour Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) plays out like a silly soap opera complete with a hotel room slapfest (that ends in a smooch on the lips) with the requisite throwing of a glass against a wall followed by shouted sayings like "How dare you! But don't leave me!  I love you!"  

Hoover was a helluva guy.  Overly ambitious it seems, but strongly believing that everything he did (whether it be wiretapping Martin Luther King, Jr.'s hotel room sexcapades or claiming to have scoop on Communist ties to Eleanor Roosevelt) was done in order to strengthen his position and the FBI's position in the government.  Sure, on one hand he was attempting to overthrow radicals in the country, but on the other hand he was becoming that dictatorial presence that he so despised.  Add the cross-dressing (which is only lightly touched upon and done so in a rather horrifying Norman Bates-ish Psycho manner) and the gay aspect of the guy and there's gotta be a good story there.  It's just not present in the movie.

Leonardo DiCaprio was fine (although oddly uncharismatic) and did a pretty darn good job at creating six decades of a character through changes in movement and speech.  Naomi Watts was adequate in what amounted to a very plain role as Hoover's longtime loyal secretary Helen Gandy.  Her character was in the film quite a bit, but wasn't given a whole lot else to do beyond saying, "Yes, sir," which just ends up wasting many minutes of the 140-minute runtime.  Still, DiCaprio and Watts were the two bright spots here.  Armie Hammer (whose role in The Social Network landed him in spot #5 on last year's Breakthrough Star RyMickey Awards) was overacting quite a bit, playing his role of Hoover's gay confidante Clyde Tolson with never a smidgeon of believability.  The screenplay does him no favors as it makes Clyde love fashion and dress impeccably (not that those are necessarily inherent characteristics of a gay man, but the way the movie plays them up it most certainly is intended to be that way).  And let's not even get started on Judi Dench who seemed to be sleepwalking through this thing as Hoover's overbearing mother -- another role in which the screenplay does no favors to the actor playing the part.

The personal life of J. Edgar Hoover admittedly isn't all that well-documented so who really knows if he was gay or a cross-dresser.  The problem is that J. Edgar skirts around these issues incredibly awkwardly and while it takes stands (to a degree) as to whether these rumors were true, it never attacks them head-on and it creates a lack of drama because of that.  

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - Hereafter

Hereafter (2010)

Starring Matt Damon, Cécile De France, Frankie and George McLaren, Jay Mohr, and Bryce Dallas Howard
Directed by Clint Eastwood

At this point in time, I've seen about seven or eight Clint Eastwood-directed films.  And with the exception of maybe one, every single one of them is a complete bore.  Sure, Eastwood may be competent at composing a scene or evoking a mood, but I rarely am excited by his project choices and I'm certainly not impressed with his ability to keep a film moving at a steady clip.  Hereafter is no exception, unfortunately.  

Part of me wanted to see this movie because it's rare nowadays to get a mainstream Hollywood film that even touches upon issues of spirituality.  This flick is unabashedly about that -- this sense of "where do we go after we die."  That, in and of itself, is "ballsy" nowadays.  The script by Peter Morgan and the rather plodding direction by Eastwood just don't do the film any favors.  Broken up into three distinct segments that eventually come together rather anticlimactically in the film's final ten minutes, the film doesn't allow for any real sense of emotional connection with the characters, all of whom have gone through something traumatic which begs for us to really want to give a damn about these people.  Eastwood and Morgan, however, never allow the audience to really relate to the people onscreen.

Matt Damon is perfectly fine as a psychic who speaks to the dead.  Having given up on his craft, he finds himself being pulled back into that world by his caring, but overbearing and slightly money-hungry brother (a decent Jay Mohr).  Another storyline deals with Marie (Cécile De France), a French journalist vacationing in Thailand who gets swept away in a tsunami and has a near-death experience that connects her with the hereafter.  She becomes fascinated by the notion of afterlife and begins to investigate the concept.  Story #3 focuses on twin brothers Marcus and Jason (Frankie and George McLaren) who are living with their drug-abusing, alcoholic mother.  When Jason runs to a drug store to get medicine for his junkie mother, he gets hit by a truck and dies.  Marcus is rather devastated and tries to do all that he can to reconnect with his brother in a spiritual way.

Unfortunately, two of the three storylines just don't carry the emotional weight that they should and that's in part due to some lukewarm acting and just plain silly dialog (which, admittedly, could be because of some stupid subtitled translations from French to English).  Cécile De France seemed very distant to me and I never once felt bad for her character; I have to think that is in part due to her lack of connection with the character and storyline itself.  Also unfortunate is the fact that young Frankie and George McLaren, while adequate, just didn't deliver as well as they could have in what should have been the huge emotional arc of the movie -- I mean, a kid dies...that should've been freakin' tremendously sad and it wasn't.  Matt Damon's arc was probably the best and had a nice turn from Bryce Dallas Howard as a potential girlfriend.  However, considering his story only takes up a third of the movie, it simply isn't enough to carry the flick.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - Invictus (2009)

Invictus
Starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon
Directed by Clint Eastwood

Wow. I haven't been this bored in a movie in a while. In fact, very few movies in 2009 have bored me as much Invictus.

Morgan Freeman is utterly dry as Nelson Mandela who after being released from a South African prison in 1990 becomes President of the country in 1994. Amidst much racial tension, Mandela places what appears to be all his faith in bringing the country together behind South Africa's losing rugby team, the Springboks, and their quest to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Apparently, nothing else will unify whites and blacks except a rugby team. We are literally shown nothing else that Mandela does except put all his strength behind this team. Mandela is certainly an admirable figure, but he's portrayed here in the driest fashion possible. Granted, Mandela may not be the most jaunty guy...but maybe you shouldn't make a movie about him.

It's no secret that biopics are my least favorite genre (I've said it multiple times and will continue to do so) and Invictus does nothing to change that. Written by Anthony Peckham, we learn just enough about rugby to "kinda sorta" follow the matches on the field, but not nearly enough to understand what's really going on (Why are they in that massive huddle? Why was that a foul and why did it lead to the game-winning point?). And it's not just the rugby. This is 135 minutes of nothingness. Nothing happens here.

And part of that problem lies in Clint Eastwood's direction. Sure, I haven't seen a lot of Eastwood-directed flicks, but I've seen six or seven of them, and that's enough to prove to me that I dislike him immensely as a director. I've yet to see a film by him that's felt anything other than ploddingly paced. It's like watching a snail...no excitement whatsoever. There were shots here that felt so incredibly film school in their basicness and simplicity and with his sloth-like pacing issues, Eastwood needs to at least give me something visually stimulating. Plus, Clint hits us over the head here with the racial issues, going so far as to include some horrific song midway through telling me to be "Color Blind." I literally laughed out loud when that lyric invaded my eardrums.

I don't know of any rugby terms, so I'll stick with some a sports term that I know -- Invictus is yet another strike-out for Eastwood.

The RyMickey Rating: D