As much as I love Unforgiven, In the Line of Fire, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and Dirty Harry, I think my favorite Clint Eastwood film is Escape from Alcatraz. As bank robber Frank Morris, you can see him plotting a way off the famed prison from the very first scenes of the film. Eastwood’s Morris is taciturn, intelligent, and does not suffer fools gladly.* Clint Eastwood casts a long shadow. He’s been in the entertainment industry since 1955, and he has 72 acting credits and 40 directorial credits. At age 88, he keeps at it, releasing a film or two every few years. He’s made some... Read More

One of the old Hollywood legends is about the genesis of 1937’s A Star Is Born. Allegedly, it was not-so-secretly about the relationship between Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay. While Fay was a success on Broadway, his film career fizzled. Stanwyck became a massive film star, and Fay worked out his resentment of her through alcoholism and physical abuse. For a while, that was the template for these remakes, that of the meteoric rise of the ingènue and the corresponding fall of the has-been. That tells us that, at the end of the day, there aren’t that many stories. In Christopher Booker’s... Read More

Hollywood is a place where people who should fail, don’t. It’s where people who deserve to have long careers crash and burn. Earlier this year, Michael Mann’s film Blackhat was released, and it flopped big-time. The man who made amazing films like Heat, The Insider and Collateral, has seemingly lost his touch. Can he regain his mojo? Hopefully. Now that strange malady has afflicted Cameron Crowe with the execrable Aloha, but in this case, his career may be terminal. That’s a shame. See, Crowe occupies an interesting filmmaking niche. He’s not a soulless journeyman... Read More