Posted on 12/17/2018 7:24:46 AM PST by nikos1121
So, like many here, I'm waiting for the opening of Clint's new movie, The Mule.
Why? Hmmm. Let me counts the ways.
1. His movies are 95% of the time entertaining, esp if he's in them.
2. I like watching him.
3. His movies cut thru the crap, and make you think while at the same time have you glued to the seat, I'm thinking of the 2 two Iwo Jima movies, or Gran Torino, Unforgiven, etc
4. HIs movies can be funny, like Bronco Billy.
Ok? So, I'm eagerly awaiting this one, The Mule, as I've seen the previews. And it supposedly takes place in Peoria, IL where I lived once, and my kids still do.
I get up on SUnday, and check the times. Perfect, a 1:15 Matinee.
I call up a friend, she in!
WE meet. I get my senior discount ticket, and her adult, big 2019 Popcorn Bucket, and off we go.
We sit up in the higher seats.
(NOte: Has anyone noticed that no one, I MEAN NO ONE sits downstairs anymore...esp adult. We all sit at the higher seats...so, like Bill Hickok, we can watch everyone walk in. I'd wager that 60% of us were packing.)
So, before the show, I'm scanning thru the reviews at Rotton Tomato, and here I see that the movie critics are really slamming the movie. I mean about 50% say it's zero.
One guy, implies that the movie has cryptic pro Trump messaging ie...I guess anti-immigrants?
Another guy says, the movie was "pasted together with very few retakes."
Another is upset that Bradley Cooper didn't have a bigger part.
And on and on bs.
I"m thinking no way, no how, Clint, my Man is not going to let me down.
I pan thru the reviews by people like us, "The audience" and they're glowing...I mean not an Oscar winning movie, but a good solid Clint film. Many giving it 4/4 stars.
Here's the real impression.
It's a great movie. Solid 3 out of 4 star Clint movie all the way. Not real artsy fartsy movie like The Unforgivin, but entertaining...Got that Folks, Entertaining.
Clint makes movie making easy. He tees up the good guy's on one side, usually the family he left behind, the bad guys on the other side, usually criminal elements in the Latino and black community, and he's in the middle, a repentant old geezer, selfish in life until life stares him in the face.
He's says in the movie, "The only guy wishing to live to be 100, is the guy who is 99."
No spoiler alert, but here's a little background.
Clint plays the part of 90 year old Earl Stone, a very popular Horticulturist who wins contests for the best Lilys who goes bankrupt when the internet makes ordering flowers easy.
He's out of money, out of a job. So, by fate he runs into some Mexican Cartel guys, at his grand daughter's wedding, who hire him to do some drug running for them, from Texas to CHicago, because no one would suspect him, and like he says, he's NEVER had a traffic ticket in his whole life.
He's The Mule.
He makes a lot of money working with these tough hombres, on the first run. And I would have been happy if the movie ended there, and we went home knowing that Earl buys his old farm back, and lives happily ever after...
but noooooooooOOOOOOooooooo.
We have to go through the usual tense moments back and forth, and watch Earl smoothly enter in and out of danger.
I don't know who does the casting of these movies, but they always seem to get the people who actually make you scared to look at them. I mean, I could feel my BP going up when they would be threatening Clint.
And of course, just like in the movie Gran Torino, they can threaten him all day, and he doesn't give a rat's @...he's Veteran and he's seen it and done it all...and tells them to get lost.
Anyway, he makes the first run...then he does it again and again.
I'm going to stop here.
All I'm going to say is, I found myself praying that he'd stop while he was ahead,
but noooooooOOOOOooooo
he keeps going to the point, that the big Kahuna in Mexico played capably by Andy Garcia, flies him in to party at his home for a week or so.
It's a movie worth seeing, even alone. Clint knows how to real us in, and he does it quickly. Movie moves fast, even the slow parts.
And as usual, Clint sticks it to the PC crowd of critics, he mocks blacks and Latinos like breathing in and breathing out. Being PC doesn't exist in an Eastwood movie.
ONe scene has him pulling over to help a black family with a flat tire, and Earl says something like, "Not surprising to find Negros on the side of the road not knowing how to change a tire." Bwahahahahahahaaaaa.
I get the critics, but while watching this movie, I realize these critics, who make money reviewing movies, DON'T GET Clint Eastwood, same as the idiots at CNN and MSNBC etc don't get Trump.
Can't wait until the next Clint movie. I hope he keeps going, until? Well, he's 100.
I wonder if that’s a sign, as I find myself doing this a bit more than I have, but you’re right, that Damn Autocorrect.
I’m not kidding, the critics actually say this in their reviews. You get the feeling, that they wrote the review without seeing the movie.
Best two movies for 2018 for me are:
Bohemian Rhapsody
First Man
Worst Movie
Star is Born
I love Clint and I'll go see this but it really does look like a "breaking bad" knock off, at least conceptually. In "Breaking Bad" the most interesting thing was how the main character, a brilliant good guy family man who just wants to provide for his family, turns into an amoral psychopath seeking personal glory at any cost and yet we continue to root for him the whole time. Wonder if they go down that path. Harder to do in a movie, without dozens of hours to add nuance to the characters.
I believe it. My dad bought a collection of his Dirty Harry movies and I love them.
Poorly written review and that “real us in” faux pax is torturous. I have no idea what a dumb, pointless line like “not surprising finding negroes on the side of the road not knowing how to change a tire” I mean, seriously, what TF? Actually I doubt that scene plays out like the reviewer says - I don’t believe it
No, I don’t think so. It follows the story line that is all too familiar in Clint’s movies. Clint has remorse for ignoring his family.
In this movie like others, he leaves his wife, (maybe she left him), and devotes his life to raising flowers, that he finds more important than going to his daughter’s wedding, because he’s “a somebody with the public who adore his flowers, and a loser at home.)
Then he finds atonement, and forgiveness in the end, and he’s willing to pay the price.
You get the feeling that these later year movies of Clint are autobiographical.
The other thing with Eastwood, less is more. I don’t think he give many of these characters many lines but you know everything you need to know about them, without getting into the nuances.
Andy Garcia, Bradley Cooper, (oddly enough he forgets to wish his wife happy wedding day, because he’s chasing after Clint.) Every character, you know them without knowing much.. The wife, the daughter, and grand daughter, just like in Gran Torino.
You really feel for these people...
You know you raise a good point. TVs and other movies spend alot of time on nuances and character building, Clint does it quickly.
I’m not being paid...and the not sure about what you’re saying. Go see the movie, Clint makes his point about the race issue is all about in less than 60 seconds.
I read some reviews here about the movie First Man, that were obviously written by people who didn’t see the movie. That movie was actually very patriotic, and I wouldn’t have seen it had I not read a review here.
Same with The Mule. You read RT, like many people do, and you won’t see it.
The flat tire scene, is comic relief. It comes at a very suspenseful moment. I think every Eastwood has it’s “Make My Day” line. He’s not being mean, he’s a 90 year ole guy who is an obvious racist, not to his generation, but to the rest of us. But he shows that the couple on the side of the road are racist too. Very clever. I think I know what you’re saying, that you don’t believe, he’d throw that line in there, but he does, and I’m sure he thought it thru.
High Plains Drifter...
Didn’t he make the townspeople paint every building red in that one?
And he made the midget that everyone abused the town’s sheriff?
Yeah, that was the movie.
The Stranger:
Wonder what took her so long to get mad?
Mordecai:
Because maybe you didn’t go back for more?
Only the best TV takes an effort to build a character and show how they change over time, give them an arc. That's why they're the best shows I think. In the case of Breaking Bad, we learn that Walt gave up a shot at fame and wealth as an entrepreneur to marry and start a family and how he seeths under the surface with anger, resentment and jealousy over that. It's really well hidden initially but over time we see it come out as he gets further and further into the drug trade and he finds another outlet to finally be the superstar he wished he had become by selling his soul. That's hard to make convincing in two hours but over several seasons, as we see it build. And as it does, we understand it, as he becomes more loathesome we actually cheer on his victories instead of wishing for his downfall. No small feat.
A really good show I've just binge watched the first season of was called "Countepart" which is a cloak and dagger spy thriller but the twist is that the spying is between two alternate versions of Earth, mostly identical but with some key differences. Lots of good cold war type spy stuff with moles and dead drops and assassins and all that. But at the same time they show us two versions of the same character and they are extremely different; as we follow those two versions it explores the idea of identity, how we become who we are and how we don't really know ourselves or others as well as we think. It's bee outstanding in its first season, second one just started. Great writing and great acting (so far).
A spoiler is when someone tells the ending of the movie/show spoiling it for those who might want to see it.
Why pay to see it when someone has spoiled the ending for you?
“You get the feeeling they’re real drug cartel guys from Guatemala or something.”
Danny Trejo still gives that feeling.
Baddest looking dude in pictures in my book.
“Why pay to see it when someone has spoiled the ending for you?”
—
Like Rush Limbaugh did with “Million Dollar Baby”.
.
Same in “Better Call Saul” and “Breaking Bad.” The bad guys really give you the creeps.
I also recently watched that movie and I didn't care for it. Clint basically rapes a woman in a sort of "she's screaming for him to stop but you know she wants it" way which even in the time had to be at best jarring. Basically in that movie everyone is the villain, all of them for various reasons including Clint. They are living in a thinly veiled symbolic hell and Clint isn't there to save them from it. In the 70s it was fashionable to say that there are no good guys, only shades of gray but it makes it my least favorite Eastwood movie.
I think they were going for a similar idea in the original "Dirty Harry". I think we're supposed to view Harry ambivalently, good but also bad. He's the only guy who will pursue justice but his methods are too extreme, we're supposed to say. Yet instead we said "damn right, it's about time someone took action!" I don't think the Hollywood guys were expecting Clint's "judge, jury, and executioner" character to get cheers but in the real world people were sick of leftist anarchy and revolving prison doors. But in High Planes Drifter we aren't really presented with much to cheer for. In my opinion.
“Old Like Clint”
Is that a remake of “In Like Flint”?
Rush always warns with a spoiler alert if he is going to divulge something.
They were double dirty dealers trying to play both ends against the middle and then hired a social misfit to fix everything for them. But, they didn't like his way of taking care of business and some of them met their demise anyway. The squishy middle of the road folks were offended by him being there and in the end they didn't want him to leave and found themselves vulnerable again.
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