MovieChat Forums > Clint Eastwood Discussion > he's a pretty bad director these days, l...

he's a pretty bad director these days, let's be honest...


Clint Eastwood may be a living screen legend and for a time he was a decent, if unremarkable and rather workmanlike sorta director. Ever since Invictus though, I think it's fair to say that he's just a bad director these days.

His movies often have no clear message or narrative arc to them now. They often just come off as empty biopics that exist solely for the sake of telling a "true" story, rather than a meaningful one. Clint seems to have nothing on his mind to express when making these films, other than "it's a true story". My boring day at work yesterday is a true story, should that be a movie too, Clint?

Visually, his movies have become ever-increasingly stale and boring. Clint was never much of a visual artist, so to speak, but his old films were at least watchable and competently shot. Nowadays however, his movies all have the same washed out, grey, ugly color palette to them. The shot compositions themselves range from flat and uninspired, to straight up terrible. I'll give him credit for the fact that his movies are at least better lit than they were during the early 2010's (remember J. Edgar... yikes) but still, the Clint of yesteryears was definitely more visually competent than the Clint of now.

Even in terms of performances, his movies have suffered. Like the scripts he picks and the visuals he employs, they come off largely flat and uninspired. Because of his notorious one-take technique of directing, perfectly good actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Bradley Cooper end up giving some of the weakest performances of their entire careers under his direction.

I know we all love Clint because he's a living legend who still pumps out movies regularly at the age of 90 but really, ask yourself, if he wasn't a big screen cinematic icon already, would you be at all curious to see what this bland and unremarkable filmmaker would do next?

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Yawn*

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Don't waste your breath. Take a nap, son. Feel free to never wake up.

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Go play in traffic

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Sure, why not? I love playing red light, green light in a car!

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Richard Jewell was his best since Gran Torino.

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I agree. I really liked it and it was well made.

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I enjoyed Sully and Richard Jewell, yeah Eastwood's movies have been a chore to watch for a long time.

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I thought Jersey Boys, The Mule and Sully were descent, but American Sniper was really good.

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That's normal for all directors. George Romero's movies went downhill dramatically after Day of the Dead. Eastwood has faired better compared to George Lucas. Though, with people being so disenfranchised with the Disney Star Wars, they're trying to argue otherwise.

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