Richard Jewell, based on the true story about the 1996 Olympic bombing, is director Clint Eastwood’s latest and stars Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm and Olivia Wilde.
Escape from Alcatraz is one of my personal favorites from Clint Eastwood and although it’s hardly perfect, it is efficient in both its story telling as well as character development giving us just enough to care about the outcomes. This bargain catalogue title is rather basic with no features while the video and audio transfers, although not great, are both satisfactory.
Jersey Boys is clearly a passion project for producer/director Clint Eastwood and although the cast perform admirably enough, I never quite found the feature that engrossing but admittedly, I also don’t have much of a connection with the music or the group, so those who do (older crowd) might get more out of the movie than others.
Twilight Time’s release of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, a long ignored title within the MGM catalogue line, is a fun flick featuring excellent performances from Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges set against the beautifully photographed backdrop of the Midwest. The Blu-ray offers up good video/audio transfers, both certain upgrades over their DVD counterpart, but the features are limited.
J. Edgar is one of those films that you can see the passion be it from the costume design, production design and the cast. It’s unfortunate that the screenplay never quite gives the viewer a reason to care either way. Worst still, the movie plods along at a slow and arduous pace and although I appreciate the non-linear storytelling (it worked for Scorsese in The Aviator after all), it doesn’t do any justice for the character in the long run.