To be quite fair, the last two Eastwood movies have been average at best. Not bad pictures, but no way they are as great as the acclaim.

However Hagen, Eastwood did make some movies that I quite enjoy in differing levels. Some you've heard of...and others, probably not. Here are the films I've seen far from Eastwood the director that I would rate as good:

HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973)

Eastwood's second go-around as director, this western film of revenge and hellraising, with tones for a tale that may be a supernatural tale of vengeance from hell itself, or a desperate fever wishful dream of a wronged man.

THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES (1976)

Replaced Phil Kaufman as director during shooting, Eastwood was behind this pretty popular and quite enjoyable western about a southener who's family gets massacred by those damn Yankees...and which he goes off on a long epic trek into the old west, with a strident lawman(the late great John Vernon) on his trail.

PALE RIDER (1985)

Many have cited this as a SHANE knock-off, and thats pretty fair. Still, a nice decent western that certainly helped to knock cobwebs out of the western genre, which was quite empty in the 1980s.

HEARTBREAK RIDGE (1986)

An average film for sure, with Eastwood as yet another tough-ass marine forced to make something out of a trash crew of Marine losers. However, he is sure entertaining as the asshole of a tough yet noble bastard. Nobody likes him, yet nobody disrespects him.

BIRD (1988)

Funny enough, Eastwood is a Jazz nut. BIRD was his biopic of legendary Jazz man Charlie "Bird" Parker, and pretty much an excuse for The Squint to dwell on his passion. This is a biopic which plays by biopic rules, so don't expect anything different or probably anything special, but damn Forest Whittaker is quite awesome never the less.

WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART (1990)

While Eastwood embarrased himself quite badly with the god-awful THE ROOKIE in 1990, that same year he unveiled to critical acclaim, but nothing more, a tightly-made movie of obsession and the false myth of machoism in his thinly-told cinematic tale of director John Huston during the shoot of a THE AFRICAN QUEEN-esque picture, where the hunt for an elephant becomes his sole purpose in life. No really, this owns MYSTIC RIVER and MILLION DOLLAR BABY like the Yankees own the Royals.

UNFORGIVEN (1992)

Maybe overrated, but still a good film where a bad man that has tried to reform himself becomes his own primal self once again.


Clint Eastwood isn't a Master director as many would argue, but hes made some good movies, some average flicks, some dubious star-vehicles for himself, and ya even some turkeys.