Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008)

“God, I’ve got more in common with these gooks than I do my own spoiled-rotten family.” Plot summary: A racist white man protects his Hmong neighbors from a local gang. Review: Early in 2008 Eastwood released Changeling, a dreadfully overlong stinker whose hack direction displays an amazing fidelity to melodramatic cliché. The film has, among […]

The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)

“Nobody cares but me” Plot summary: Private eye Philip Marlowe attempts to get to the bottom of his friend’s supposed suicide in this offbeat adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel. Review: It doesn’t take long to realize that Altman’s The Long Goodbye offers a very skewed vision of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: the first time he steps outside his […]