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Post by joekiddlouischama on Jun 27, 2017 4:32:10 GMT
Mystic River opens (as I recall; I have not seen the film since March 2004) in the 1970s with the pivotal scene prompting everything else, but the rest of the movie is set in contemporary times. But that can work ...
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Jun 27, 2017 4:43:35 GMT
I could go in a lot of different directions here, and I do like the citations of such films as The Godfather and Schindler's List (not that the latter is remotely like any Hollywood product from the Classic Era or Golden Age; while The Godfather is very different, too, one can glimpse certain vestiges or residue, down to the casting of Sterling Hayden in a critical role).
But I will cite the three films that Clint Eastwood has directed about musicians: Honkytonk Man (1982, in which he plays the protagonist), set in the 1930s during the Great Depression; Bird (1988) set mainly in the forties and fifties; and Jersey Boys (2014), set in the 1960s.
They all create an effective historical aura. I consider Honkytonk Man and Bird Eastwood's two best films of the 1980s (and two of the decade's best movies). Norman Mailer loved Honkytonk Man; the film caused him to analogize Eastwood to Ernest Hemingway. Although largely ignored by the Academy, Bird caused Eastwood to receive his first major critical award, a Golden Globe for direction. And although Jersey Boys is not quite on the level of those two "great" films, I consider it "very good"—perhaps Eastwood's most bittersweet movie.
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