Unstinting in its graphic brutality, Gangster Squad is “inspired” by the take-down of mobster Mickey Cohen by the LAPD in the late 1940s. Josh Brolin plays the cast-iron Sgt. O’Mara, a lawman that makes Joe Friday look soft

  Clint Eastwood was still a whippersnapper when he debuted on “Rawhide” as Rowdy Yates. But, especially when the going got tough on the trail and he furrowed those iron brows, the outline of the persona he revealed a few years later in Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly could be discerned. On “Rawhide Season Five,” a two-volume DVD set (with some 27 hours of pro...

My first memory of J. Edgar Hoover comes from early childhood in the 1960s...

The tsunami that rushes through a Third World resort in the opening sequence of Hereafter is one of the best uses of CGI ever. Vividly real (and all the more impressive on a big screen), the cascading ocean wave is enough to make you duck your head as the flow carries Marie (Cecile de France), a French anchorwoman, through buildings collapsing from the weight of the water. The opening is cinem...

A barely perceptible silhouette crawls forward on the trail, a slight shadow on the face of the rocky desert. The silhouette is a horseman at the onset of For A Few Dollars More and the only sounds are the absent-minded humming and jangling of the distant rider�until a rifle shot cracks the stillness and the tiny silhouette collapses. The perspective is like that of an uncaring god, mirroring th...

Milwaukee native Elvis Thao, an actor in Clint Eastwood’s recent film Gran Torino, also lists rapper, community activist and record-company owner among his credentials. We talked to him about his multiple careers. How real to life was Gran Torino? I think the critics would know...

Walt Kowalski speaks in hoarse rasps and growls through lips clamped in a perpetual sneer. He glares through narrow, resentful eyes. Add the leathery skin of an Egyptian mummy and Walt (Clint Eastwood) resembles a cartoon supervillain more than the retired autoworker and widower of Gran Torino, living out his last days bitter over a world gone for good. Walt angrily...

Angelina Jolie has climbed a long way up from her days as a Tomb Raider. Nowadays her roles usually demand acting. In Changeling, she plays Christine Collins, a mother whose panic quietly overtakes her denial when her nine-year old son doesn�t run to greet her when she comes home. Her face registers the gathering unease as she calls out his name, going room by empty room before the realization...

I am an unabashed admirer of Spike Lee movies, especially Do the Right Thing (1989) and Malcolm X (1992). His achievements as a director are among the most notable of the last 20 years. Thus, I took to heart Lee’s recent criticism of Clint Eastwood for failing to use black actors in Flags of Our Fathers and its companion piece, Letters from Iwo Jima (both 2006). In fact, some 900 blacks participated in this bloody World War II battle, including my late uncle, Lonnie Brake, a U.S. Marine from Milwaukee. On the whole, though, Eastwood has an admirable record . . .