Clint Eastwood‘s films have been less-is-more propositions all along. They’re never been complicated or cluttered or tricky; all the moves are straight from the shoulder. But in Invictus and now, especially, Hereafter, there’s been a detection of a less-is-less thing going on. I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t sense a strengthening at work here. I feel a lack of inquiry and vigor and snap — a lack of focus and demand, perhaps a little too much of a “good enough, this’ll do” attitude.

Eastwood has spoken before about not believing in succumbing to “constipation through concentration.” He doesn’t believe in making himself crazy. He believes in action, cut, print…next. But you have to suffer a little bit for your art. You always have to sweat it somewhat. Art isn’t easy.

Hereafter is probably Eastwood’s weakest film ever. I’m convinced it’s not as good as Breezy, a William Holden-Kay Lenz romantic drama Clint directed back in ’73 or thereabouts, and which is never brought up when they discuss Eastwood’s work-behind-the-camera. I think it’s fairly decent, though, and I wish, frankly, that the guy who directed that film or Play Misty For Me or High Plains Drifter or The Outlaw Josey Wales or The Rookie, even, was a little more evident today.

My e-mailed Hereafter review from two days ago: “Nope. Banal. Okay, so-so, mild, auto-pilot, meh. Matt Damon is good — I believed his readings and conveyances. But some of the dialogue (including some of Damon’s) is too flat, too on-the-nose. And those teardrops falling down those cheeks…twice! I will however give points — everyone will — to the Southeast Asian tsunami sequence that opens the film. It’s quite thrilling, scary…although it does, truth be told, ‘look’ like CG.”

To stay or not to stay? You’re feeling more and more irked, anxious, unsettled. You knew the movie wasn’t working almost immediately, and now there’s no question. All you have to is grab your bag and get up and “slip out the back, Jack.”

It’s really that easy. You don’t have to explain yourself or face recriminations from publicists. You can just escape — twenty or thirty paces and you’re free. And that’s what I am right now — a free man.

All to say I’ve just walked out of Dustin Lance Black‘s What’s Wrong With Virginia?. I’m sorry but I don’t — didn’t — give a damn about the angry rurals in Black’s world — small-town, Christian, cigarette-smoking, fetish-indulging loons all caught up in what I saw as sad, meandering, insignificant crap.

A critic friend just wrote the following: “I walked out of Bunraku after 15 minutes, and Brighton Rock after 45. But I liked Last Night. Now I’m in the middle of the Line for What’s Wrong With Virginia.”

llowing:

I riffed a week or two ago about moments in movies that just shut things down like that. You may be happy, unhappy or undecided about a film you’re watching, but along comes one of these moments and whap…you’re gone. Because you’ve just seen a harbinger of twenty or a hundred or a thousand similar wrong moments-to-come in this film, moments that will make you twitch or shudder or otherwise go “eewwhh,” like Humphrey Bogart did when he discovered all those leeches stuck to his chest, back and legs in The African Queen.

I experienced a dozen or so disengagement leeches during the first 20 or 30 minutes of Robert Redford‘s The Conspirator. Most of them were related to a terrible feeling I had from the get-go that I was watching a History Channel reenactment. Everything felt rote, lazy, blah…except for Kevin Kline‘s performance as Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. But then I went into minor convulsions over the white bushy mutton-chops that Tom Wilkinson was wearing. (Yes, abundant facial hair was very much in fashion among older men in the mid to late 1800s and into the early 1900s. I realize that.)

And then came the decisive killshot when John Wilkes Booth (Toby Kebbell) snuck into the presidential booth at Ford’s, shot President Lincoln, leapt onto the stage and broke his leg. John Wilkes Booth wasn’t the acting equal of Edwin Booth, his older brother, but he knew from Shakespeare and presumably had one of those distinguished-sounding, highly trained, from-the-diaphragm actor’s voices. Except when Kebbell shouts to the crowd “Sic semper tyrannis! The South has been avenged!,” he doesn’t have the voice. He sounds like a Teamster driver, like a guy from craft services, like a screenwriter or a producer doing a short cameo because he and ther director are buddies.

I was just told that legendary French director Claude Chabrol, whose view of human nature was jaded in a darkly humorous way, has passed. I never really agreed with his being regarded as the French Hitchcock. He was just Chabrol the consistent.

For me, Saturday’s big winner was Matt Reeves‘ Let Me In, as I briefly noted in an iPhone jotting yesterday afternoon. Today I’ll be trying to catch Emilio Estevez‘s The Way, The Conspirator, Submarine, Errol Morris‘s Tabloid, Patricio Guzman‘s Nostalgia for the Light and perhaps a re-encounter with Alex Gibney‘s Client 9. What is that, six films? Sure thing.

In Contention‘s Kris Tapley, filing from his Los Angeles home, has been keeping better tabs on what’s been happening overall than myself. Here’s his summary about reactions to Let Me In and to Clint Eastwood‘s Hereafter, which, according to Tapley’s understanding, landed “with a thud.” Here’s another about responses to 127 Hours, Passion Play, Made in Dagenham and The Way.

“For quite some time, Martin Scorsese‘s personal passions and enthusiasms have been channeled into his documentaries, not his dramatic features,” Indiewire‘s Todd McCarthy wrote four days ago. “His first two major documentaries about the cinema, A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies and My Voyage to Italy, were surveys shot through with personal insights. No Direction Home: Bob Dylan thrived on Scorsese’s enthusiasm for another artist and his great feel for music and ’60s New York, while Shine A Light, a concert film featuring The Rolling Stones, felt more like a technical exercise.

“But A Letter to Elia cuts closer to the bone than anything Scorsese has done since the 1990s; by mixing the authenticity of his initial emotional response to Kazan’s films with his vast cinematic erudition, and by deciding to largely jettison the usual documentary baggage of archival footage, interviews with associates and Hollywood history factoids, Scorsese and Jones have been able to concentrate nearly all their attention on that which is of the greatest value in Kazan’s work and to throw an intense spotlight the man’s complexity and distinction as an artist.

“Given how passionately this Letter advocates for Kazan’s ability to make highly personal films within a commercial context, the great irony that emerges from the documentary is that Scorsese himself has ceased doing the same himself.

“Which was the last Scorsese feature that felt at all personal? In my book, the last fully successful one artistically was Casino, released 15 years ago. Bringing Out the Dead, in 1999, was indisputably shot through with themes meaningful to Scorsese, centrally the need of the main character to find salvation through saving lives. But perhaps that film’s failure was sufficiently discouraging to move the director toward the more grandiose productions he’s subsequently undertaken, films of varying quality but, the Oscars for The Departed notwithstanding, not the sorts of things that made him the most admired American director for more than 20 years.”

Two nights ago a big, bear-sized bearded guy in white pants had one of those “no, no…everyone!…listen to me!” experiences (possibly LSD-enhanced) at Hollywood’s American Cinematheque during the finale of Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was being shown in 70 mm. Let’s have a round of applause for the AC’s security staff, who obviously cared more about the feelings of this loon and treating him with kid gloves than giving the rest of the audience what they were entitled to receive.

Todd McCarthy’s account of the experience reports that “the guy was really big,” so the security guys probably felt a bit intimidated. McCarthy also offers comments/observations about how Kubrick’s masterpiece is playing with younger teenagers (i.e., Todd’s son Nick and his pally Jake) these days.

Warner Bros. publicists are asking critics to hold their Hereafter reviews until Sunday midnight, so that’s all for that one. (I just came out of it about an hour ago.). I’m now in line for a 5:30 pm screening of Danny Boyle‘s 127 Hours. Three parties follow — Sony Classics at Creme Brasserie, Robert Redford/Conspirator gathering and a Fox Searchlight shindig.