Book reviews: 'Clint: The Man and the Movies' and 'What Is Wrong With Men: Patriarchy, the Crisis of Masculinity, and How (Of Course) Michael Douglas Films Explain Everything'

A deep dive on Clint Eastwood and how Michael Douglas' acting roles reflect a shift in masculinity

Clint Eastwood
"Eastwood is not an easy person to biographize"
(Image credit: Getty Images)

'Clint: The Man and the Movies' by Shawn Levy

"It's easy now to forget just how unusual Clint Eastwood's rise was," said Anthony Paletta in The Washington Examiner. A child of the Depression and a California native, he took up acting because he was told he looked the part. But his screen career was going nowhere until he was cast as a sidekick in TV's Rawhide, and he was 37 when the three Italian Westerns he made with director Sergio Leone finally made him a movie star in America. That same year, he took his first step toward directing by starting his own production company, and today, at 95, he's still making films and has earned a new biography. After a 1996 hagiography and a 2002 hatchet job, "what readers needed was some balance," and that is what Shawn Levy's new book achieves. The veteran critic proves an astute judge of Eastwood's work and "an unusually fair evaluator of Eastwood's politics."

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