Mocking mortality itself, Clint Eastwood worked prolifically for more than three decades after directing what many thought would be a swan song. It was back in 1991 that Eastwood made Unforgiven, the Oscar-winning Western that Hollywood honored left, right, and center because it assumed that he was hanging up his boots. Little did the industry know that he would make roughly one new movie a year for the next 30 years. Tragically, Eastwood has now retired for good, having directed his last movie at the ripe age of 93. The movie in question, Juror #2, was released directly on HBO Max in 2023, and is sitting at a terrific 93% score on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s a sharp rebuke to Quentin Tarantino‘s theory about filmmakers losing their touch as they get older. Eastwood was arguably operating at the peak of his powers in the 2000s, when he made hits such as Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, and Gran Torino.
It was during this same run that Eastwood put together perhaps his most ambitious project of the 2000s — the World War II epics Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. Both movies presented the same chapter of history from contrasting perspectives. Surprisingly, Letters from Iwo Jima, which featured a predominantly Japanese cast and offered the so-called enemy’s point-of-view, ended up receiving better reviews and delivering better box-office results. While Flags of Our Fathers grossed $65 million worldwide against a reported budget of $90 million, Letters from Iwo Jima earned nearly $70 million worldwide against a reported budget of under $20 million. The Japanese-language epic received four Oscar nominations, including in the Best Picture category.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
Parasite
Everything Everywhere
Oppenheimer
Birdman
No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Clint Eastwood Revolutionary WWII Movie Has Been Overtaken at the Box Office
Two decades later, the movie’s $13.7 million domestic haul has been overtaken by a new WWII hit — Pressure, starring Brendan Fraser and Andrew Scott. Directed by Anthony Maras, Pressure has proven to be quietly successful at the box office on the strength of excellent reviews and audience reception. It holds a “Certified Fresh” 86% critics’ score and a “Verified Hot” 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The aggregator website’s consensus reads, “Finding a fresh angle on one of the most dramatized days in military history, Pressure is a brainy war film that derives most of its thrills from Andrew Scott’s simmering performance.” Pressure will no doubt do extremely well on the PVOD market, as movies with high audience scores tend to. But first, it remains to be seen if it has the juice to overtake the $14.5 million haul of Russell Crowe‘s Nuremberg. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
