Play Misty for Me and Bullitt

Just finished watching this duo of Netflix holdovers from last week. Here are my views, in a nutshell.

PMFM is a decent thriller, although it seems to me to borrow from Hitchcock probably more than is really necessary. I mean, to some extent, most thrillers in the "person-coming-at-me-with-a-butcher-knife" vein owe something to Hitchcock, but did Eastwood really have to have the same sort of choppy editing during the slashing scenes? Anyway, that's just one comment. In addition, it's difficult to watch this movie without comparing it to Fatal Attraction, though I think they're at heart different approaches. In Fatal Attraction, Lyne doesn't (I HOPE, otherwise he's more of a misogynist than I thought originally) expect us to feel any real sympathy for Michael Douglas; there isn't a character here that is free of moral taint. But Eastwood's approach is purer in one sense: there's no real ambiguity here, the fling between the two main characters was fully consensual and they both knew explicitly what they were getting into. So it really is just supposed to be a story about a guy who sleeps with a psycho. And although FA has its place, I sort of enjoy the purity of PMFM.

Bullitt sucked.