I love Clint Eastwood as an actor and as an icon, but as a director… not so much. I’m not just talking about the obvious stinkers here, like True Crime or Absolute Power—I thought Million Dollar Baby was pretty stiff and cornball, despite Clint’s awesome reading of the line “Girlie, tough ain’t enough.” His cartoonishly gruff performance is the only thing I liked in his wildly over-praised latest, Gran Torino. I mean, the man actually growls; there’s a part where he literally says “Grrrr.”

Hard not to love that, but the rest of the movie feels like it was written by someone as misanthropic as the main character. Eastwood plays a grumpy widower, a retired autoworker who lives in a Detroit neighbourhood now populated largely by Hmong immigrants and who reluctantly bonds with the family next door when they become the target of gang violence. The characterization of Eastwood’s ungrateful kids and grandkids in particular grates; if you remember the scene with Hillary Swank’s family in Million Dollar Baby, you’ll know what I mean. They’re portrayed as greedy, grasping, one-dimensional louts. It’s remarkably thin and ungenerous writing. The movie’s weird insistence on the positive and healing power of racism is also, to say the least, extremely strange. Gran Torino is available on DVD and Blu-Ray now.

Ghostbusters. The word is practically hard-wired into my brain; this was one of my favourite movies as a kid, and it’s one of those rare childhood favourites (like the original Indiana Jones and Star Wars movies) that still holds up. The third installment of the story arrives this week in video game form, but they’ve also finally released the film in high-def Blu-Ray. Like the original DVD, there are lots of special features, though the new disc also features something called CineChat, which allows you, via the Internet, to chat with your friends as you all watch the movie. It’s possibly the stupidest special feature I’ve ever heard of.