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Even with some of his more successful works as a director, this tendency still sometimes prevails. In "Million Dollar Baby," the supporting characters were caricatures with little depth to them because they were poorly conceived within the script. In "American Sniper," he chose to use a fake baby because neither the primary child nor the alternate were available, and he didn't want to wait for another baby to be chosen to fill the role. He'll often leave imperfections in the film because he just wants to move onto the next take or the next project.
Another major flaw as a director is that he just does too many films. His desire to make, in some years, as much as two films in a single year causes him to sometimes choose projects that are not a good fit for him, or where the script just isn't ready to be filmed (Hereafter, J. Edgar, Cry Macho, Jersey Boys) For example, when he made "Hereafter," Peter Morgan, the screenwriter, was very surprised Eastwood didn't ask for rewrites because even he didn't think the script was ready to be produced. When he made "Jersey Boys" he was simply the wrong fit for the material. When he made "Sully," although I think he made the best possible film he could out of the material he had to work with, there was simply no story to build a film around, so he had to invent one. With "Cry Macho" the script was very poorly written, and at 90 years old, he was not a good fit to portray the character. It seems like if he's ready to get back out there and do a film, he'll do it even when the foundation simply isn't there to make a good film instead of waiting for a better project to come along.
Another aspect of Eastwood as a director that is sometimes a strength ("Unforgiven, "Bridges of Madison County, "A Perfect World," "Million Dollar Baby,") but that is often a flaw, is that the musical scores that he uses are often too simple, and too similar to each other. The fact that he composes scores for his films at times is quite impressive, given that he is not a classically trained musician, but his limited abilities as a composer sometimes results in him doing scores that lack complexity, and that lead him to overuse the same piano notes over and over again, from scene to scene, and from film to film. In some cases, this works for the film, and reflects Eastwood's desire to have the music support what is happening on screen rather than to be used as a tool to manipulate the emotions of the viewer. But, in other cases, I think a different type of score would have made for a more impactful viewing experience, or a different musical style might have improved the film. For example, In the Line of Fire, which stars Eastwood, but which was directed by Wolfgang Peterson, has a wonderful score by Ennio Morricone. I think the film needed that kind of rousing score to work, but had Eastwood directed it, it would have lost that impact by having a much simpler, more stripped down score that really wouldn't have fit the scale and scope of the story.
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