Michael Apted
34 connections found
Filmography
Nell 1994 
Gorillas in the Mist 1988 
The World Is Not Enough 1999 
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 2010 
Thunderheart 1992 
Amazing Grace 2006 
Extreme Measures 1996 
Enigma 2001 
Continental Divide 1981 
Agatha 1979 
Enough 2002 
Gorky Park 1983 
Critical Condition 1987 
35 Up 1991 
56 Up 2012 
Coal Miner's Daughter 1980 
Incident at Oglala 1992 View:
Connections, in both directions
That life has been the subject of a play ("Breaking the Code" by Hugh Whitemore) and several books, and going its own way with an invented set of characters, the Tom Stoppard screenplay "Enigma" explored similar themes of love and deceit and a race against time.
(Some viewers may recall that this ground was covered by Michael Apted’s 2001 Enigma — a largely fictionalized account complete with name changes.)
The film’s very title refers to a game posited by Turing to deduce whether one was speaking to a man, woman or machine – a forerunner of the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner to which this owes a greater debt than such apparently comparable fare as 2001’s Enigma .
On a historical level one can fault this retelling of the English breaking of the Nazi Enigma code, the complex system through which German military instructions were sent to the field —an episode of World War II previously dramatized, though none too successfully, in Michael Apted’s “Enigma” (2001)—for inaccuracies.
The 2001 film Enigma, fictionalised the story by eliminating Turing completely and making it into a spy thriller.
But the film does a far superior job in depicting Turing and his story than the earlier film "Enigma" (2001) starring Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet.
His journey is a father figure arc that works thanks to the exceptional German child actress Zengel, who recalls Michael Apted’s “Nell” (1994) when she first appears in the wilderness.
This method does have a screen precedent of sorts: With his Up series, Michael Apted has been filming the same group of people every seven years since he first began the project in 1970 (the most widely seen of the bunch was probably 1991's 35 Up, and the series is now up to 56 Up, released in 2012).
“Boyhood” is like a fictional feature film version of the dazzling “56 Up” documentaries about British schoolkids, with the singular focus on a boy that could well be Richard Linklater: The Next Generation.
There have been inevitable comparisons with Michael Apted’s superb Up series, in which he has followed the lives of 14 British schoolchildren since 1964, starting at age seven and revisiting them every seven years (56 Up was released in 2012).
The titles tell the subjects’ ages: The most recent of the eight films to date was 2012’s “56 Up.”
He has met with them every 7 years since and the most recent instalment in his documentary series, 56 Up, was released back in 2012.
This method does have a screen precedent of sorts: With his Up series, Michael Apted has been filming the same group of people every seven years since he first began the project in 1970 (the most widely seen of the bunch was probably 1991's 35 Up, and the series is now up to 56 Up, released in 2012).
Like the Jennifer Lopez vehicle Enough (2002), Whannell’s film posits that the only genuine freedom lies in the protagonist counter-attacking and defeating her abuser, a narrative that carries a sour tinge of passive-aggressive victim-blaming.
Following their doubts, an abused partner eventually stands up to their abuser to the audience’s satisfaction: see 1944’s Gaslight to 2002’s Enough , with many other examples in between and beyond.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Directed by David Fincher
influenced by The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Visuals
Highlighting Fincher's background in music videos, Girl opens with a pulsing goth-rock cover of Led Zeppelin's 'Immigrant Song' by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross while fetish-infused visuals of oil-drenched figures writhe across the screen, not unlike the introduction to 1999's Bond film The World Is Not Enough.
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)
Directed by Dean DeBlois
influenced by Gorillas in the Mist (1988)
Plot
It shows, too, particularly in the unoriginal plot, which borrows from everything from “Harry Potter” to “Gorillas in the Mist,” with a little “Brave” tossed in for measure.
(Given that she’s tied up through most of the picture, there’s little more she’s able to do.) It’s a brave, unglamorous performance that exposes Jodie Foster’s “Nell” for the goofy, theatrical sham that it is.
It stretches belief that Polly would give Reuben as many chances as she does and a subplot about insuring billionaire Leland Van Lew (Bryan Brown, "Gorillas in the Mist"), an Xtreme sports nut, isn't successfully integrated.
If all it was was 90 minutes of them reading the phone book, all would be well, especially since they’d do it in a made-up language that’s far cooler than Jodie Foster’s in “Nell” though not nearly as cool as Milla Jovovich’s in “The Fifth Element.”
Like Michael Apted?s superior "Incident at Oglala" the film was actually shot in and around the Pine Ridge reservation itself, home of the Lakota Sioux and the famed massacre of Wounded Knee, where over 100 Lakota men, women, and children lost their lives.
The details of their quest are hazy because Hanks speaks a type of baby talk similar to Jodie Foster’s in “Nell.”
He sings “Just as I Am” and “Amazing Grace” without a wink, without a hint of the Tenacious D/”School of Rock” metal belter you know he pines to be.
Is this meant to be just a surface gag, and any noggin from any movie stand-up from the period would have served (say, Tom Hanks’ from Forrest Gump or Jim Carrey’s from The Mask or Jodie Foster’s from Nell )?
While at least Renner’s character, whose uneasy inclusion in the Native American community is begrudgingly referenced by the drug addled brother of the dead girl, is not made to be mixed-race in the same way Val Kilmer’s character in 1992’s Thunderheart was concocted, Sheridan’s film still recalls the old Hollywood hat trick of prizing the perspective of a white male protagonist unnecessarily.
Sheridan never indulges cliched views of Native American life; there's none of the mysticism that circulated through Michael Apted's 1992 thriller Thunderheart, which takes place on a reservation in South Dakota.
They are an opportunity for Sheridan to showcase his supporting actors, including Graham Greene, who previously appeared in 1992’s Thunderheart, another film about an FBI agent investigating a murder on a reservation.
Pacific Rim (2013)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
influenced by The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Characters
Pacific Rim rocks because it makes you feel just like Day, the least convincing doctor since Denise Richards as a Dr. Christmas Jones in The World is Not Enough.
When it works, which is about half the time, Red Sparrow feels like a throwback (albeit a kinkier one) to the cloak-and-dagger thrillers of the Reagan-Bush era, such as Gorky Park and The Russia House.
Other than Chris Barrie who makes his feature film debut and gets in a few amusing moments as the protective butler, Iain Glen ("Mountains of the Moon," "Gorillas in the Mist") and Daniel Craig ("Elizabeth," "I Dreamed of Africa") are completely flat as the one-dimensional villains and Noah Taylor ("Almost Famous," "Shine") can't do much with his limited techno guru part.
The bad guy is Manfred Powell (Iain Glen of "Gorillas in the Mist").
Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter, Jeremy Allen White in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Taron Egerton in Rocketman all did their own singing, even with the risk of not measuring up to the icons they played who were all still alive when their films came out.
Chief among his followers is neo-action star Jason Statham, playing the unlikely-named Lee Christmas (sadly, the film's non-existent sense of humor means we are deprived a replay of the "Christmas only comes once a year" quip from the misbegotten James Bond film The World Is Not Enough ), grappling with an ex-girlfriend (Charisma Carpenter, playing the requisite "bitch who is only a bitch according to the ultra-masculine codes governing this style of action movie" role) and a semi-distant third is Jet Li, as martial arts expert Ying Yang.
This later turns out to be a demented terrorist called Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek, bearing perhaps the silliest Bond character name since Denise Richards' Dr. Christmas Jones in The World Is Not Enough ).
Neal Purvis and Robert Wade – whose collaborative endeavours go as far back as The World is Not Enough – are joined by Fukunaga as well as Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
Neal Purvis and Robert Wade have written or co-written every Bond film since 1999’s The World Is Not Enough .
Waller-Bridge's fellow screenwriters are Bond regulars Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (who have worked on every film in the franchise since 1999's The World Is Not Enough , with very mixed results) and Fukunaga himself.
No Time to Die is tasked with juggling multiple things, the end of Craig as Bond , storyline continuity (which Neal Purvis and Robert Wade have been charged with 1999’s The World is Not Enough ), a continuing romance, 4 writers(excluding Flemming’s “characters by” credit.)…