Angelina Jolie
10 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
Those obvious visual and thematic influences to the entire “white people in hot weather” genre, which extend from “L’Avventura” to “The Sheltering Sky” to Anthony Minghella’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and Richard Linklater’s “Before Midnight,” may well have arrived by way of Austrian cinematographer Christian Berger, who has shot most of Michael Haneke’s films.
We think of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “trilogy”: L’Avventura, La Notte, and L’Eclisse.
It might have been more interesting if Jolie had toyed humorously with the conventions of a film like “L’Avventura” rather than simply trying to copy them.
Unfortunately, By the Sea is less L’Avventura than it is Je t’aime moi non plus, or for that matter, Swept Away.
Soon, Louis’s track coach and his brother discover Louis’s speed in a scene that’s almost a shot-for-shot remake of Forrest Gump running across the football field in Forrest Gump (Angelina Jolie is supposedly good friends with Forrest Gump writer Eric Roth, so maybe it was an intentional homage).
Each of Unbroken’s many segments echoes past prestige pictures, sometimes unfortunately (it’s hard to watch Zamperini’s running-career montage without thinking of Forrest Gump) and sometimes awkwardly.
Occasionally easy on the eyes, “Unbroken” isn’t exactly a chore to sit through, but it’s the kind of processed, rah-rah filmmaking mostly left to cable showings of 90s dramas like “Rudy” and “Forrest Gump.”
We think of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “trilogy”: L’Avventura, La Notte, and L’Eclisse.
His film La Notte conveniently also centers on a relationship between a male writer and female beauty.
Set on the stunning Côte d’Azur (though actually shot on the Maltese island of Gozo) and seeming to channel European directors of the '60s and '70s (Godard’s Contempt and Antonioni’s La Notte come to mind), By the Sea risks accusations of pretentiousness.
The novelty of “By the Sea” — which is no less than a naked attempt to ape ’60s French and Italian movies, especially those, like “Contempt” and “La Notte,” about bad relationships — may quickly wear off.
There are points at which Unbroken reminds us of Mel Gibson’s unbridled display of the mortification of the flesh in The Passion of the Christ.
Mortification simply comes to dominate all and the climactic battle of wills between Zamperini and Watanabe, at a hellish end-of-the-war-and-world coal-loading facility, all but literally evokes “The Passion of the Christ.”
It's essentially a 1940s propaganda flick, an act of torture porn not entirely unlike Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and it should, consequently, appeal to exactly the same audience.
“Unbroken” may be the most interminable display of male suffering in a wide-release film since the lavish homoerotic pummeling of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”
We’ve already mentioned Riefenstahl (director of “Olympia” and “Triumph of the Will”), but much more prominent are a kind of Spielbergian nostalgic glow/childlike thrill-of-action vibe in the earlier sections.
But those expecting a Swept Away-type debacle will be either mildly surprised or disappointed, depending on their level of schadenfreude.
Fortunately, Jolie's "By the Sea" isn't quite the stinker of Ritchie's "Swept Away".
Unfortunately, By the Sea is less L’Avventura than it is Je t’aime moi non plus, or for that matter, Swept Away.
When couples work together, it can often be a recipe for disaster, and while I generally have liked Jolie’s previous films as a director, her fourth attempt bears an eerie contrast to Shanghai Surprise and Swept Away, two films Madonna made with her ex-husbands.
(The raft segment recalls Life Of Pi without the preternatural beauty or the tiger.)
It may not be fair, but Unbroken suffers from comparisons to the impressionistic storytelling of Ang Lee’s metaphorical stranded-at-sea tale Life of Pi and the in-the-moment immediacy of J.C. Chandor’s All is Lost, starring Robert Redford.
The second is a liferaft picture — less the fantastical “Life of Pi” than Alfred Hitchcock’s grittier-minded “Lifeboat.”
While she’s a relative newbie in terms of direction (she’s only made one feature film previously), she’s backed by a ridiculously talented crew that includes cinematographer Roger Deakins (The Shawshank Redemption), composer Alexandre Desplat (The King’s Speech), and editors William Goldberg (Argo) and Tim Squyers (Life Of Pi).
Jolie’s not incapable of making good cinema: the entirety of the raft sequence is generally great, a more severe, realistic version of Life of Pi with noticeably crummier CGI, or a three-handed successor to All Is Lost .
We get the Olympics, the raft ordeal and the prison camp — in movie terms, Chariots of Fire plus Life of Pi plus The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in By the Sea .
Watching Hacksaw Ridge, I kept thinking of Unbroken, the 2014 war drama about POW Louis Zamperini.
American Sniper (2014)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
influenced by In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011)
Jolie’s previous film, In the Land of Blood and Honey, was a love story (written by her) in Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian, about two lovers on different sides of the Bosnian War.