Just because two people embark on an extended vacation to one of the most beautiful places in the world doesn’t mean that happiness is guaranteed to come with them. Such is the tale of Vanessa (Angelina Jolie – Girl, Interrupted, Changeling) and Roland (Brad Pitt – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Moneyball), a married couple of 14 years who set out for a remote French seaside town for some quiet time together in a local hotel that offers a stunning view of the landscape it sits next to, which happens to be the Mediterranean Sea. He’s a writer looking for inspiration. She’s a retired ex-dancer. But, unfortunately, all is not well and has not been well for quite some time in the Angelina-directed (Unbroken) By the Sea.
Category Archives: Brad Pitt
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is arguably my favorite Quentin Tarantino’s (Inglorious Bastards, Django Unchained) movie. However, that isn’t saying a lot since he is not one of my favorite directors out there. I admit that there is an audience for his movies. I’m just not a part of that audience. For me, his films are too often over the top, are loaded with extreme and unneeded violence, and contain the foulest language you’ll hear from a big-budget movie any year that one of his movies was released. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was FAR different than his previous eight films. The story was not over the top. The cursing, while present, was used to accent a verbal exchange rather than serve as the root of it. And outside of a 10-15 minute sequence, there wasn’t any over-the-top violence. This movie was long and a bit boring, but it wasn’t bad. It also had excellent acting performances.
Babel (2006)
More than a decade before earning back-to-back Best Director Oscars (Birdman, The Revenant), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu directed a series of unrelated hyperlink films. The idea behind hyperlink movies is that you have a movie that tells completely different stories in entirely different settings but is connected or influenced in ways unknown to the characters (and, for periods, the audience). These films started gaining popularity with the success of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic in the year 2000. When done correctly, hyperlink films can be incredibly memorable. Traffic won four Academy Awards and was a favorite for Best Picture in 2000.
Allied (2016)
While a 65% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes suggests a movie should be checked out, sometimes you wonder why the score isn’t higher. Allied, the Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, The Walk) World War II love story set in Casablanca and London about two intelligence officers from opposite sides of the world says a lot. The movie has been loosely referred to as Mr. and Mrs. Smith (because of Brad Pitt) meets Casablanca. While I understand the reference, this is far from the truth. I was not too fond of either of these other movies. While I did not particularly like either of those movies, I enjoyed Allied.
The Big Short (2015)
Completely flying under the radar in an otherwise crowded December release schedule (Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Concussion, Joy, The Hateful Eight, The Revenant) is Adam McKay’s (Step Brothers, The Other Guys) The Big Short, a movie that is neither short on star power or storytelling. While most will find this movie riveting, it will, unfortunately, hit a little too close to home for many viewers. This movie, while at times challenging to understand, will leave you dumbfounded that what happened happened not in some far-off land in a time long ago but right here in our own backyard just a few years ago. I promise not to explain this movie and then discuss some pros and cons. I will do my absolute best not to provide spoilers in this review.