Angelina Jolie appears in perhaps the most beautiful, spontaneous, authentic images of her ever snapped. That’s a mouthful and goodness knows, I haven’t studies all her photo shoots. But this one, styled by Alison Edmond for Marie Claire US, January 2012 issue is a delight. How trite; it’s smashing! With hair by Colin Jamison and makeup by Toni G, Angelina glows as one of our most favorite Smart Sensuality women, an inspirational icon for us all.

‘In the Land of Blood and Honey’

These gorgeous images are an escape today, two days after Angelina’s directorial debut ‘In the Land of Blood and Honey’ opened in New York and LA.

I’m a little confused reading the reviews. Wiki reports that they are evenly mixed but mostly reports the criticisms. Reading the lead paper reviews, it seems that 90 percent are written by men.

Do we have any prominent women film critics in America? I admit my chagrin that popular culture still seems so defined and interpreted by the male viewpoint, 50 years after the second wave of feminism.

Before digging into the top editor reviews, Rotten Tomatoes levels the playing field with 89% of general audience 1292 reviews liking it, rating the film a 4.1 out of 5. The big guy critics have it at 5.6 out of 10 vs a pro-rated 8.2 for the general audience.  I won’t spend the time digging into gender as a criteria in reviews, but it does cross my mind.

Note that NYTimes critic Manohla Dargis does devote major words to the topic of rape and using women as human shields in his review.

Male Film Critics on Women As Weapons of War

Can male critics be unbiased in understanding and reporting on — not only genocide of both men and women — but the unvarnished reality of rape as a key weapon of war in Bosnia? Personally, I think not.

Of course it’s possible that Jolie taken inexcusable dramatic license against Serbian men, which is a pretty consistent theme in the negative reviews. Having written so often about the horrific rape of women in the Congo and listened to the candid videos of men who did the raping, I only know that this is an incredibly complex real-world topic for male movie reviews to contemplate.

Let me not spoil this marvelous Alexei Hay editorial with tough talk. He has presented Angelina Jolie at her fabulous best. Instead, I will pick up the reviews of “In the Land of Blood and Honey” shortly and see the film myself. Note that I am not a movie critic, having no credentials or education in this discipline. I can only write about the film from my Smart Sensuality perspective. Anne