Archive
RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A big-budget remake of the classic 1975 Disney film Escape to Witch Mountain, Race to Witch Mountain is directed by Andy Fickman and stars Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as Las Vegas cab driver who gets drawn into an intergalactic conspiracy and, with the help of a beautiful UFO expert (Carla Gugino), must help two alien children (AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig) return to their space ship while avoiding the clutches of a nefarious research company who wants to exploit their powers.
The score for Race to Witch Mountain is by Trevor Rabin, continuing his collaboration with the Mouse House that he began with National Treasure in 2004. Rabin’s score is fun and adventurous Read more…
GET SMART – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Get Smart is a remake of the classic 1965 action/comedy TV series of the same name, which followed the comic misadventures of bumbling spy Maxwell Smart as he unintentionally outwits Russian agents and various bad guys without really having the faintest idea of what he’s doing. This version, which is directed by Peter Segal, stars Steve Carell as Smart and Anne Hathaway as his sexy partner Agent 99, plus Alan Arkin, The Rock, James Caan, Terence Stamp and Bill Murray in supporting roles.
The music for Get Smart is by Trevor Rabin, who is going through a quiet period in his career; the score is entertaining enough, but rather throwaway, consisting mainly of faux-heroic martial anthems Read more…
NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Considering the monumental success of the original National Treasure movie, it was almost inevitable that a sequel would be made – and so here we are again, with Jon Turteltaub directing Nicolas Cage as adventurer Ben Gates – although this time he’s trying to get his hands on a mythical “book of secrets” which, if found, will uncover the truth about Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and exonerate his great-great-grandfather from the accusations that he collaborated with John Wilkes Booth, the great president’s killer. Along for the ride this time around are Jon Voight, Ed Harris, Helen Mirren, Harvey Keitel, Justin Bartha and Diane Kruger, as is composer Trevor Rabin, who scored the original. Read more…
HOT ROD – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Rod Kimble (Andy Samberg) wants nothing more than to be a stuntman. He practices very hard, every single day. He has a team of cohorts (Bill Hader, Jorma Taccone, Danny McBride) who help him train. The only problem is, Rod is perhaps the world’s worst stuntman. He is absolutely awful at everything he attempts in the stunt department, and his incompetent friends don’t help any. Still, every time Rod attempts a stunt, he believes quite sincerely that he is going to make it.
Stunts aren’t the only thing Rod has trouble with. He also continually loses fights… yes, physical fights… with his step-father Frank (Ian McShane). He explains to his friend, “Fathers automatically love you Read more…
NATIONAL TREASURE – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of late-2004’s surprising smash hit movies, National Treasure is a ludicrous but enjoyable action-adventure romp starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Jon Turteltaub. Cage plays Ben Gates, a sort of combination archaeologist/historian/treasure hunter who is carrying on the family legacy by searching for the ‘national treasure’, a hoard of fabulous wealth passed on from generation to generation by Knights Templar and Freemasons, which he believes was hidden in a secret location by the United States’s founding fathers, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Having been double crossed by his former partner Ian Howe (Sean Bean) and left for dead in the Arctic Circle, Ben escapes and returns to home soil, where he teams up with technical whiz Riley (Justin Bartha) and beautiful museum curator Abigail (Diane Kruger). Together, the trio try to locate a map which Ben believes is hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence, and find the treasure before Ian does… Read more…
GONE IN 60 SECONDS – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I don’t want to turn this review into a diatribe, but this release of Trevor Rabin’s Gone in 60 Seconds epitomises, for me, everything that is wrong with certain aspects of film scoring today, and is exactly the kind of score which could sound the death knell for the old-school ways of the classically trained composer. The problem is not really a musical one: it’s more to do with what a director (or, more importantly in this instance, a producer) sees as being a score that will create the most amount of excitement, regardless of whether there is any musical talent at work. Gone in 60 Seconds is much more about rhythm and volume than it is about mood or emotion. It’s the soundtrack equivalent of a battering ram. Read more…
DEEP BLUE SEA – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ever since Jaws, the concept of the “killer shark” has been the staple of many thrillers, from the original’s three sequels to watery mimics such as Leviathan, Deep Star 6, Deep Rising and other films beginning with the word deep. Unlike its predecessors, Renny Harlin’s Deep Blue Sea returns to more familiar, more terrifying territory by making the villains of the piece a couple of Mako sharks instead of nasty alien crustaceans, and is a better and more believable film because of it. Starring Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane and Samuel L. Jackson, the film is a generally straightforward action thriller set on a Pacific Ocean research installation, where a team of scientists are conducting experiments on the aforementioned sharks in an attempt to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. When a storm hits the station and all power is lost, the sharks – which have become more intelligent as a result of the experiments – escape from their pens. All hell, as they say, breaks loose. Read more…
ARMAGEDDON – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In the all-spectacle, no-brains world of the Hollywood summer blockbuster, Armageddon became the antithesis of everything that people find wrong with commercial film making. Even the title – “commercial” film making – smacks of financial return being held in higher esteem than artistic merit. Everyone hated it, from the critics at Cannes who laughed during the premiere, to the newspaper hacks who decried the banal dialogue, Bruce Willis’ wooden lead performance, and the glaring implausibilities in the plotline. Despite this, audiences loved it. For all its shortcomings, Armageddon was an out-and-out crowdpleaser, with genuinely spectacular special effects, plenty of action and romance and, in the shape of Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler, two cover-story attractive protagonists. Read more…
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