MARY REILLY – George Fenton
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review byJonathan Broxton
In the mid-1990s there were a series of big-budget Hollywood films which adapted classics of the horror genre to the big screen, with the most famous being Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992 and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1994. One of the films which is now somewhat forgotten is this one: Mary Reilly, an adaptation of a 1990 novel by Valerie Martin, which was itself inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The twist here is that this story is told from the point of view of Henry Jekyll’s housemaid, the Mary of the title, who falls in love with her master, but then makes an enemy in the form of Jekyll’s “assistant,” Edward Hyde. The film stars Julia Roberts as Mary, John Malkovich as Jekyll and Hyde, and has an excellent idiosyncratic supporting cast that includes Michael Sheen, Glenn Close, and Michael Gambon, plus British TV stalwarts like George Cole of Minder and Kathy Staff of Last of the Summer Wine. It was written by Christopher Hampton and directed by Stephen Frears, who had previously worked together on Dangerous Liaisons in 1988. Read more…
SEND HELP – Danny Elfman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s probably a universal experience that everyone has dealt with at some point in their lives: a terrible boss. Maybe they are a micromanager. Maybe they take credit for others’ work. Maybe they are just jerks – misogynistic, sexist, or simply bullies who revel in public humiliation, criticizing or mocking employees in front of others. In Send Help, star Rachel McAdams has to put up with all these things and more from her boss, played by Dylan O’Brien, before she is able to get revenge in the most surprising – and violent – of ways. McAdams plays Linda Liddle, a corporate strategist who is constantly belittled by her male colleagues and denied the professional respect she believes she deserves. When a company plane crashes on the way to an international business trip, she and her smug, chauvinistic boss Bradley Preston are the only survivors, washing ashore on a desert island. Stranded together, their uneasy alliance soon turns into a disturbing battle of wills in which Linda’s survival instincts begin to blur into something far darker. Read more…
LUST FOR LIFE – Miklós Rózsa
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1946 MGM purchased the film rights to Irving Stone’s 1934 biographical novel Lust for Life, about the tumultuous life of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. The contract required production within ten years or ownership would revert to Stone, but the project languished until 1954, when actor Kirk Douglas purchased the rights with the intention of starring in and producing a film adaptation. Director Vincente Minnelli also sought to make a film about Van Gogh, which had long been a passion project of his. Eventually, all parties joined in common cause and the film proceeded to production by MGM, with John Houseman in charge and a $3.23 million budget. Minnelli was tasked with directing, and Kirk Douglas would star in the lead role of painter Vincent van Gogh. Joining him would be Anthony Quinn as Paul Gauguin and James Donald as Theo van Gogh. Read more…
WUTHERING HEIGHTS – Anthony Willis, Charli XCX
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Heathcliff, it’s me, I’m Cathy, I’ve come home…
Wuthering Heights is one of the undisputed classics of British literature. Written in 1847 by Emily Brontë, it is a vivid story of all-encompassing love, obsession, cruelty, and revenge, with more than a splash of the English class system and an exploration of the crushing effects of poverty thrown in for good measure. The story chronicles the ill-fated relationship between the spoiled but free-spirited Catherine Earnshaw and the handsome, rugged foundling Heathcliff, who was brought as a child by Catherine’s father to live with them at their ancestral home, the Wuthering Heights of the title, an imposing house sitting atop one of the bleakest parts of the Yorkshire moors. As they grow up, Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship develops from childhood friendship to adult romance, but circumstances conspire to keep them apart – not least Catherine’s simultaneous relationship with the wealthy Edgar Linton, heir to the neighboring property Thrushcross Grange. Read more…
CITY HALL – Jerry Goldsmith
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An underrated movie co-written by Nicholas Pileggi, the former investigative journalist best known for his work on Goodfellas, City Hall is a political crime thriller directed by Harold Becker. Set against the murky political landscape of New York City, the film stars Al Pacino as Mayor John Pappas and John Cusack as his idealistic deputy mayor, Kevin Calhoun, alongside a supporting cast that includes Bridget Fonda, Danny Aiello, and then-recent Oscar winner Martin Landau. The story begins with a tragic shooting in which a young boy is killed during a botched police operation targeting a suspected Mafia figure. The incident appears to be a routine case of excessive force, but Calhoun begins to suspect that the circumstances surrounding the event are more complicated than they initially appear. As he digs deeper, Calhoun uncovers a tangled web of connections linking the police department, the district attorney’s office, organized crime figures, and even members of the mayor’s own administration. Read more…
SOLO MIO – Joy Ngiaw
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Considering that I finished my 2025 review schedule with a score by Joy Ngiaw, it’s perhaps only fitting that I start 2026 with one too. I said in my review of WondLa that ‘somebody needs to give Joy Ngiaw a Star War to score,’ and while I still absolutely stand by that sentiment, that hasn’t actually happened, and what has happened instead is that she has been given a lovely, sunny, romantic comedy drama to work on instead. Solo Mio was made by five of the eight filmmaking Kinnane brothers from Rhode Island – directors Chuck Kinnane and Dan Kinnane, writers John Kinnane and Patrick Kinnane, and editor Pete Kinnane – and it is the latest in several ventures involving actor and comedian Kevin James. In this film, James plays Matt Taylor, whose life is upended when he is ditched at the altar by his fiancée Heather in the middle of his dream wedding in Rome. Despite being crushed and heartbroken by the end of his relationship, Matt is convinced by his friends to take his honeymoon anyway – a tour around the most romantic locations in Italy that becomes an adventure he never expected. Read more…
IFMCA Award Winners 2025
INTERNATIONAL FILM MUSIC CRITICS ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF 2025 IFMCA AWARDS
SIMON FRANGLEN WINS SCORE OF THE YEAR, TWO OTHER AWARDS, FOR AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH; ALEXANDRE DESPLAT WINS COMPOSER OF THE YEAR; COMPOSERS FROM FRANCE EXCEL IN GENRE CATEGORIES
FEBRUARY 26, 2026 — The International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) announces its annual list of winners for excellence in musical scoring, in the 2025 IFMCA Awards.
The award for Score of the Year goes to British composer Simon Franglen for his score for Avatar: Fire and Ash, director James Cameron’s second sequel to his epic space saga Avatar. IFMCA member Christian Clemmensen wrote that Franglen “continues his intelligent merging of James Horner origins with his complex thematic narrative for immense fantasy highlights,” and especially praised the score’s intricate thematic tapestry and gargantuan performances of full ensemble and choral majesty. Similarly, IFMCA member Jon Broxton wrote that Avatar: Fire and Ash is “simply outstanding” and commended the cohesive musical design of the score overall, the emotional impact of the new themes for the Windtraders and the Mangkwan clan, and the way Franglen blended these new themes with those from previous Avatar films in a richly developed narrative fabric.
The score also wins its genre category, Best Fantasy/Science Fiction Score, while his new theme for “The Windtraders” is named Composition of the Year. These mark Franglen’s fourth, fifth, and sixth IFMCA Awards. He previously won Best Fantasy/Science Fiction Score and Composition of the Year for Avatar: The Way of Water in 2022, and Best Original Score for a Drama Film for The Curse of Turandot in 2021. Read more…
WAR AND PEACE – Nino Rota
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
A film based on Leo Tolstoy’s epic 1869 novel War and Peace first surfaced in 1941 with aspirations by renown British producer Alexander Korda, but the project could not move into production because the Soviet Ministry of Culture would not cooperate. It would take thirteen more years for ambitious producer Dino De Laurentis to finally get the project off the ground. He would personally manage production using his own production company with a massive $6.0 million budget. Condensing the massive 1,225-page novel into a cogent screenplay for a 2.5 – 3.5-hour film was daunting with it going through several incarnations at the hands of eight writers, including director King Vidor. A stellar cast was assembled, including Audrey Hepburn as Natasha Rostova, Henry Fonda as Count Pierre Bezukhov, Mel Ferrer as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, and Herbert Lom as Napoleon Bonaparte. Read more…
BAFTA Winners 2025
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) have announced the winners of the 79th British Academy Film Awards, honoring the best in film in 2025.
In the Best Original Music category, the winner was Ludwig Göransson, who won the award for his score for Sinners, director Ryan Coogler’s Deep South vampire horror film which, in addition to being a bloody thriller, also examines the origins of Black American music. Göransson was not at the ceremony to accept his award, which was accepted by Coogler instead He said:
“I am not Ludwig Göransson. He is much taller, much more good looking, and much more Swedish. He is also in a lot of pain for not being able to be here tonight, he is working on a small indie film for Dame Donna Langley and Sir Christopher Nolan, it’s called The Odyssey. I hope people show up to see it. He’s working away, and he sent me this text to read. The music of Sinners is unequivocally intertwined with the contributions of everyone else here tonight. Ryan, Zinzi, Sev, Hannah, Autumn, Ruth, Michael B, Miles, Delroy, Wunmi, Jack, Monique Champagne, Shunika Terry, Sian Richards, Mike Fontaine, Christopher Welker, Benny Burke, Brandon Proctor, Steve Boeddeker, Francine Maisler, and of course Warner Brothers. Shout out to Pam and Mike for believing in us. We all took the transcendent script written by the man reading these words as a gift. We all sought to share in the most joyful way possible. Thank you to the BAFTAs for recognizing our family of artists, creators, and the rest of the musicians who brought their personal truths to the music of Sinners. I share this with you all. Thank you. ”
The other nominees were Joscelin Dent-Pooley (Jerskin Fendrix) for Bugonia, Alexandre Desplat for Frankenstein, Jonny Greenwood for One Battle After Another, and Max Richter for Hamnet.
THE EMPEROR WALTZ – Victor Young
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In the late 1940s Billy Wilder was Paramount Pictures premier director, and Bing Crosby was the studio’s leading star. Wilder had always wanted to do a musical with Crosby, and found a story, which drew from an actual historical event, which eventually became this film: The Emperor Waltz. Valdemar Poulsen was a Danish inventor who demonstrated his magnetic recording device to Emperor Franz Joseph I of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in an audacious effort to secure financing for his invention. Charles Brackett was assigned production with a $3.8 million budget, Wilder would direct and Brackett and Wilder would write the screenplay. Bing Cosby would star as Virgil Smith, joined by Joan Fontaine as Countess Johanna Augusta Franziska, with Richard Haydn as Emperor Franz Josef, Roland Culver as Baron Holenia, and Sig Ruman as Dr. Zwieback. Read more…
IFMCA Award Nominations 2025
INTERNATIONAL FILM MUSIC CRITICS ASSOCIATION (IFMCA) AWARDS NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED
ALEXANDRE DESPLAT LEADS LIST OF NOMINATED COMPOSERS WITH SIX NOMINATIONS; FANTASY, SCIENCE FICTION, HORROR FILMS DOMINATE MAIN CATEGORIES
FEBRUARY 12, 2026. The International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) has announced its nominees for excellence in musical scoring in 2025 for the 22nd annual IFMCA Awards. Composer Alexandre Desplat leads this year’s field with six nominations, followed by Michael Giacchino with five and Simon Franglen with four.
The bulk of Desplat’s nominations come for his work on two scores: director Guillermo del Toro’s new exploration of the classic horror story Frankenstein, and the latest installment in the Jurassic Park series, Jurassic World: Rebirth. IFMCA member James Southall called Frankenstein “one of the year’s most elegant and rich film scores,” writing that “Desplat brings elegance and grace to the music, exploring feelings and relationships with precision and care,” and praising its lavish, multi-layered musical storytelling. Similarly, IFMCA member Florent Groult described Jurassic World: Rebirth as “a fine score” ranging “from the intimate to the spectacular and the horrific,” and “full of melodic features, shades, and orchestral details.” Read more…
FLYING TIGERS – Victor Young
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
By 1942 the United States was fully engaged in WWII and Republic Pictures management decided making a propaganda film to support the war effort would be both patriotic, and profitable. They decided to tell the tale of the American Volunteer Group (AVG), American civilian pilots who shipped out to China for the purpose of flying American P-40F fighter aircraft to aid Chinese allies fighting Japanese aggression. Edmund Grainger was placed in charge of production with a $900,000 budget, David Miller would direct, and Kenneth Gamet and Barry Trivers would write the screenplay. A fine cast was assembled, with John Wayne starring as Captain Jim Gordon, joined by John Carroll as “Woody” Jason, Anna Lee as Brooke Elliot, Paul Kelly as “Hap” Davis, Gordon Jones as “Alabama” Smith, Edmund MacDonsald as Blackie Bales and Mae Clarke as Verna Bales. Read more…
SCL Award Winners 2025
The Society of Composers and Lyricists (SCL) has announced the winners of the seventh annual SCL Awards, honoring the best in film and television music in 2025. The SCL is the premier professional trade group for composers, lyricists, and songwriters working in the motion picture, television, and game music industry, and is headquartered in Los Angeles. The winners are:
OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A STUDIO FILM
- LUDWIG GÖRANSSON for Sinners
OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SCORE FOR AN INDEPENDENT FILM
- BRYCE DESSNER for Train Dreams
OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A TELEVISION PRODUCTION
- THEODORE SHAPIRO for Severance
OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL TITLE SEQUENCE FOR A TELEVISION PRODUCTION
- CRISTOBAL TAPIA DE VEER for The White Lotus
OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SONG FOR VISUAL MEDIA – DRAMA/DOCUMENTARY
- RAPHAEL SAADIQ and LUDWIG GÖRANSSON for “I Lied to You” from Sinners
OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SONG FOR VISUAL MEDIA – MUSICAL/COMEDY
- EUN-JAE ‘EJAE’ KIM and MARK SONNENBLICK for “Golden” from K-Pop Demon Hunters*
OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SCORE FOR INTERACTIVE MEDIA
- AUSTIN WINTORY for Sword of the Sea
DAVID RAKSIN AWARD FOR EMERGING TALENT
- CHIN-SHAN CHANG
SPIRIT OF COLLABORATION AWARD
- LUDWIG GÖRANSSON and RYAN COOGLER
In addition, American composers Stephen Schwartz and Charles Fox were presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award; Italian composer Ennio Morricone and American singer Peggy Lee were inducted into society’s Hall of Fame; American songwriters Sara Bareilles and Steve Dorff were honored with the Ambassador Award and the Trailblazer Award, respectively; and American politician Marsha Blackburn received a special recognition for Excellence in Advocacy.
*Joong-Gyu Kwak, Yu-Han Lee, Hee-Dong Nam (Ido), Jung-Hoon Seo (24), and Teddy Park are also credited songwriters on “Golden” but they are not listed as nominees for some reason.
Movie Music UK Awards 2025
2025 was an excellent year for film music, if you were prepared to go and look for it. While very few of the year’s most acclaimed films had scores to match (I actively disliked a lot of the music from ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER and MARTY SUPREME and SIRÂT, especially as I heard it in context. I was not especially enamored of HAMNET or TRAIN DREAMS or WEAPONS, and the scores for THE SECRET AGENT and SENTIMENTAL VALUE barely even registered), exploring genre cinema, and especially cinema outside the American mainstream, revealed to me a significant amount of very high quality music that would never otherwise be acknowledged by the more well-known awards bodies.
I heard more than 750 scores in 2025 – either as a soundtrack album, in movie context, or both – and I ended up rating 75 of them **** or better, which is slightly down from 2024, but still a decent rate of return by anyone’s standards. Scores from France, the UK, Japan, and China all made my Top 20, and it was an especially outstanding year for Scandinavian film music, with five scores and one original song among my genre-specific winners and nominees.
Television music and video game music also continues to exceed expectations and, as I said last year, at this point scores written for those media can easily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with traditional film scores – and in my opinion they now often exceed them in terms of quality. Almost half of my nominees for score of the year come from those two worlds. Many of them feature the big, bold, thematic orchestral writing that drew me to the film music in the first place, and many of them show a significant amount of originality and creativity, which suggests to me that TV showrunners and game producers especially are fostering an environment where composers can push boundaries, be fearlessly creative, and combine genres and styles in a variety of exciting ways. Long may it continue.
One thing I want to mention is that, for the first time, I have decided to split my TV award between live-action projects and animated projects. There is so much astonishing TV music being written across the world these days, especially for anime in east Asia, that I felt it necessary to separate them out so I could properly highlight all the excellence that exists, and this seemed to me to be the most logical way to do it.
So, without further ado, here are my choices for the best scores of 2025! Read more…
WONDLA – Joy Ngiaw
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
WondLa is an animated science-fiction adventure TV series produced by Skydance Animation which aired on Apple TV+ for 20 episodes across three seasons between 2024 and 2025. It is an adaptation of the 2010 children’s novel The Search for WondLa (and its sequels) by Tony DiTerlizzi, and follows the adventures of Eva, a teenage human girl who grows up in a state-of-the-art bunker, assisted by ‘M.U.T.H.R,’ a robot caretaker. However, after an attack on the bunker by unknown assailants on her sixteenth birthday, Eva suddenly finds herself on the surface of a strange planet called Orbona, which is inhabited by aliens, and which appears to have no other humans. With the help of Otto, a friendly giant sentient tardigrade, and a cantankerous alien named Rovender Kitt, and guided by a faded picture containing the word ‘WondLa,’ Eva sets off across the planet to find others like her, and hopefully establish a new home. The show stars Jeanine Mason as the voice of Eva, and has a fun supporting voice cast that includes Teri Hatcher, Brad Garrett, Alan Tudyk, John Ratzenberger, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Simon Pegg, and Dwight Schultz, among others. Read more…
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