Archive
THE NUMBER 23 – Harry Gregson-Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’m always excited when Jim Carrey plays is straight, having witnessed his superb performances in films like The Truman Show, Man on the Moon, and The Majestic; however, his run of dramatic successes had to end eventually – and end it did, with director Joel Schumacher’s paranoiac thriller The Number 23. Carrey plays oridinary family man Walter Sparrow, a dog catcher for the Department of Animal Control, with a loving wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen), and a teenage. However, after Agatha buys an odd novel with the central premise concerning the number 23 as a birthday gift for Walter, his life quickly unravels: he becomes obsessed with the story, believing the mystery about the number 23 to be true, and finding many coincidences and parallels between the book and his own life. Read more…
THE ASTRONAUT FARMER – Stuart Matthewman
Original Review by Clark Douglas
The opening image of “The Astronaut Farmer” presents a challenge to the audience… almost a dare. It’s an image of a man in a spacesuit riding a horse across the plains, a bizarre thing that will either inspire curiosity, derision, or laughter from an audience. It’s the film’s way of saying, “get on or get off right now, because you’re in for something pretty unbelievable.” Some will (and have) labeled the film as a ridiculous piece of nonsense, which is understandable. It’s one of those stories that can “only happen in the movies”. Twenty years ago, that might have been a complaint on my end, but these days… I don’t think that’s so bad. Read more…
AMAZING GRACE – David Arnold
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the least worthy aspects of the British Empire was their involvement in and implicit support of the international slave trade in the 1700s. For over one hundred years, thousands upon thousands of west African tribesmen were forcibly removed from their homes and shipped overseas to work as slaves, on sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and in the cotton fields of what would eventually become the United States. This heinous activity, in Britain at least, was eventually abolished due to the tireless activity of one man: William Wilberforce.
Amazing Grace, directed by Michael Apted and starring Ioan Gruffudd, tells the life story of Wilberforce: his first hesitant steps into British government as the young member of Parliament from Yorkshire in 1780 Read more…
ANGEL – Philippe Rombi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Angel, also known as The Real Life of Angel Deverell, is a French-English romantic comedy-drama based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor (the writer, not the actress), and is the second English-language feature from the acclaimed French filmmaker François Ozon. Romola Garai stars as the eponymous Angel, a fiery and passionate aspiring writer in late-Victorian England, whose determination, intelligence, and sense of imagination and magic allows her to escape from the dreary tenement where she lived, and fulfill her literary dreams. The film charts Angel’s life, from birth to death, with a sense of satire and a biting wit, and features an outstanding supporting cast, including Sam Neill, Charlotte Rampling, Lucy Russell and Simon Woods. They are accompanied by a truly marvelous score by Ozon’s regular musical collaborator, Philippe Rombi. Read more…
MUSIC AND LYRICS – Adam Schlesinger
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Another Valentine’s Day, another romantic comedy at the movie theatre. Wonders never cease to exist. I’ve lamented the current languishing state of romantic comedies in general, screenwriters have gotten lazier and lazier with the genre, pushing out inane drivel with no romance, no humor, and no feeling. It takes a movie like “Music and Lyrics” to remind us of why the genre can be such fun.
At the center of attention in “Music and Lyrics” is the finest romantic comedy star in movies today, Hugh Grant, who has single-handedly resuscitated countless formulaic films. Here, he plays a washed-up pop singer named Alex Fletcher, one of the two key members in the cheesy 80’s band PoP (we see a hilarious music video of one of the band’s hits over the opening credits). Read more…
GHOST RIDER – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The first of Christopher Young’s two major 2007 releases, Ghost Rider is a super hero movie with a twist. Directed by Mark Steven Johnson and starring Nicolas Cage, Peter Fonda, Eva Mendes, Sam Elliott and Wes Bentley, the film follows the life of daredevil stunt motorcyclist Johnny Blaze (Cage). When his father falls terminally ill with cancer, Blaze strikes a deal with the devil: his soul to save his father’s life. The deal, however, backfires on Johnny, turning him into a skeleton-headed motorbike-riding demon with a blazing inferno raging from his skull and hands! If this sounds all a bit hokey, you could well be right, but the fight between Cage’s urban cowboy superhero and Bentley’s evil son-of-the-devil strikes the right balance between over the top action and downright silliness. Read more…
BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA – Aaron Zigman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Since first emerging as a film music composer in 2002, with his score for John Q, Aaron Zigman has quickly – and somewhat unexpectedly – become a film music everyman, this decade’s version of John Debney, Marc Shaiman or Randy Edelman: a composer who can be relied upon to deliver the goods with the minimum of fuss, but never really drawing attention to himself or his work in the wider world. In 2006 alone Zigman scored an astonishing six movies, including the moderately successful Step Up, Take the Lead and ATL, and shows no sign of slowing down in 2007, with three fairly major studio assignments already in the first couple of months of the year. The second of this trio is Bridge to Terabithia, a new fantasy adventure based on the popular novel by Katherine Paterson. Read more…
BREACH – Mychael Danna
Original Review by Clark Douglas
You have to admire a film that manages to underplay the greatest security breach in U.S. history. Those who follow the news will remember the arrest of F.B.I. Agent Robert Hanssen, who was found guilty of giving top-secret information to the Russians and compromising the safety of all sorts of things, many of them too secret to be revealed. The story could have easily been turned into a sensational thriller full of all sorts of shocking elements, but “Breach” isn’t interested in that. It places all the cards on the table from the very start, taking away suspense and tension and offering the chance to view a carefully designed character study. The trade-off is more than acceptable. Read more…
L’ULTIMO DEI CORLEONESI – Ennio Morricone
Original Review by Clark Douglas
If composers were construction workers, I’m pretty sure that I would want Ennio Morricone to build my house. There is not another composer working today who is as reliable and consistent as Morricone, no one who creates such excellent and admirable music on such a regular basis. At his best, Morricone takes us to the heights of musical ecstasy, showing us levels of beauty that we had previously only fantasized about. At his worst, Morricone writes difficult, challenging, harsh music that is easy to admire but incredibly difficult to listen to. Even if you hate the album, you have a hard time saying anything bad about it, because it’s done so well. Read more…
NORBIT – David Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Pity David Newman. No other working composer in Hollywood today has such a disparity between the size of his composing talent and the quality of the films he is asked, or agrees, to score. It has not always been this way. In late 80s and early 1990s, he scored a succession of generally well-regarded highbrow comedy films such as Throw Momma from the Train, Heathers, The War of the Roses, and even the occasional quality drama, like Hoffa in 1992. His career trajectory finally seemed to be taking an upward turn following his double Oscar nomination for Anastasia in 1997, but since then he has found himself in a continual and inexplicable rut, scoring the most inane comedies Hollywood has to offer: the likes of Daddy Day Care, Death to Smoochy and Monster-in-Law. Once in a while something comes along which briefly makes you think he might have turned a corner – Ice Age, or Serenity, for example – but before you know it he’s back again, scoring the new Eddie Murphy comedy. Which brings us to Norbit. Read more…
HANNIBAL RISING – Ilan Eshkeri and Shigeru Umebayashi
Original Review by Clark Douglas
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a franchise fall as far as this one. “Silence of the Lambs” is often unfairly labeled a horror film, it is so much more than that. It’s a brilliant character study featuring one of the most fascinating characters ever to grace the movie screen. Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter, as played by Anthony Hopkins, was nothing short of pure evil, magnetic and seductive, a layer of intelligent charm covering the terrifying monster underneath. When Hopkins played the role in two sequels, “Hannibal” and “Red Dragon”, the character lost a bit of fascination, but watching Hopkins play the character was so enjoyable that those movies were tolerable, particularly “Red Dragon”. Read more…
ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (DE FORTABTE SJÆLES Ø) – Jane Antonia Cornish
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In such a crowded market as the today’s international film music world, it’s difficult to make a splash. Hundreds of films are released each year, many of which never make any kind of box office impact or draw any kind of press, positive or negative. The vast majority of these undiscovered films have scores by jobbing composers, looking to make a name for themselves, looking to be attached to that one, golden movie which can launch a career. One such film is the Danish supernatural fantasy-adventure “De Fortabte Sjæles Ø”, better known internationally as Island of Lost Souls, which could very well be the break-out score for the comparatively little known English composer Jane Antonia Cornish. Read more…
BECAUSE I SAID SO – David Kitay
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A romantic comedy which is one part sweet and entertaining, yet one part highly irritating, director Michael Lehmann’s chick flick was one of the successes of the early part of the year. Mandy Moore stars as Milly Wilder, a young chef whose lackluster love life is cause for concern for her overbearing, overprotective mother Daphne (Diane Keaton); so, in a last-ditch attempt to finally find a dream husband for her daughter, Daphne begins auditioning potential suitors, and forces straight-laced architect Jason (Tom Everett Scott) in Milly’s direction.
Meanwhile, and without Daphne’s knowledge, Milly begins dating jazz musician Johnny (Gabriel Macht) – the polar opposite of Jason, but in whom Milly sees a future… Read more…
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