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THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER – The Newton Brothers
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The latest TV mini-series horror effort from director Mike Flanagan is The Fall of the House of Usher, which is ostensibly a modern-day adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 work of the same name, but which also draws inspiration from and makes reference to numerous other Poe works, including The Raven, The Masque of the Red Death, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Gold-Bug, and The Pit and the Pendulum, among many others. The show stars Bruce Greenwood as Roderick Usher, the corrupt elderly billionaire CEO of a pharmaceutical company, whose six children – heir Frederick, entrepreneur Tamerlane, surgeon Victorine, gaming mogul Leo, PR head Camille, and socialite Perry – have all died in a span of two weeks. Fearing that his own death is imminent, Usher invites Assistant US Attorney Auguste Dupin – who has been trying to prosecute him for decades – to his crumbling childhood home to finally confess his crimes, reveal how his children died, and so much more. The show is an excellent exploration of power, corruption, and greed, filtered through the deliciously macabre lens of Poe’s horror stories, and was one of the most popular successes of Netflix’s 2023 fall lineup. Read more…
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES – Frank Skinner
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
The 1851 novel The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne was first adapted to the screen in 1910 by Universal Studios. In 1939 studio executives decided to remake the film, believing a retelling of its gothic tale of a self-destructive family consumed by greed would be well-received by the public. It was conceived to be a B-film offering and so Universal assigned one of its B-film producers, Burt Kelly, to oversee production with a small budget of $178,000. Joe May was tasked with directing and Lester Cole was hired to write the screenplay. Despite its small budget, a fine cast was assembled, including; George Sanders as Jaffrey Pyncheon, Margaret Lindsay as Hepzibah Pyncheon, Vincent Price as Clifford Pyncheon, Nan Grey as Phoebe Pyncheon, Dick Foran as Matthew Holgrave, and Gilbert Emery as Gerald Pyncheon. Read more…
RUDY – Jerry Goldsmith
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Arguably one of the most inspiring and beloved sporting drama films ever made, Rudy tells the story of Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, a working class kid from Chicago who harbors dreams of playing American football at the University of Notre Dame despite significant obstacles – notably, his lack of good academic grades, his family’s financial struggles, and his diminutive stature. However, Ruettiger’s persistence and positive nature eventually results in him making the team, earning the respect of his college teammates, and even being interviewed for the college newspaper, which makes him a cult figure in South Bend. Eventually Rudy convinces the stubborn head coach to put him on the field for the last ten seconds of the final game of his final year at the college – his first and last appearance – whereupon he sacks the opposition quarterback, and is carried from the field in glory while the stadium chants his name. Much of the story is apocryphal and embellished for dramatic purposes, but it’s a feelgood tale nevertheless. The film is directed by David Anspaugh from a screenplay by Angelo Pizzo, and stars Sean Astin as Rudy, along with Ned Beatty, Jason Miller, Robert Prosky, and Charles S. Dutton in supporting roles, as well as Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn making their acting debuts. Read more…
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON – Robbie Robertson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Killers of the Flower Moon is the latest film from revered director Martin Scorsese. It tells the true, but mostly unknown, story of the so-called ‘Osage Indian Murders,’ which happened in Oklahoma over the course of many years in the 1910s and 20s. The Osage Native American tribe, having forcibly been removed from their ancestral homeland to a dusty, barren area of Oklahoma, became fabulously wealthy almost overnight when oil was discovered on their land. Naturally, the white men of the time couldn’t just let the Osage be rich and live in peace – the concept of ‘manifest destiny’ and racism against the ‘redskins’ has a lot to answer for – and so they started moving into the area, trying to think of ways to take control of the oil for themselves. The most evil and twisted plot they concocted was the one cooked up by cattle baron Bill ‘King’ Hale that forms the core of this film: he and his nephews Ernest Burkhart and Byron Burkhart would insidiously earn the trust of the Osage elders, seduce and marry the women of one of the wealthiest families, and then over time murder the women so that the oil rights eventually passed to the white men. The film stars Robert De Niro as Hale, Leonardo Di Caprio as Ernest, and the brilliant Lily Gladstone as Ernest’s Osage wife Millie, with Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, and Brendan Fraser in supporting roles, Jesse Plemons as the FBI man sent in to solve the crime, and many real members of the current Osage nation playing their own ancestors. Read more…
THE BLUE BIRD – Alfred Newman
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Following the enormous success of The Wizard of Oz in 1939, Darryl F. Zanuck, the Vice-President of Production at 20th Century Fox, decided to cash in on the children’s fantasy genre to showcase their child star Shirley Temple. Film rights to the 1908 fantasy play “The Blue Bird” by Maurice Maeterlinck were purchased. Gene Markey was assigned production with a budget of $2.0 million, Walter Lang was tasked with directing, and Ernest Pascal was hired to write the screenplay. Heading the cast was megastar Shirley Temple as Mytyl, Spring Byington as Mummy Tyl, Nigel Bruce as Mr. Luxury, Gale Sondergaard as Tylette, Eddie Collins as Tylo, Sybil Jason as Angela Berlingot, Jessie Ralph as Fairy Berylune, Helen Ericson as Light, Johnny Russel as Tyltyl and Laura Hope Crews as Mrs. Luxury. Read more…
LIFE ON OUR PLANET – Lorne Balfe
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I don’t know whether it’s my imagination or not, but there seem to be more nature documentary series right now than ever before. When I was a kid, the only nature documentaries I saw were made by the BBC Natural History Unit, they were narrated by Sir David Attenborough, and they came out once every couple of years to great fanfare and acclaim. The first one I remember watching as it aired was The Living Planet in 1984, followed by The Trials of Life six years later in 1990. Now, everyone is getting in on the act; Attenborough and the BBC are still making them, of course, and they are doing them magnificently, but in recent years Netflix and National Geographic and Disney Nature and seemingly dozens of other companies are getting in on the act too, to the point where I wonder whether we might be getting a little over-saturated. What else is there really left to say about polar bears or blue whales? The latest such documentary to be released is Life On Our Planet, which will begin airing on Netflix at the end October 2023. It’s executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, is narrated by Morgan Freeman, and ambitiously attempts to look at the multi-billion year history of the world, from the time of the dinosaurs to the present day. It looks to feature some absolutely astonishing cinematography, and will include a hybrid of both computer-generated imagery and live-action film. Read more…
DEMOLITION MAN – Elliot Goldenthal
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Mellow greetings. What seems to be your boggle?
One of my favorite action movies of the 1990s is Demolition Man, directed by Marco Brambilla from a screenplay by Peter Lenkov, Daniel Waters, and Robert Reneau (the latter of whom might be better known to readers as ‘Scott Bettencourt,’ a regular contributor to Film Score Monthly magazine). It’s a dystopian, futuristic sci-fi story with a heavy dose of satire and social commentary, interspersed with several outstanding action set pieces. The film stars Sylvester Stallone as John Spartan, a renegade LAPD cop from the 1990s known as the “demolition man” for his unorthodox and sometimes brutal law enforcement tactics, especially when it comes down to catching his arch-nemesis, violent criminal Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes). After one such confrontation Phoenix is captured and cryogenically frozen in a ‘cryo-prison’ as punishment – but Spartan is framed for a murder he did not commit, and is frozen alongside him. In 2032, Phoenix somehow breaks out of the prison and emerges into ‘San Angeles,’ a utopian, peaceful, politically correct society run by the benevolent yet controlling Dr. Raymond Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne). However, when Phoenix resumes his life of crime in a city with a police force that is simply unable to deal with his violence, Spartan is thawed out too, and teams up with Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock), a 2030s police officer who idolizes 1990s culture, to stop him. Read more…
THE CREATOR – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Creator is a science fiction epic from writer/director Gareth Edwards, set in a world where artificial intelligence has become wholly integrated into society, in the form of both robots and human/A.I. hybrids known as ‘sims’. However, after the A.I. detonates a nuclear warhead in Los Angeles, essentially destroying the city, the world descends into war and chaos. Years later, US army special forces agent Joshua is recruited to hunt down and kill ‘the creator,’ the elusive architect of a mysterious new type of advanced A.I. weapon that has the power to end the war and destroy humanity. However, things change for Joshua when he discovers that this ‘super weapon’ is actually a genetically modified child, who just wants humans and sims to live in peace. The film stars John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Alison Janney, and newcomer Madeleine Yuna Voyles as the mysterious child, and it’s mostly good. It has been marketed as a cerebral, ambitious new science fiction story, and while it is certainly visually and technically impressive, I found it to be a weird conceptual mishmash derivative of other, better films: one part Blade Runner, one part Apocalypse Now, with some other Vietnam allegory thrown in for good measure. Unusually, the central relationship between Joshua and the mystical child actually kept reminding me of the one between Eddie Murphy and The Golden Child from the 1986 film of the same name, which I’m sure is not what the filmmakers envisioned. I liked it, but I wanted to like it more than I did. Read more…
MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON – Dimitri Tiomkin
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Columbia Pictures decided to purchase an unpublished story “The Gentleman From Montana” by Lewis R. Foster to adapt for a sequel to their film “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), which starred Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur. Frank Capra was placed in charge of production with a $1.5 million budget, would also direct, and Sidney Buchman and Myles Connolly were hired to write the screenplay. Gary Cooper was unavailable to reprise his role and so Capra decided to borrow James Stewart from MGM who he believed was perfectly suited to the role of Jefferson Smith. Joining him would be Jean Arthur as Clarissa Saunders, Claude Rains as Senator Joseph Harrison Paine, Edward Arnold as Jim Taylor, Guy Kibbee as Governor Hubert Hopper, Thomas Mitchell as Diz Moe and Beulah Bondi as Ma Smith. Read more…
THE FOUR FEATHERS – Miklós Rózsa
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Renowned film maker brothers Zoltan and Alexander Korda decided that for their next film they wanted to go for a historical epic. They chose to adapt the 1902 novel “The Four Feathers” by A. E. Wilson, which tells the story of the Madhist Wars circa 1881. Alexander would oversee production with a budget of $1.0 million, Zoltan would direct, and R. C. Sherriff, Lajos Bíró and Arthur Wimperis were hired to write the screenplay. The cast would include John Clements as Harry Faversham, Ralph Richardson as Captain John Durrance, C. Aubrey Smith as General Burroughs, and Jack Allen as Lieutenant Thomas Willoughby. Read more…
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