Archive
ANACONDA – David Fleming
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Despite being a reasonable box office success when it was first released, the 1997 film Anaconda has become something of a cult classic in the almost 30 intervening years, not because it was good, but because it was very, very bad. From its awkwardly written characters, implausible plotting, and scientific nonsense to its unrealistic creature effects, and especially Jon Voight’s wildly unhinged performance, the film is now remembered as – and this is me being very charitable – a ‘camp classic’. However, two genuine fans of the original movie are writer/director Tom Gormican and writer Kevin Etten, and they have now come together to present this film, an action-comedy meta-reboot of the franchise starring Jack Black and Paul Rudd. Read more…
HELEN OF TROY – Max Steiner
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1955 Warner Brothers undertook a massive international collaboration with Italian and French partners to bring the timeless tale of Helen of Troy to the big screen. Ancient epics were very popular and they sought to capitalize with a massive undertaking of their own. The film would be shot in Rome, Giuseppe De Blasio and Maurizio Lodi-Fè were assigned production with a massive $6.0 million budget, Robert Wise was tasked with directing, and N. Richard Nash was hired to adapt a story by Hugh Gray and John Twist, which drew inspiration from Homer’s Iliad. An international cast was assembled with Italian actress Rosana Podestà starring as Helen. Joining her would be Frenchman Jacques Sernas as Paris, Englishman Sir Cedric Hardwicke as King Priam, Welshman Stanley Baker as Achilles, Irishman Niall MacGinnis as Menelaus, Englishman Robert Douglas as Agamemnon, and even a young Brigitte Bardot as the slave girl Andraste. Read more…
Golden Globe Winners 2025
The Golden Globe Foundation (GGF) has announced the winners of the 83rdd Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and American television of 2025.
In the Best Original Score category composer Ludwig Göransson won the award for his incredibly authentic score for Sinners, director Ryan Coogler’s historical horror-drama about a pair of brothers who return home to depression-era Mississippi to open a juke joint blues club, only to see it attacked by vampires and members of the local Ku Klux Klan. This is the second Golden Globe win for Göransson – he previously won for Oppenheimer in 2024. In the acceptance speech Göransson, said:
“Wow wow. Thank you. I mean, first of all, Ryan Coogler, you wrote an incredible movie, directed an incredible movie about a guitar player, about a musician. I think everyone here and everyone in this industry is just… I feel we’re grateful to be living in a timeline with you in it right now. Thank you, Ryan. I also wanted to thank our producers Zinzi Evans, Sev Ohanian, and our executive music producer and my partner Serena Göransson, and also Raphael Saadiq for writing such an incredible song for this film, “I Lied To You.” I also just want to take a little moment to just thank our incredible cast that was amazing to work with. Miles Caton, he learned how to play a guitar in three and a half months, and that was not easy. What you saw there is live! I mean, he played with a slide, and that was amazing. Wunmi Mosaku, every time you were on screen you were just… the music was just coming to me, it was so inspiring. I was on set for almost three months for this film,and being there while Michael B. Jordan was playing two characters was weird… because it was so incredible to witness and your devotion to the craft and how incredible your performance was really made my job easy, so thank you. Thank you.”
The other nominees were Alexandre Desplat for Frankenstein, Jonny Greenwood for One Battle After Another, David Letellier (“Kangding Ray”) for Sirāt, Max Richter for Hamnet, and Hans Zimmer for F1.
Controversially, the organizers of the Golden Globes decided to present the Best Original Score award during a commercial break, and as such the presentation and Göransson speech was not shown during the television broadcast airing of the ceremony. This decision was heavily criticized by almost all members of the film music community. Talking to a reporter from Variety before the ceremony, nominee Hans Zimmer said:
“I think it’s a shame not to honor those people – my friends – who work so hard to become a voice. As a person who has been making films forever, everybody who works on a film works their utmost, doesn’t get any sleep, there are no weekends. I think the work should always be acknowledged. This year is a fantastic year for composers — don’t ignore them, you don’t have a movie without them.”
In the Best Original Song category, the winners were Eun-Jae Kim (Ejae), Mark Sonnenblick, Joong-Gyu Kwak, Yu-Han Lee, Hee-Dong Nam (Ido), Jung-Hoon Seo (24), and Teddy Park for “Golden” from the smash hit animated film K-Pop Demon Hunters.
The other nominees were Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner for “Train Dreams” from Train Dreams; Miley Cyrus, Andrew Wyatt, Mark Ronson, and Simon Franglen for “Dream as One” from Avatar: Fire and Ash; Raphael Saadiq and Ludwig Göransson for “I Lied to You” from Sinners; and Stephen Schwartz for “No Place Like Home” and “The Girl in the Bubble” both from Wicked: For Good
K-POP DEMON HUNTERS – Marcelo Zarvos
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most fascinating trends to emerge in recent years has been the emergence of Korean popular entertainment into the western mainstream. When I was a kid, there were no really popular films from countries in East Asia – China, Japan, South Korea – outside of highbrow movies by directors like Akira Kurosawa, and to the best of my recollection no widely known Japanese or Korean pop songs charted in the UK as mainstream hits in the 1980s or 1990s, with the possible exception of a couple of instrumentals by Kitaro and Ryuichi Sakamoto. The first truly massive mainstream Asian pop hit was Psy’s “Gangnam Style” in 2012, which soared to #1 on the UK Singles Chart and stayed in the charts for many weeks. Read more…
HEAT – Elliot Goldenthal
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Widely considered one of the best action thrillers of the 1990s, and notable for marking the first time that legendary actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino appeared together in the same scenes on screen (they were both in The Godfather Part II but did not feature in the same scenes), Heat follows the intense cat-and-mouse conflict between a meticulous professional thief and a relentless police detective in Los Angeles. De Niro plays Neil McCauley, a highly disciplined career criminal who leads a small crew of expert thieves. After a planned armored car robbery goes disastrously wrong, the gang attracts increased attention from law enforcement in the shape of Vincent Hanna (Pacino), an LAPD robbery-homicide detective. As Hanna becomes obsessively focused on tracking McCauley and his team – alienating his wife and daughter in the process – McCauley’s crew prepares for an even bigger and more dangerous bank heist, placing both men in each other’s crosshairs. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2025, Part 8
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
I’m pleased to present the latest installment in my on-going series of articles looking at the best under-the-radar scores from around the world.
This article, the eighth of 2025, covers another five scores released this year from a wide array of genres and countries, including a Korean romantic fantasy TV series about a time-travelling chef, the latest season of a long-running British period TV series about midwives serving London’s working poor, a Norwegian Christmas action-comedy caper about a family of mischievous mice, the third film in a series of films from Finland about a young girl who can transform into a flying guinea pig super hero, and a Chinese period TV drama series about the marriage between a son and a daughter from rival clans. Read more…
THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT – Bernard Herrmann
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
The best-selling 1955 novel “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” by Sloan Wilson caught the imagination of Nunnally Johnson, a producer, director, screenwriter, and playwright. He believed that its story of a man and wife struggling to find life meaning and purpose following WWII would resonate with the public. He sold his conception to Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox, the film rights were purchased, and Zanuck would personally oversee production with a $2.6 million budget. Johnson would direct and also write the screenplay. A fine cast was hired, with Gregory Peck starring as Tom Rath. He would be joined by Jennifer Jones as Betsy Rath, and Fredric March as Ralph Hopkins. Read more…
RESTORATION – James Newton Howard
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Restoration is a period drama film directed by Michael Hoffman, adapted from the 1989 novel of the same name by Rose Tremain. The film is set during the Restoration period in England, which began in 1660 when Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth – which had overthrown the monarchy of King Charles I a decade or so previously – came to an end and Charles II was restored to the throne as king. The restoration was known for its cultural renewal, scientific curiosity, and political change, but also for its sometimes vulgar and obscene decadence, something which stood in polar opposition to the dourly stringent and sometimes cruel Puritan morality that Cromwell enforced during his time in power. The story follows the experiences of Robert Merivel, a young aspiring physician from a lowly background who, after he inadvertently saves the life of the king’s dog, is summoned to the royal court, and quickly becomes surrounded by a new world of wealth and indulgence. Read more…
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