Archive
FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL – Richard Rodney Bennett
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the best romantic comedies of the 1990s, and one of my personal favorite comedies of all time, is Four Weddings and a Funeral, directed by Mike Newell and written by Richard Curtis. It follows the story of Charles, a charming but perpetually single British man, who over the course of a year repeatedly finds himself attending different weddings and funerals involving his extended group of friends. As time goes on, Charles begins a relationship with Carrie, an American woman in England with whom he shares a connection, but struggles to pursue due to various comic obstacles and embarrassing misunderstandings. The film explores themes of love, friendship, and the unpredictability of life, all set against the backdrop of a series of quintessentially British social gatherings. The film launched its leading man Hugh Grant into international superstardom, briefly re-kindled the career of Andie MacDowell, and features a superb supporting cast of British character actors including Kristin Scott Thomas, Simon Callow, James Fleet, John Hannah, Rowan Atkinson, and the late Charlotte Coleman. Read more…
THE KILLERS – Miklós Rózsa
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Successful producer Mark Hellinger decided to setup his own production company after departing Warner Brothers. He had recently paid Ernest Hemingway $36,750 for the film rights to his 1927 novel “The Killers,” which he intended to be his company’s inaugural effort. He would oversee production, Universal Pictures would manage distribution, Robert Siodmak would direct, and Anthony Veiller would write the screenplay. Hellinger assembled a fine cast, including Edmond O’Brien as Jim Reardon, Burt Lancaster in his acting debut as Pete Lund/Ole “Swede” Anderson, Ava Gardner as Kitty Collins, Albert Dekker as “Big Jim” Colfax, Jack Lambert as “Dum-Dum” Clarke, and Sam Levene as Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky. Read more…
SIRENS – Rachel Portman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Sirens is an Australian comedy-drama film written and directed by John Duigan, starring Hugh Grant, Tara Fitzgerald, Sam Neill, and supermodel Elle MacPherson. It is loosely based on the life of artist and author Norman Lindsay, who was one of the most prolific and popular Australian artists of his generation, and is set in Australia in the 1920s. Grant plays Anthony Campion, an Anglican priest newly arrived in Australia from the United Kingdom, who is asked to visit Lindsay (Neill) by the church, who have concerns about a blasphemous painting of a crucifix that the artist plans to exhibit. When Campion and his reserved wife Estella (Fitzgerald) arrive at Lindsay’s home they are initially shocked to discover just how sexually free and uninhibited Lindsay, his wife Rose, and their beautiful ‘models’ are. However, as the days pass Estella finds herself increasingly intrigued by their relationship, which leads to her beginning to embrace her own sexuality in unexpected ways. Read more…
THE PRIMEVALS – Richard Band
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The story behind the new fantasy adventure movie The Primevals is quite fascinating. In the late 1960s filmmaker David Allen set out to make a movie paying homage to his beloved Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure stories, and he originally envisaged a film about an unevolved Viking society that was threatened by a race of malevolent lizard-men. As the years went by Allen had to repeatedly abandon and return to the project, due to lack of funding and various other issues, until eventually he teamed with low-budget filmmaker Charles Band and his production company Full Moon Entertainment. Finally, in the summer of 1994, Allen shot his film – now entitled The Primevals – but he was unable to finish the complicated post-production due to yet more financial difficulties. Allen tinkered with the special effects for almost five years, but then in 1999 he died of cancer, and the unfinished film sat dormant for nearly two decades afterwards, despite Charles Band and Allen’s protégé Chris Endicott repeatedly trying to raise enough money to finish the film. Eventually, in 2018, an online crowdfunding campaign was successful, and the film was completed – although, even here, much of the final FX work was done by Allen’s former colleagues donating their time for free. The film finally premiered at the Fantasia Film Festival in Canada in July 2023, and is now being released to the wider public, almost 55 years since it was first put into production. Read more…
HANGOVER SQUARE – Bernard Herrmann
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Actor Laird Cregar saw opportunity for a film adaptation of the popular 1941 novel “Hangover Square,” a murder melodrama by Patrick Hamilton. He convinced 20th Century Fox executive Darryl F. Zanuck to purchase the film rights, Robert Bassler was assigned production with a budget of $1.145 million, Barré Lyndon was hired to write the screenplay, and John Brahm was tasked with directing. A fine cast was recruited, including Laird Cregar as George Harvey Bone, Linda Darnell as Netta Langdon, George Sanders as Dr. Allan Middleton, Faye Marlowe as Barbara Chapman and Alan Napier as Sir Henry Chapman. Read more…
Academy Award Winners 2023
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the winners of the 96th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2023.
In the Best Original Score category Ludwig Göransson won the award for his score for Oppenheimer, director Christopher Nolan’s epic drama about the life and work of the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer whose work on the Manhattan Project in the 1940s led to the creation of the world’s first nuclear weapon. Accepting his award, Göransson said:
“Thank you Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas for inviting me on this incredible world. Christopher Nolan it was your idea to use the violin in the score, and it allowed me to work and collaborate with my wonderful wife and acclaimed violinist Serena Göransson. We had… we recorded at night and we were rushing to home and put our kids Apollo and Romeo down to bed, but the result of that was amazing and it really set a really nice tone for the film of that performance. Theresa Stanislav, Jake Brown, Chris Fogel, Anthony Parnther, Alyssa Park, thank you for making the music sound great, and to my parents up there, thank you for giving me guitars and drum machines instead of video games! Thank you!
The other nominees were Joscelin Dent-Pooley (Jerskin Fendrix) for Poor Things, Laura Karpman for American Fiction, Robbie Robertson for Killers of the Flower Moon, and John Williams for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
In the Best Original Song category, the winners were Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell for “What Was I Made For” from the smash hit movie Barbie.
The other nominees were Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson for “It Never Went Away” from American Symphony, Scott George for “Wahzhazhe – A Song for My People” from Killers of the Flower Moon, Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt for “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie, and Diane Warren for “The Fire Inside” from Flamin’ Hot.
In film-music adjacent news, composer Kris Bowers also won an Oscar, not for music, but for co-directing and producing the documentary short film The Last Repair Shop, which is about a workshop in Los Angeles who find, repair, and donate musical instruments to under-privileged students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. This makes Bowers one of the few full-time film music composers to win an Academy Award for something other that composing.
DUNE, PART TWO – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The first true blockbuster of 2024, Dune Part Two is the continuation of director Denis Villeneuve’s epic adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel. I’m not going to recap the plot of the first film – if you’ve seen it, you know it, if you haven’t, go watch it – but it essentially picks up immediately where the first film ends, with young Paul Atreides, having survived the attack on his family that killed his father, heading into the desert with the Fremen, the native inhabitants of the desert planet Arrakis. Meanwhile the Harkkonens – the sworn enemies of House Atreides – have taken back stewardship of the planet and resumed mining the valuable ‘spice’ that is only found in Arrakis’s vast sand dunes. However, as Paul begins to adopt the Fremen ways, and falls in love with Fremen warrior Chani, his mother Jessica is subtly manipulating events in the background to bring about the prophecy that has followed Paul since his birth – that he is both the kwisatz haderach and lisan al gaib, a messiah figure across different cultures. Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, and Javier Bardem reprise their roles from the first film, while Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, and Christopher Walken, join the ensemble cast. Read more…
GOLDEN GATE – Elliot Goldenthal
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Golden Gate is a romantic drama written by acclaimed playwright David Henry Hwang, and directed John Madden. The film is set in San Francisco in the 1950s and stars Matt Dillon as FBI Agent Kevin Walker, who is sent with his partner to investigate potential links between the residents of San Francisco’s Chinatown and the emerging communist ‘threat’ posed by Chairman Mao’s China. His investigation leads to the prosecution and eventual imprisonment of several local residents on trumped-up charges, one of whom – Chen Jung Song – is clearly innocent. A decade later, Song and his cohorts are released, but Song has never recovered from his ordeal, and Walker watches as he jumps to his death from the Golden Gate Bridge. In the aftermath of this, Walker meets Song’s daughter Marilyn (Joan Chen), and the two of them unexpectedly embark on a torrid love affair – an affair which eventually causes Walker to begin to question his ethics and morals, and the part he played in her father’s death. Read more…
COVER GIRL – Jerome Kern, Ira Gershwin, Morris Stoloff, and Carmen Dragon
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Columbia Pictures wanted to showcase their star Rita Hayworth, the most popular pinup girl for American soldiers in WWII, and chose a musical romantic comedy to be adapted from the story “Cover Girl” by Erwin Gelsey. Arthur Schwartz was assigned production, Charles Vidor was tasked with directing, and Virginia Van Upp was hired to write the screenplay. Gene Kelly was on loan from MGM and was given creative control and would also manage choreography. Rita Hayworth would star as Rusty Parker. Joining her would be Gene Kelly as Danny McGuire, Lee Bowman as Noel Wheaton, Phil Silvers as Genius, and Jim Falkenburg as Jinx Faulkenberg. Read more…
MASTERS OF THE AIR – Blake Neely
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Masters of the Air is the latest TV mini-series from executive producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks looking at the American military experience in World War II. It serves as a companion piece its predecessors Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010), as well as the 2020 movie Greyhound, and is based on the 2007 book of the same name by Donald L. Miller, which follows the actions of the 100th Bomb Group, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber unit in the Eighth Air Force in eastern England during World War II. Led by Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven and John ‘Bucky’ Egan, the group embarks on a series of dangerous missions to bomb targets inside German-occupied Europe. The series stars Austin Butler and Callum Turner as Buck and Bucky, with support from Anthony Boyle, Nikolai Kinski, and Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan. Read more…
MR. SKEFFINGTON – Franz Waxman
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Executive Jack L. Warner of Warner Brothers decided that the popular American Book of The Month Club novel “Mr. Skeffington” (1940) by Elizabeth von Arnim could be successfully adapted to the big screen. He purchased the film rights and would manage production along with the Epstein brothers, Julius and Philip. A $1.521 million budget was provided, the Epstein brothers would write the screenplay, and Vincent Sherman would direct. Casting was a challenge in that studio stars Merle Oberon, Hedy Lamar and Paul Henreid all turned down offers. Eventually Bette Davis accepted the role of Fanny Trellis Skeffington. Joining her would be Claude Rains as Job Skeffington, and Richard Waring as Trippy Trellis. Read more…
ON DEADLY GROUND – Basil Poledouris
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An action thriller with an environmental protection theme, On Deadly Ground marked the directorial debut of action star Steven Seagal, who was hot off the unexpected critical and commercial success of his previous film Under Siege in 1992. Here Seagal plays Forrest Taft, an expert firefighter who gets involved in a conflict between an unscrupulous Alaska oil company and a local indigenous tribe, whose lands are being damaged by the oil company’s drilling methods and poor safety record. Things escalate when the head of the oil company orders his henchmen to eliminate anyone who knows about his company’s indiscretions, and the tribal leader is murdered; angered by the injustice, Taft teams up with the tribal leader’s daughter to take down the company. Despite an excellent supporting cast that included Joan Chen, John C. McGinley, R. Lee Ermey, a young Billy Bob Thornton, and Michael Caine chewing the scenery as the despicable head of the evil oil company, the film was unfortunately a critical disaster, appearing on many end-of-year ‘worst’ lists; much criticism was leveled at Seagal’s ham-fisted and amateurish direction, as well as the preachy tone of the film’s screenplay. Read more…
AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER – Takeshi Furukawa
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I want to start this review by saying that, for the most part, I am coming to it from a place of complete ignorance. I am aware that there is a very well-loved and popular animated TV show called Avatar: The Last Airbender, which aired on Nickelodeon for three seasons between 2005 and 2008. This show was very loosely adapted into a live-action movie, The Last Airbender, by M. Night Shyamalan in 2010, which was a critical and commercial flop. There was also a sequel TV series, The Legend of Korra, which also aired on Nickelodeon for four seasons from 2012 to 2014. While I did see the Last Airbender movie, I have never seen any episodes of the original animated show, and while I very much liked James Newton Howard’s score for the movie, I have absolutely no experience with the scores for the animated shows, which are by Jeremy Zuckerman and Benjamin Wynn. Read more…
THE UNINVITED – Victor Young
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
During WWII Hollywood began to explore a new genre – paranormal or supernatural themed films. When Irish author Dorothy Macardle’s 1941 novel “Uneasy Freehold” was published in the United States as “The Uninvited” producer Charles Brackett believed he had found a story that needed to be brought to the big screen. He sold his vison to Paramount and would oversee production, Lewis Allen was tasked with directing, and the team of Dodie Smith and Frank Partos would write the screenplay. For the cast, Ray Milland would star as Roderick “Rick” Fitzgerald, joined by Ruth Hussey as Pamela Fitzgerald, Donald Crisp as Commander Beech, Cornelia Otis Skinner as Miss Holloway, and Gail Russel as Stella Meredith. Read more…
IFMCA Award Winners 2023
INTERNATIONAL FILM MUSIC CRITICS ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF 2023 IFMCA AWARDS
JOHN WILLIAMS WINS SCORE OF THE YEAR FOR FIFTH INDIANA JONES FILM, DIAL OF DESTINY; CHRISTOPHER YOUNG WINS FOUR AWARDS FOR OUTSTANDING WORK IN HORROR FIELD; COMPOSERS FROM JAPAN AND POLAND ALSO TAKE HOME AWARDS
FEBRUARY 22, 2024 — The International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) announces its list of winners for excellence in musical scoring in 2023, in the 2023 IFMCA Awards.
The award for Score of the Year goes to American composer John Williams, for his score for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the fifth film in the beloved action-adventure series starring Harrison Ford as the eponymous globetrotting archaeologist. The score also won the award for its genre, being named Best Score for an Action/Adventure film.
IFMCA member James Southall praised Dial of Destiny as “a nostalgic throwback to those great times of the past – a set of meticulously-composed new music by one of the greatest film composers we’ve ever had – an exhibition in skill and technique with the orchestra which is guaranteed to go beyond almost any other film music we hear this year.” IFMCA member Christian Clemmensen said that the score was “an especially gratifying treat and an immense pleasure to hear in the 2020’s… it continues to espouse the uniquely superior aspects of Williams’s writing from decades past”. Similarly, IFMCA member Anton Smit said the score was “a fantastic listening experience from start to finish… a masterpiece… one of the highlights of this final phase of John Williams’ career.”
This is John Williams’s fifth Score of the Year victory, having previously won for Memoirs of a Geisha in 2005, War Horse in 2011, Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015, and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019. These wins also take Williams’s all-time IFMCA win tally to 21, not including those for archival releases of his older scores, making him the most-awarded composer in IFMCA history. Read more…
Shop at the Movie Music UK Store
Member of the
MOVIE MUSIC UK 