Archive
MILDRED PIERCE – Max Steiner
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
After eighteen years as a marquee actress for MGM, Joan Crawford departed the studio in search of better roles, signing a three-year contract with Warner Brothers. The studio had purchased the film rights to the popular novel “Mildred Pierce” by James M. Cain and Crawford campaigned hard for the role. Director Michael Curtiz did not believe she was right for the role, but relented when she acquiesced to the indignity of a screen test, which changed his mind. Jerry Wald was placed in charge of production with a $1.4 million budget, Curtiz would direct, and Ranald MacDougall was hired to write the screenplay. Joining Crawford would be Jack Carson as Wally Fray, Zachary Scott as Monte Beragon, Eve Arden as Ida Corwin, Ann Blyth as Veda Pierce Forrester, and Bruce Bennett as Bert Pierce. Read more…
Mark Snow, 1946-2025
Composer Mark Snow died on July 4, 2025, at his home in Connecticut after a short illness. He was 78.
Martin Fulterman was born in August 1946, in Brooklyn, New York. He studied piano as a child, and he later attended New York’s High School of Music and Art and the Juilliard School of Music, where his roommate was fellow composer Michael Kamen. They co-founded the New York Rock & Roll Ensemble, and released several well-regarded albums.
Fulterman adopted the professional pseudonym ‘Mark Snow’ after he moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. He began his film and TV career writing music for the ABC drama series The Rookies starring his then-brother-in-law, actor Georg Stanford Brown, and quickly established himself as one of the most in-demand composers working on American television, writing for massively popular shows such as Starsky & Hutch, The Love Boat, Hart to Hart, Dynasty, Cagney & Lacey, and T. J. Hooker.
However, it was his association with the 1993 sci-fi series The X-Files starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson that brought Snow to international fame. In addition to writing its iconic whistled main theme, Snow scored more than 200 episodes of the show across 11 seasons, as well as scoring its two spin-off theatrical movies in 1998 and 2008. The single of the instrumental main title theme was an unexpected chart hit in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and he received five Emmy nominations for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series between 1997 and 2002 for different X-Files episodes.
Snow also received Emmy nominations for scoring the TV series Ghost Whisperer (2005-2010), writing the theme for Nowhere Man (1996), and for scoring the TV movies Something About Amelia (1984), An American Story (1993), Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1994), Children of the Dust (1995), and Helter Skelter (2004). Read more…
SPECIES – Christopher Young
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Species is a science fiction horror film that blends alien-invasion tropes with creature-feature thrills. Directed by Roger Donaldson from a screenplay by Dennis Feldman, the story begins with a top-secret government project called SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), which receives a transmission from outer space containing DNA instructions for creating a hybrid organism – part human, part alien. Scientists follow the instructions and create a girl named Sil, who appears human but matures at an astonishing rate and soon exhibits alarming, inhuman traits. When the SETI lead scientist Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley) deems her too dangerous, they attempt to terminate her, but she escapes from the lab; now fully grown and played by Natasha Henstridge, Sil goes on the run in Los Angeles, driven by a primal urge to reproduce. Her alien DNA pushes her to find a mate, but any man she deems genetically unfit meets a gruesome end. A team is assembled to track her down, including an empath (Forest Whitaker), a molecular biologist (Alfred Molina), an anthropologist (Marg Helgenberger), and a government assassin (Michael Madsen), and as Sil leaves a trail of bodies behind her, the team races against time to prevent her from mating and giving birth to a potentially unstoppable alien species. Read more…
F1: THE MOVIE – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s lights out and away we go!
Anyone who knows me in real life knows that I have been a massive fan of Formula 1 motor racing for many, many years. My grandfather, who was also a big fan, introduced me to it in the late 1980s – the first race I actively remember watching was the 1987 British Grand Prix, when I was 11, which was won by Nigel Mansell in extraordinarily emotional circumstances – and since then I have watched virtually every race of every subsequent season, cheering on a succession of great British drivers, from Mansell to Martin Brundle, Damon Hill and Johnny Herbert, Jenson Button, and now Lando Norris and George Russell. I love everything about the sport; the incredible skill and strength of the drivers, the chess-like tactics and strategies of the teams, the world-class engineering. You become invested in the lives of everyone involved, their triumphs and tragedies, and you watch it unfold across the world every two weeks at speeds approaching 200mph. There’s nothing like it. Read more…
BEAU GESTE – Alfred Newman
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Paramount Pictures executives decided that they wanted to remake their 1926 silent film “Beau Geste”, which starred Ronald Coleman. William Wellman was assigned production, he would also direct, and Robert Carson was tasked with writing the screenplay. The 1926 film was based on the novel “Beau Geste” (1924) by P. C. Wren and the creative team ultimately decided to adopt the screenplay of the 1926 film almost verbatim. For the cast, Gary Cooper would star in the titular role, joined by Ray Milland as John Geste, Robert Preston as Digby Geste, J. Carrol Naish as Rasinoff, Susan Hayward as Isobel Rivers, and Brian Donlevy as Sergeant Markoff. Read more…
Lalo Schifrin, 1932-2025
Composer Lalo Schifrin died on June 26, 2025, at the age of 93. He had been in ill health for several years, and died of pneumonia.
Boris Claudio Schifrin was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in June 1932, into a musically inclined family. His father was the concertmaster of the Teatro Colón, and young Lalo was immersed in classical music from a young age. He began piano lessons early, and his precocious talent led him to study with luminaries such as Juan Carlos Paz and, later, Olivier Messiaen in Paris. While still in Paris, he played in local jazz clubs and developed a deep appreciation for American musical idioms. This duality – rigorous classical training paired with a spontaneous, exploratory jazz sensibility – would define his voice as a composer.
Upon returning to Argentina, Schifrin formed one of the country’s first modern jazz orchestras, gaining acclaim before accepting an invitation to join Dizzy Gillespie’s band in the mid-1950s. Their collaboration signaled his arrival on the international stage and cemented his lifelong reputation as a jazz innovator with global instincts.
Schifrin moved to the United States in the early 1960s, and by mid-decade had become a sought-after composer in Hollywood, working across television and film. His first major television project was scoring episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. beginning in 1965, but it was his theme for Mission: Impossible (1966) that catapulted him into pop culture immortality. Written in 5/4 time, the show’s theme was at once avant-garde and accessible, and became instantly iconic, so much so that it became a kind of musical shorthand for danger, intrigue, and ingenuity. It later powered the Tom Cruise-led film franchise to billion-dollar success. Read more…
JUDGE DREDD – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The character Judge Dredd was well-known to British comic book fans for almost 20 years prior to him debuting on film. Created by writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra, he first appeared in the second issue of the British science fiction comic magazine 2000 AD in 1977, and quickly became the most iconic character of the anthology, known for his authoritarian demeanor, brutal sense of justice, and unwavering loyalty to the law. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, the Dredd stories have strong satirical and political overtones, exploring themes ranging from fascism to state surveillance, corporate corruption, and dystopia. Dredd himself is not the protagonist in a traditional sense – instead, he is a symbol of rigid, authoritarian justice, who has no personal ambition, rarely shows emotion, and sees mercy as weakness. Attempts to adapt Judge Dredd for the big screen began in the 1980s but the screenplay was stuck in development hell for years; the film eventually moved forward in 1994 with director Danny Cannon, a self-proclaimed fan of the comic, who was given the green light by the studio on the strength of his directorial debut The Young Americans in 1993. Unfortunately, subsequent interference and script re-writes heavily altered his intended vision, resulting in a film which disappointed long-time fans of the series. Read more…
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In 2010 Dreamworks Pictures released an animated adventure film based on Cressida Cowell’s popular children’s novel How to Train Your Dragon. Set on the mythical Viking island of Berk, the film follows Hiccup, a skinny and awkward teenager, who is also the son of the village chief, Stoick the Vast. In Berk, dragon attacks are a regular hazard, and slaying them is a mark of honor; Hiccup desperately wants to prove himself to his father and the village but lacks the brute strength of the other Viking youths. Fearing that he will never earn his father’s respect, Hiccup resigns himself to the fact that he will never become a dragon slayer – until the day that Hiccup accidentally shoots down a rare and mysterious dragon known as a Night Fury, and in doing so upends everything he thinks he knows about dragons. Read more…
ARSENIC AND OLD LACE – Max Steiner
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Renowned producer and director Frank Capra saw opportunity with the popular success of the Broadway play “Arsenic and Old Lace”, which was adapted from Joseph Kesserling’s novel of the same name. He purchased the film rights, however the contract stipulated that the film could not be released until the Broadway run had ended. Due to the enduring success of the play, the film debut was delayed by almost two years. Capra would manage production with a budget of $1.2 million, and also direct, with Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein writing the screenplay based on Joseph Kesselring’s novel. A fine cast was hired, with Cary Grant starring as Mortimer Brewster, Priscilla Lane as Elaine Brewster, Raymond Massey as Jonathan Brewster, Jack Carson as Officer Patrick O’Hara, and Peter Lorre as Dr, Herman Einstein. Read more…
POCAHONTAS – Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The idea to make a movie about the life of Pocahontas was first pitched to Walt Disney studios in 1990, shortly after the success of The Little Mermaid, and as Beauty and the Beast was in production. The studio was looking to diversify its slate with more mature, emotionally grounded stories, and chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg was eager to pursue more prestigious, award-caliber projects. He saw Pocahontas as a chance for Disney to do a “serious” animated film with Oscar potential, aimed at adults as much as children, and described the film as potentially Disney’s equivalent of West Side Story or Dances with Wolves – emotionally resonant, message-driven, and grounded in real-world conflict. Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg were hired as directors, and during development Pocahontas was considered the “prestige” project compared to another film in development simultaneously – The Lion King. Many animators reportedly lobbied to work on Pocahontas, which was expected to win awards, while The Lion King was seen as the “B project,” although ironically it was The Lion King that would become a much bigger global phenomenon, both critically and commercially. Read more…
THE LIFE OF CHUCK – The Newton Brothers
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Life of Chuck is an unusual, but ultimately warm-hearted and life-affirming story that touches on subjects no less important than the meaning of life itself, which it explores in a way that combines art, dance, poetry, music, mathematics, philosophy, existentialism, and a little bit of supernatural magic. It is based on a novella by Stephen King that was published in the 2020 anthology book ‘If It Bleeds’; similar to things like The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me, it is not a horror story, and instead is more of a rumination on the nature of reality. Told in reverse chronological order, it traces the life of a man named Charles “Chuck” Krantz, played by Tom Hiddleston as an adult. To reveal more of the plot would do it a disservice, so I’ll leave it at that, but at its core the story is a meditation on mortality, memory, and the idea that a single life contains a universe, as Walt Whitman once proposed. Rather than horror, it delivers awe – both for how fragile the world is, and how astonishingly rich a single human life can be if we take the time to make it so. Read more…
SON OF FURY – Alfred Newman
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1941 20th Century Fox Studio Director Darryl F. Zanuck was seeking a new film to showcase his star, Tyrone Power. He came across the 1941 novel Benjamin Blake by Edison Marshall and purchased the film rights for $50,000 one month prior to its publication. Zanuck would manage production with a $2 million budget, John Cromwell would direct, and Philip Dunne was tasked with writing the screenplay. Tyrone Power would star in the titular role, joined by Gene Tierney as Eve, George Sanders a Sir Arthur Blake, Kay Johnson as Lady Helena Blake, Dudley Diggs as Pratt, Frances Farmer as Isabel, and Roddy McDowell as Benjamin as a boy. Read more…
IL POSTINO – Luis Enríquez Bacalov
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most surprising global hits of the 1990s was Il Postino, The Postman, an Italian romantic drama film based on the novel Ardiente Paciencia by Antonio Skármeta, and directed by English filmmaker Michael Radford. The film is set in the early 1950s on a small, picturesque island off the coast of Italy and centers on Mario Ruoppolo, a shy and uneducated local man who takes a job as a postman. His only task is to deliver mail to Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet, who has taken refuge on the island after fleeing Augusto Pinochet’s government and going into political exile. As Mario and Neruda begin to interact, Mario becomes fascinated by the poet’s charisma, politics, and especially his romantic use of language; eventually, Mario seeks Neruda’s guidance in learning how to express himself, particularly because he has fallen in love with Beatrice Russo, a beautiful but reserved woman who works at a local café. Read more…
PREDATOR: KILLER OF KILLERS – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s been fascinating to watch the development of the Predator franchise over the years. Following their first appearance in the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie in 1987, the Predators have gone on to feature in numerous sequels and prequels, crossovers with the Alien franchise, comic books, video games, and more, developing a whole back story and cultural history in the process, fleshing out what were initially presented as bloodthirsty killers into something much deeper. We now know the name of the species – they are the yautja – and we know that theirs is a warrior culture that has been sending their young adults to Earth for millennia, requiring them to trophy-hunt human warriors as a rite of passage. Previous films in the series have depicted them interacting with humans across time, helping ancient Egyptians build the pyramids in Alien vs. Predator, and hunting 16th century Comanche warriors in Prey. This new film, Predator: Killer of Killers, expands on this legacy even more. Read more…
SERGEANT YORK – Max Steiner
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Alvin C. York was an iconic American WWI Medal of Honor hero celebrated in the 1928 biography “Sergeant York: His Own Life Story and War Diary” by Tom Skeyhill and York himself. Producer Jesse L. Lasky approached York several times to allow a movie to be made of his life, but was repeatedly refused, declaring; “this uniform ain’t for sale.” Lasky eventually convinced York that, with war threatening in Europe, it was his patriotic duty to allow the film to proceed. York finally agreed, but only on three conditions. First, his share of the profits would be contributed to a Bible school he wanted to be built. Second, no cigarette-smoking actress could be chosen to play his wife. Third, only Gary Cooper could recreate his life on screen. Cooper at first turned down the role, but when Lasky sent him a letter with a personal plea that included York’s forged signature, Cooper agreed to do the picture. Lasky, Howard Hawks and Hal B. Wallis were placed in charge of production with a $1.7 million budget, Hawks would also direct, and the team of Harry Chandlee, Abem Finkel, John Huston and Howard Koch would adapt York’s biography. Gary Cooper would play the titular role supported by Walter Brennan as Pastor Rosier Pile, and Joan Leslie as Gracie Williams. Read more…
Shop at the Movie Music UK Store
Member of the
MOVIE MUSIC UK 