Archive
JUPITER ASCENDING – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An ambitious, noble science fiction failure, Jupiter Ascending is the latest film from the Wachowski siblings, who rose to massive fame and critical acclaim in the late 1990s with The Matrix, but have never been able to recapture that lightning in a bottle in any of their subsequent projects. The sprawling, complicated plot involves Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), a simple house cleaner in modern day Chicago, who suddenly finds herself involved in an intergalactic adventure concerning three members of the massively powerful Abrasax family (Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton), who originally ‘seeded’ the Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago, and who are now battling for control of its resources – all without the knowledge of the inhabitants of the planet itself. Caught in the middle of all this is a half-human half-wolf disgraced former soldier named Caine (Channing Tatum), who is sent to find and rescue Jupiter, but quickly discovers that his task is much more complicated than he originally thought. Read more…
WITNESS – Maurice Jarre
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Witness is a thriller set in Pennsylvania’s Amish community. The film stars Harrison Ford as John Book, an honest cop, who is forced to travel to rural Pennsylvania to protect a young Amish boy named Samuel, played by Lukas Haas, who unintentionally witnesses a murder while visiting the big city with his mother Rachel, played by Kelly McGillis. To keep his witness safe, Book tries to maintain a low profile within the community, which shuns modern conveniences and technology, but unexpectedly begins to develop romantic feelings for Rachel, causing friction among the elders, who view Book as an interloper and outsider. Worse still, the murder suspects have discovered the whereabouts of the one eyewitness to their crime, and are coming after the young boy. The film was directed by Peter Weir, and was one of the major cinematic successes of 1985, receiving critical acclaim and eight Oscar nominations, including nods for Best Picture, Best Actor for Ford, and Best Score for the film’s composer, Maurice Jarre. Read more…
PAPER PLANES – Nigel Westlake
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Paper Planes is an Australian family film, directed by Robert Connolly, about a young Australian boy named Dylan, whose passion for flight inspires him to compete in the World Paper Plane Championships in Japan, while simultaneously re-connecting with his father Jack, who is severely depressed following the death of his wife – Dylan’s mother – in a car accident. The film stars Ed Oxenbould as Dylan, Avatar’s Sam Worthington as Jack, has a supporting cast that includes David Wenham and Terry Norris, and has a score by one of Australia’s leading film composers, Nigel Westlake. Read more…
CHAMPIONS – Carl Davis
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When I was a kid, Grand National day was one of my favorite days of the British sporting calendar. I had, and continue to have, a very personal connection with it, as it was something I shared with my late grandfather, who had a passion for the sport of kings, and my childhood memories of spending those Saturdays with him in the 1980s are some of my fondest. For those who don’t know what it is – which is probably every American reading this – the Grand National is a steeplechase horse race, in which 40 brave and gallant horses and their equally brave and gallant jockeys test themselves by negotiating 30 daunting fences over two 2-mile circuits of the challenging Aintree racecourse in Liverpool. The race has been run every year since 1839, and has grown to become a major television event in the UK, watched by millions across the country. The winning horses, winning jockeys, and the race’s controversies go down in history and become part of the nation’s sporting lexicon – speak to pretty much any Englishman of my generation, and he will know what you’re talking about if you mention Devon Loch or Red Rum, Ginger McCain or Jenny Pitman. However, by far the most famous Grand National in terms of human and equine drama was the race run in 1981. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2014, Part 5
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
My fifth article in my Review of the Year 2014 looks at the Best Scores from Scandinavia. Scandinavian movies and scores get pretty short shrift from the majority of mainstream audiences, and that needs to change, because the level of talent and craftsmanship at work in those countries is superb. While composers like Johan Söderqvist from Sweden, Jóhann Jóhannsson from Iceland, and Tuomas Kantelinen and Panu Aaltio from Finland have developed an international profile over the past few years, there are still a number of domestic composers doing excellent work within their own industry; as such, this year’s choices from the frozen north contain music by both established names and promising newcomers, and include a Danish TV mini-series, a Swedish comedy, and three scores from Norway: a children’s adventure, a historical thriller, and a wonderful classical documentary.
STARMAN – Jack Nitzsche
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Starman is a science fiction romance movie, directed by John Carpenter at the height of his studio powers, from a screenplay by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon, who would later collaborate on the classic coming-of-age drama Stand By Me. The film stars Jeff Bridges as an alien who, in response to the message of peace from the Voyager II probe, is sent to Earth on a scouting mission prior to a planned ‘first contact’ meeting between humanity and the rest of his species. Unfortunately, the alien’s craft is shot down by the military and it crash lands in rural Wisconsin, next to a farm owned by the recently-widowed Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen). The alien takes the form of Jenny’s late husband, and convinces her to drive him to Arizona to rendezvous with his mothership; on the journey, Jenny and the alien bond, initially due to his physical resemblance to her husband, but later due to the alien’s child-like curiosity regarding Earth, and his genuine goodness and compassion. Unfortunately, the US government – personified by NSA colonel Fox (Richard Jaeckel) and a compassionate scientist named Shermin (Charles Martin Smith) – has found out about the alien, and wants to capture him for their own ends. Read more…
TAKEN 3 – Nathaniel Méchaly
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Taken 3 (styled ‘Tak3n’) is the third and, likely, final installment of writer/producer Luc Besson’s series of modern revenge action-thrillers starring Liam Neeson in what is quickly becoming one of his iconic screen roles. After taking on Albanian human traffickers in Paris in the first film, and virtually the entire Albanian mafia in Istanbul in the second, Neeson’s character Bryan Mills is back home in Los Angeles for the third film, still doting on his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), and hesitantly re-kindling his relationship with his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen), who is becoming increasingly estranged from her current husband Stuart (Dougray Scott). Bryan’s world falls apart when he discovers Lenore’s dead body in his own apartment, and soon he is running for his life, accused of a murder he did not commit, pursued by a dogged LAPD detective (Forest Whitaker), and trying to find the real killers, who appear to have something to do with a vicious band of Russian gangsters terrorizing the city. The film is directed by French action specialist Olivier Megaton, and has a score by the similarly Gallic Nathaniel Méchaly, who has scored all three Taken films to date. Read more…
THE RIVER – John Williams
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The River is a contemporary drama film directed by Mark Rydell, starring Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek as Tom and Mae Garvey, a married couple trying to make ends meet on their farm in rural Tennessee. Over the course of several years, Tom and his family battle desperately to save and hold on to their home, despite the threats they face when a bank threatens to repossess their farm, when severe storms threaten to make the nearby river burst its banks and ruin their crops, and when a ruthless hydroelectric developer (played by Scott Glenn) threatens to cut off their power supply for his own ends. The film was a moderate critical success when it opened in cinemas in December 1984, and picked up four Academy Award nominations, with nods for Spacek as Best Actress, cinematography, sound, and John Williams’s folksy original score. Williams wrote The River at a time when he was still regularly working with multiple directors, and this was the last of his five collaborations with director Rydell, which previously encompassed similarly Americana-heavy films such as The Reivers, The Cowboys, The Long Goodbye, and Cinderella Liberty. Read more…
MR. TURNER – Gary Yershon
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Joseph Mallord William “JMW” Turner is one of the greatest and most respected British painters, a mercurial figure in British society in the mid-1800s who hobnobbed with royalty, frequented brothels, and famously had himself strapped to the mast of a ship so he could accurately paint an approaching storm. Some of his works, notably masterpieces such as ‘Modern Rome-Campo Vaccino’, ‘Dutch Boats in a Gale’, ‘Ivy Bridge’, and ‘Calais Pier’, elevated the art of landscape painting to new heights, and his legacy lives on today through the Turner Prize, the most prestigious British art award, which is granted annually by the Tate Gallery in London. Director Mike Leigh’s film Mr. Turner is a fairly straightforward biopic of Turner’s life, starring Timothy Spall in the title role, and featuring supporting performances from Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson and Lesley Manville. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2014, Part 4
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
My fourth article in my Review of the Year 2014 looks at the Best Scores from Spain. It’s pretty common knowledge that I consider Spain to be one of the world’s great hotbeds of excellent film scoring, and 2014 continues to affirm that this is the case. This year’s group of scores from the Iberian peninsula runs the gamut of genres, from dramas to comedies to horror scores to contemporary thrillers, and features music from some of from the best regional composers working today, including Roque Baños, Arnau Bataller, Zacarías M. de la Riva, and Federico Jusid.
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2014, Part 3
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
My third article in my Review of the Year 2014 looks at the Best Scores from Poland and Eastern Europe. It has been exciting to watch the emergence of several young, talented Polish composers over the last few years, as the ‘old guard’ of composers like Wojciech Kilar and Zbigniew Preisner pass the film music torch onto the next generation. This year’s crop of scores from the European continent’s eastern edge includes two scores examining the subject of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising from different musical points of view, the score for the top-grossing film at the Polish box office in 2014, and an excellent multi-national fantasy score from Russia, written by a Spaniard!
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2014, Part 2
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
My second article in my Review of the Year 2014 looks at the Best Scores from Italy. Italian cinema doesn’t quite have the same level of acclaim and popularity as it did in the past, and the state of Italian film music is not once what it was either; the country’s heyday, when composers like Ennio Morricone, Pino Donaggio, Nino Rota and Riz Ortolani dominated, appears to be mostly over, and today’s most prominent Italian artists (Dario Marianelli, Carlo Siliotto, Nicola Piovani) are working mostly on non-Italian projects. Ironically, it appears to be for Italian television that the most promising music is being written today, and my picks for the best Italian scores of 2014 include three works for TV, and one stunning work for an under-the-radar art house piece from a composer to watch.
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
And so, at last, after an astonishing 13-year trip across Middle Earth in the company of director Peter Jackson, through three Lord of the Rings films and two Hobbit films, we come to the conclusion of the saga with The Battle of the Five Armies, the third and final film based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic fantasy story The Hobbit. The film picks up immediately where the second film in the trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug, left off last year, with the hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and his dwarf cohorts looking on helplessly as the dragon Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch), having emerged from under the mountain of Erebor, decimates the city of Laketown, before finally being brought down by the brave Bard (Luke Evans). In the aftermath of the devastation, the survivors of Laketown regroup in the ancient city of Dale, while the newly-crowned dwarfish king Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) jealously guards his new wealth from inside his impregnable stronghold. However, news of Smaug’s death quickly spreads across Middle Earth, and before long numerous different armies are massing outside Erebor’s gates, each claiming a valid right to the treasure inside, or having insidious ulterior motives of conquest and destruction. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2014, Part 1
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
The first installment in my series of articles looking at the best “under the radar” scores from around the world concentrates on music from films from Asia: specifically, the far eastern nations of China, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam. Already in 2014 I have reviewed Christopher Young’s magnificent score for the Chinese epic fantasy adventure The Monkey King, and Jo-Yeong Wook’s score for the revisionist samurai action film Kundo: Age of the Rampant. In this article, I’m taking a deeper look at some other excellent works, ranging from anime movies and TV series from Japan, baseball dramas from Taiwan, and two of the highest-grossing films from Vietnam.
You can read my review of The Monkey King here, my review of Kundo: Age of the Rampant here.
EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS – Alberto Iglesias, Harry Gregson-Williams, Federico Jusid
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ridley Scott’s epic version of the biblical exodus story, Exodus: Gods and Kings, is lavish film making on an enormous scale. Based on the tale of Moses and his efforts to liberate the people of Israel from slavery under an Egyptian pharaoh, it stars Christian Bale as Moses, Joel Edgerton as the pharaoh Ramses, John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley. Scott’s version is more rooted in historical realism than Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic The Ten Commandments, but the film still covers all the major bases of the story: Moses and Ramses growing up together as brothers, the burning bush through which Moses communicates with God, the plagues which attack Egypt when Ramses refuses to free the slaves, the parting of the Red Sea, and the writing of the Ten Commandments. Visually, the film is a triumph, depicting the glory and opulence of ancient Egyptian civilization in majestic detail, but dramatically the story flounders occasionally, and some great actors – especially Paul, Weaver, and Tara Fitzgerald – are woefully underused. Read more…
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