Archive
MONEYBALL – Mychael Danna
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
You would think it would be quite difficult to make an interesting film about baseball statistics, but that’s what the makers of Moneyball have done. It tells the story of the wonderfully-named Billy Beane who, in 2002, having been recently made the general manager of the struggling Oakland Athletics MLB franchise, rocks the baseball world to its core by embracing a controversial new statistical method of choosing players to sign called sabermetrics in an attempt to turn around the fortunes of his team. Directed by Bennett Miller and based on a popular book by Michael Lewis, the film stars Brad Pitt as Beane, Jonah Hill as his assistant Peter Brand, and features Robin Wright, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Chris Pratt and Casey Bond in supporting roles. Read more…
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA – Paul J. Smith
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
This classic Jules Verne’s novel was adapted to the screen by Earl Felton. It tells the story of the adventure of Professor Aronnax (Paul Lukas), Ned Land (Kirk Douglas) and Conseil (Peter Lorre) whom Captain Nemo (James Mason) captures after he sinks their ship. Aboard his submarine the Nautilus, they explore the underwater wonders of the sea and battle amazing sea creatures. But all is not well as Nemo, despite his scientific genius, is quite mad and uses the power of the Nautilus to pursue a course of vengeance upon humanity. Ultimately Nemo is undone by his own demons and arrogance as he and the Nautilus perish into the ocean depths as our three heroes escape. The film was the first to use the new Cinemascope technology and was both a commercial and critical success, earning Oscars for Best Art Direction and Best Special Effects. Read more…
A SYMPHONY OF HOPE: THE HAITI PROJECT – Christopher Lennertz et al.
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
On January 12, 2010, the city of Port-au-Prince in Haiti was effectively flattened when it was struck by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. Within a matter of seconds over 50,000 people had been killed, and over a million people left homeless. Diseases such as cholera blighted the survivors and thwarted relief efforts, and since then the humanitarian crisis in the country has reached staggering proportions, with over 250,000 residences destroyed and basic services and infrastructure left in ruins. Reacting to the global call for help, film composer Christopher Lennertz was inspired to act. Calling upon his fellow composers and other members of the Los Angeles film music community of musicians and engineers, Lennertz teamed up with the charity Hands Together to create A Symphony of Hope: The Haiti Project, a musical fundraising project intended to help the people of Haiti. Read more…
STRAW DOGS – Larry Groupé
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The original Straw Dogs, which was directed by Sam Peckinpah, hit unsuspecting cinema goers like a hammer in 1971, and was an incredibly controversial film in it’s time. The film tells the story of a mild mannered American academic David (originally played by Dustin Hoffman) and his pleasant English wife Amy (originally played by Susan George), who move to a rural part of England and immediately become the subject of increasingly intense harassment by the locals. Things come to a head after Amy is brutally raped by several local men who are ostensibly working on the house, and before long David finds himself having to defend his house, his family, and his life, from circumstances that are spiraling out of control. The original film’s controversy arose due to the fact that, during the rape sequence, it was left intentionally ambiguous as to whether the Amy character actually enjoyed being raped, and this possible misogynism left a nasty taste in the mouths of censors and cinema viewers at the time. This remake of the film is directed by Rod Lurie, stars James Marsden and Kate Bosworth in the lead roles, and relocates the action from rural England to the Deep South of Mississippi, a regular location for the cinematic depiction of shitty-shoed rednecks and their unsavory sexual proclivities. Read more…
THE GREAT SANTINI – Elmer Bernstein
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
The Great Santini was adapted from Pat Conroy’s semi-autographical tribute to his father Bull Meechum, a tough, and hard-edged Marine fighter pilot. The film explores how he struggles in peacetime to adapt to his new life as well as to be a loving father and husband without relinquishing his tough guy warrior image. The film starred Robert Duvall as Col. “Bull” Meechum, Michael O’Keefe as his eldest son, Ben and Blythe Danner as his wife, Lillian. Although the film was a critical success and earned Oscar nominations for both Duvall and O’Keefe, it was a commercial failure, never able to resonate with the viewing public. Read more…
FRIGHT NIGHT – Ramin Djawadi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The original Fright Night was one of my favorite scary movies of the 1980s, a wonderfully grotesque comedy horror about a teenage movie nerd named Charley Brewster who finds out that a real live (dead?) vampire is living next door; in order to stop the evil vampire from taking over the neighborhood – and, more importantly, turning his cute girlfriend into a bloodsucking fiend – Charley teams up with aging TV anthology host and one-time vampire-hunter Peter Vincent to take on the forces of darkness. The 2011 remake is directed by Craig Gillespie (the creator of United States of Tara), and stars Anton Yelchin as Charley, David Tennent as Vincent, and Colin Farrell, hamming it up as the suave, but deadly Jerry Dandridge. Read more…
THE BLACK HOLE – John Barry
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
The Black Hole was to be Disney’s effort to take the successful disaster movie genre into outer space. Conceived in 1975 as a “Poseidon Adventure in Space”, the film was never able to germinate until the Star Wars phenomenon served to catalyze a resurgence of the space epic genre. Gary Nelson was hired to direct with Jeb Rosebrook given the task of adapting the earlier disaster in space script to a more epic adventure tale involving a monstrous black hole. The movie had a stellar cast that included Ernest Borgnine, Yvette Mimieux, Anthony Perkins and Maximillian Schell, as well as Roddy McDowall who provided the voice of the robot VINCENT. Set in the year 2130 C.E. aboard the USS Palomino, the story details the discovery of the lost USS Cygnus, which is seen apparently derelict, orbiting a massive black hole just beyond its event horizon. An investigation into the mystery that was the Cygnus leads to a grim discovery that threatens to end the lives of all involved. Although Disney conceived the film as an epic much in the mold of 2001: A Space Odyssey and provided a story replete with symbolic references to Dante’s Inferno, uninspired directing and a truly poor script resulted in critical failure. The film was nevertheless a commercial success due to its amazing special effects and myriad of robots that won the hearts of the audience. Read more…
GAME OF THRONES, SEASON 1 – Ramin Djawadi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Game of Thrones is a sprawling fantasy drama television mini-series made by HBO, based on the popular first novel in the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin. Set in a fictional ancient kingdom similar to medieval Britain, it follows the fortunes of four noble families – the solid and gritty Starks, the manipulative and cunning Lannisters, the warlike but faded House Baratheon, and the proud and mysterious House Targaryan, the last surviving members of which have been banished overseas, but who have joined forces with the vicious and nomadic Dothraki clan and are looking to return home for revenge. The show has a sprawling, labyrinthine plot of murder, betrayal, sex, violence, magic and superstition, but at its core is about the four houses and their various political machinations to gain control of the fabled Iron Throne, and with it the monarchy of the kingdom. The show stars Sean Bean, Mark Addy, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Kit Harington, Harry Lloyd, Emilia Clarke and Jason Momoa, and received rave reviews when it premiered on US television in April 2011. Read more…
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, subtitled On Stranger Tides, came a little belatedly, four years after the conclusion of the well-received third entry in the record breaking series, At World’s End. Although Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush return at the strutting Captain Jack Sparrow ad his nemesis Barbossa, gone are co-stars Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, as is director Gore Verbinski. In their place is new director Rob Marshall – whose last film, the musical Nine, couldn’t have been more different – while the new supporting players include Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane. The story follows the search for the mythical Fountain of Youth; Cruz plays Angelica, one of Captain Jack’s old flames, while McShane plays the legendary Blackbeard, Angelica’s father and Jack’s rival in the hunt for eternal life. Read more…
CONAN THE BARBARIAN – Tyler Bates
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Film music aficionados generally consider the score for the original 1982 version of Conan the Barbarian, written by the late great Basil Poledouris, to be one of the finest scores ever written. While remaking the film itself is, from my point of view, neither here nor there as I thought the original movie was greatly flawed, stepping into Poledouris’s musical shoes was always going to be a daunting task, no matter who the composer is. It turns out that the composer is Tyler Bates, returning to the historical action epic genre that first brought him to prominence – or should that be notoriety? – with 300 back in 2006.
The film, which is based on the sword-and-sorcery pulp stories of Robert E. Howard, is directed by Marcus Nispel and stars Hawaiian actor Jason Momoa in the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger role. The straightforward story follows the adventures of Conan, a vengeful warrior who marauds across the landscape of medieval Hyboria searching for those that murdered his father and slaughtered his village when he was a small boy. Read more…
DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK – Marco Beltrami, Buck Sanders
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton:
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a creepy horror movie co-written produced by Guillermo Del Toro, and directed by Troy Nixey. It’s a remake of a 1973 TV movie of the same name, and stars Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce as Alex and Kim, a young couple who have just moved into an old, rambling house, Blackwood Manor, which Alex – an architect – is intending to renovate. However, when Alex’s daughter from a previous relationship, Sally (Bailee Madison) comes to stay, things start to happen in the house in the dead of night. Left alone to investigate the macabre history and dark corners of the estate, Sally begins to hear rasping voices whispering from the basement, who promise her understanding and friendship, who are so very hungry and would like to be set free… Read more…
TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON – Steve Jablonsky
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I didn’t want to write this review. I really didn’t. I saw the first Transformers movie and thought it was a decent enough summer popcorn flick, but then I endured Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and with the terrible acting and the execrable screenplay and the awful direction and the interchangeable fighting robots and the mind-numbing score, I vowed never to suffer through another Transformers-related experience, cinematically or musically. Transformers: Dark of the Moon, however, is one of the biggest box office successes of 2011, and contains one of the best-selling scores of the year, and as such it’s difficult to ignore it completely.
The complicated story concerns a secret crashed spaceship on the moon, the US military searching for the evil Decepticon transformer that still remain in the world, and a plot by those Decepticons to use ancient technology found within the spaceship to enslave humanity. Naturally, the heroic Autobots and their human friend Sam Witwicky team up with the military to save the day – cue massive scenes of chaos, enormous fighting robots, and general death and destruction. Read more…
SUPER 8 – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Super 8 is director J.J. Abrams’ sentimental homage to Steven Spielberg. One part monster movie, one part children’s fantasy, it takes inspiration from films such as E.T. and The Goonies in that it looks at a terrible event from an adult perspective, but filters it through children’s eyes, so that the simple and uncomplicated central truths of that event shine through, especially the ones which the adults cannot see. It’s also a loving tribute to a childhood obsessed with movies, sitting in darkened theaters, munching popcorn, dreaming of making movies one day yourself. Abrams did this, Spielberg did this, and Michael Giacchino did this too.
The film stars Joel Courtney as Joe, a young boy in 1970s small-town America who passed the time making Super 8 films with his friends during their summer vacation. Joe is emotionally distant from his father Jackson (Kyle Chandler), the chief of police in the town, following the death of his mother, but has a crush on Alice (Elle Fanning), the daughter of the man whose heavy drinking indirectly caused his mother’s death. Read more…
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER – Alan Silvestri
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Growing up as I did in the UK, the comic book adventures of Captain America didn’t mean very much to me. I was aware of the character, of course, and vaguely remember seeing the 1990 film starring Matt Salinger, but beyond that my knowledge of the comics, and the hoopla surrounding him was nonexistent. It turns out that he’s actually something of an icon; since his first appearance in print in 1941 – when he was depicted landing a right slug on Hitler’s jaw – he has grown to become a true all-American hero beloved by millions, with a large fan base that endures to this day.
This new version of the Captain America story – the last of the series of Avengers prequels that also includes Thor, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk – stars Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, an ambitious and brave wannabe soldier in 1940s America who is continually turned down for military service due to his scrawny build. After impressing scientist Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) with his determination, Rogers is selected to take part in a top-secret science experiment that intends to breed a genetically enhanced battalion of super soldiers that will help turn the fortunes of World War II in the favor of the Allies. Read more…
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COMMENT LES SÉDUIRE/1001 WAYS TO LOVE – François de Roubaix
Original Review by Craig Lysy
This CD is a compilation of music from three films directed by Jean-Claude Roy and scored by François de Roubaix. Roy and de Roubaix became good friends during the French-Algerian War circa 1958 and worked together several times during their careers prior to the composer’s untimely death in a diving accident off the island of Tenerife in 1975, when the composer was just 36 years old. The films covered here are Les Strip-Teaseuses (or, to give it it’s full title, Strip-Teaseuses Ou Ces Femmes Que L’on Croit Faciles) from 1964, Les Combinards from 1966 and Comment les Séduire from 1968. Read more…