Archive
STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER – Jerry Goldsmith
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Star Trek V is at its heart a mystical quest film concerned with a question that has aroused humanity’s curiosity for millennia. It explores our search for that sacred omphalos from whence we arose – the Garden of Eden. In metaphysics Eden symbolizes primordial perfection, the source of all life and the state of perfect communion between humanity and God. It is from this inner longing, this yearning that the saga which is Star Trek V unfolds. William Shatner lobbied very hard to direct the film and although he managed to win the directorship, he regretfully would not enjoy critical success. Production and financing problems forced a dramatic scaling back of the movie’s climactic scene where he had planned a dramatic display of immense stone gollums and the earth opening up to reveal scenes of Dante’s ten levels of Hell. It suffices to say that the lack of resources served to mortally wound the story’s narrative and resulted in what many believe to be the weakest film in the Star Trek franchise. Read more…
HOME ALONE – John Williams
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Writer-producer John Hughes, best known for his 80’s teen movies “16 Candles”, “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” conceived a new twist on the holidays when he took on “Home Alone”. The story opens with the McAllister family preparing for a Christmas vacation in Paris, France. As the family is packing, Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) gets into a scuffle with his older brother Buzz and is sent to his room on the third floor. As the out of control family rushes to depart the next morning, Kevin is somehow overlooked and left “Home Alone.” When Kevin awakes and finds himself alone he makes the best of it, as any kid would, by having fun, eating pizza, making a mess and jumping up and down on his parents’ bed. The real fun begins however when Kevin discovers two burglars, Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) planning to rob his house on Christmas Eve and devises all sorts of booby traps and outrageous schemes to defend his house at all costs. The film stretched credulity from the start, but through its slap-stick humor, Christmas sentimentality and Culkin’s endearing screen persona, it won the hearts of the public and became a huge commercial success. The film made Culkin an instant star, spawned a sequel and to this day remains an enduring holiday favorite. Read more…
TRUE GRIT – Carter Burwell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
True Grit is the latest film from Joel and Ethan Coen, the writing-directing-producing brothers who brought us such classic movies as Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou and No Country For Old Men. True Grit is a new version of the well-respected 1968 novel by Charles Portis which chronicles the adventures of grizzled marshal Rooster Cogburn at the end of the Wild West era in the 1920s, who is hired by 14-year-old Mattie Ross to track down the drifter who murdered her father. John Wayne won his first and only Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Cogburn in the original 1969 version of the story. This time around, the cast features Jeff Bridges in the leading role, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin in supporting roles, and an original score from the Coens’ regular composer, Carter Burwell. Read more…
BEN-HUR – Miklós Rózsa
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
This 1959 film version of General Lew Wallace’s best-selling novel achieved Oscar legend as it went on to win 11 Academy Awards including Best Score for Miklós Rózsa. The film tells the tale of Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur, played in exemplary fashion by Charlton Heston, who lives in Judea with his family during the time of Jesus Christ circa 33 C.E. Judah’s childhood Roman friend Messala returns to Judea as an ambitious Tribune intent on achieving fame and his destiny at any cost. When Judah refuses to provide Messala with the names of local Jewish dissidents, an offended Messala contrives a pretext to exact a terrible revenge. Messala orders the arrest of Judah and his family on patently false charges. Judah is then condemned to certain death on the Roman galleys, while his mother and sister are given life imprisonment.
Doomed to die chained to a galley oar, Judah’s hatred and the desire for vengeance fuels his will to live. Soon the hand of fate intervenes and he gains his freedom. Empowered with the help of a Roman General and a wealthy Arab sponsor he returns to Judea and challenges Messala to a chariot race. In an epic struggle Judah emerges triumphant while Messala lays defeated on the track, his body mangled irreparably by horses that trampled him. Meeting for a last time as surgeons wait to amputate Messala’s legs, Judah realizes the hollowness of his victory, of how unquenching it is to drink from the cup of revenge. He leaves Messala to death and rescues his family from a leper colony. Later he sees them cured as the pounding rains born of the crucifixion storm cleanses the sores from their bodies. Read more…
THE KING’S SPEECH – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The United Kingdom suffered one of its worst constitutional crises in living memory in the early 1930s. Following the death of King George V, his eldest son David ascended to the throne as King Edward VIII, but his insistence on marrying Wallis Simpson – a commoner, a divorcee, and worst of all an American – brought criticism from the political and religious leaders of the time. Forced with a choice between his kingdom and the woman he loved, Edward chose the latter, leaving his younger brother Bertie to reluctantly take over as King George VI. However, suddenly becoming the monarch of over a third of the world’s population did not sit well with the new king, who was forced to deal with two issues at the beginning of his reign: firstly, the growing influence of German chancellor Adolf Hitler threatening peace in Europe, and secondly the King’s own terrible stutter, which often rendered him literally speechless on important occasions. To counteract the latter, the King sought out the help of an unconventional Australian speech therapist named Lionel Logue. Director Tom Hooper’s excellent film The King’s Speech tells the story of the unconventional friendship of the pair; it stars Colin Firth as George VI, Geoffrey Rush as Logue, and Helena Bonham-Carter as Queen Elizabeth, Guy Pearce as Edward, and Michael Gambon as the ailing George V. Read more…
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER – David Arnold
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the third contemporary film based on the Chronicles of Narnia saga by C. S. Lewis. Directed by Michael Apted, it tells the story of the two youngest Pevensie children, Lucy and Edmund, who return to the fantastical land of Narnia with their insufferable cousin Eustace to assist the noble Prince Caspian and the heroic mouse warrior Reepicheep aboard the royal ship, the Dawn Treader. Caspian is attempting to solve the mysterious disappearance of eight Narnian lords in the remote islands of the Western seas, and must do battle with slave traders, sea serpents, dragons, and the spectral legacy of the Snow Queen along the way. The film stars Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Ben Barnes and Will Poulter, the voice work of Liam Neeson and Simon Pegg, features cameos from Tilda Swinton, Anna Popplewell and William Moseley, and has an original score by David Arnold. Read more…
JADE – James Horner
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Weintraub Entertainment purchased the script for Jade from the famous writer Joe Eszterhas, who had gained earlier acclaim and commercial success for sexual thrillers such as Jagged Edge and Basic Instinct. Paramount Studios eventually came to select William Friedkin (of The Exorcist and The French Connection fame) to direct. The film deals with a woman’s secret life and a classic love triangle consisting of psychologist Dr. Katrina Gavin (played by Linda Florentino), her husband Matt Gavin (played by Chazz Palminteri) and politically ambitious District Attorney David Corelli – her ex-boyfriend – played by David Caruso. Read more…
BLACK SWAN – Clint Mansell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An intense psycho-sexual drama which touches on a number of themes ranging from parental oppression and body dysmorphic disorder to sexual repression and the search for perfection, Black Swan is the latest film from the challenging director Darren Aronofsky, the man behind films such as Requiem For a Dream, The Fountain and The Wrestler. Natalie Portman stars in a tour-de-force performance as Nina, a young and talented ballerina in the New York City ballet, whose personal life is dominated entirely by her overbearing mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), herself a former dancer. Artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) decides to promote Nina to the leading role in their new production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, as the expense of prima ballerina Beth (Winona Ryder), but Thomas is concerned as to whether the naïve and virginal Nina has enough ‘dark side’ to play both the White Swan and the Black Swan on stage. Into this mix comes the free-spirited and sexually adventurous Lily (Mila Kunis), a transfer from the San Francisco ballet; before long, Nina and Lily embark on a dangerous relationship which is part-friendship part-rivalry, which threatens to shatter Nina’s already tenuous grasp on her sanity. Read more…
PRINCESS KAIULANI – Stephen Warbeck
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Princess Kaiulani is a film about the life of the extravagantly-named Victoria Kaiulani Kalaninuiahilapalapa Kawekiu i Lunalilo Cleghorn, who was the heir to the Kingdom of Hawaii until the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893. Kaiulani – who was educated in England and New York and was in no way the ‘Barbarian Princess’ that the media of the time dubbed her – immediately took up the cause of her country, petitioning US presidents Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland to restore the monarchy, but her efforts were cut short by her untimely death in 1899 at the age of just 23. Nevertheless, Kaiulani was exceptionally popular in the islands, and is remembered today as a strong and tireless campaigner for Hawaiian rights and sovereignty. The film is directed by Marc Forby, stars The New World’s Q’Orianka Kilcher as Kaiulani alongside Barry Pepper, Will Patton and Julian Glover, and features a rich and expansive original score by Stephen Warbeck. Read more…
REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT – Laurence Rosenthal
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
This is the tragic story of Mountain Rivera who competed for heavyweight champion of the world but is now at the end of his 17 year boxing career. He has suffered a devastating knockout blow by Cassius Clay in the seventh round and his career is over. A life time of damaging blows has left him a broken man with slurred speech, unrealized dreams and many regrets. Unbeknown to him, his manager Maish Renick bet against him lasting four rounds with Clay and is now owes the mob considerable money, money that he does not have. As such he hatches a self-serving plot to reinvent Rivera as a costumed wrestler, a scheme to make him some quick money so he can pay off the mob who will otherwise soon kill him. Read more…
TRON: LEGACY – Daft Punk
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Tron: Legacy is a very belated sequel to the 1982 science fiction classic Tron, which starred Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner and introduced audiences to what were then state-of-the-art computer graphics in a story about a computer programmer named Flynn who gets sucked into his own software programme and is forced to take part in vicious gladiatorial games by the omnipotent Master Control Program. The sequel, which is directed by Joseph Kosinski, sees Flynn’s son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) suffer the same fate as his father, albeit 20 years later, when he receives a mysterious message from his father’s old video game arcade and subsequently becomes trapped in the same digital world – which in the intervening years has become bigger, more visually stunning, and much more dangerous. With the help of a beautiful warrior named Quorra, Kevin must traverse this astonishing landscape and find a way home. The film, which stars Olivia Wilde and Michael Sheen and sees both Bridges and Boxleitner reprising their original roles, is Disney’s big movie for Christmas 2010, and features an original score by Daft Punk. Read more…
A RAISIN IN THE SUN – Laurence Rosenthal
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
“A Raisin in the Sun” was adapted from the acclaimed play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959. It is a potent narrative on the pathology of segregation still pervasive in America almost one hundred years after the hope and promise of the Great Emancipation. The title is derived from the renowned poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes, who poses the following question, “does a dream deferred dry up like a raisin in the sun”? Set in the early 1950’s, the story provides us with a few weeks in the life of the Youngers, an African-American family living in the dire poverty of the South Side of Chicago. Mama the matriarch has just inherited an insurance check for $10,000 after the death of her husband. What ensues is a tragedy born of desperation arriving at an intersection of competing aspirations. Mama wants to buy a house to fulfill her dream of a better life, while her son Walter would rather use the money to invest in a liquor store with his friend. Beneatha, Mama’s daughter, wants to use the money for her medical school tuition. Read more…
THE SOCIAL NETWORK – Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A film about Facebook, the online phenomenon of the 21st century, doesn’t sound especially interesting when you first think about it, but the history of its creation is actually quite fascinating. Mark Zuckerberg was a 20-year-old student at Harvard University when he and his roommate Dustin Moskovitz launched the first incarnation of Facebook into the world in 2004; despite various lawsuits, development problems, and other issues, Facebook eventually became the dominant social networking website with 500 million users worldwide, and eventually making Zuckerberg the world’s youngest multi-billionaire, worth $6.9 billion according to the Forbes 2010 Rich List. The film is directed by David Fincher from a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, and stars Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake and Rooney Mara. Read more…
THE WAR WAGON – Dimitri Tiomkin
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
The tale opens with Taw Jackson played by America’s defining western actor John Wayne returning from prison. This film is indeed a rarity as Wayne for the first time in his career plays a villain. He is bent on recovering his fortune which was stolen from him by antagonist Frank Pierce after being wounded in a shoot-out. At his ranch Jackson decides to make a deal with Lomax (Kirk Douglas), the very man who shot him five years ago to join forces against Pierce and steal a large gold shipment. The gold is transported in an armored stage coach called “The War Wagon” that is very heavily guarded. This is a classic example of vigilante justice as these two men collaborate in assembling a team of men to stage a hold-up to regain Jackson’s lost gold. Read more…
MEGAMIND – Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A silly-but-fun animated action/comedy set in a world of super-heroes and super-villains, Megamind features the voice talent of Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, Tina Fey and Jonah Hill. After their respective planets are destroyed Superman-style, two alien babies – one who looks human, one with a giant blue head and superior intellect – crash land on Earth. The human-looking baby grows up to be Metro Man, the savior of the fictional Metro City, while the other grows up to be Megamind, his arch enemy and super-villain. After kidnapping beautiful reporter Roxanne, Megamind hatches a typically hare-brained scheme to kill Metro Man but – as much to his own surprise as anyone else’s – actually succeeds in apparently dispatching his nemesis. However, rather than being happy with his triumph, Megamind quickly becomes depressed with having no-one to fight, and concocts a new scheme: to genetically alter Roxanne’s hapless cameraman Hal, turning him into a new hero… Read more…
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