Archive
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…
TOBRUK – Bronislau Kaper
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
The movie is set in North Africa September 1942. Germany’s top General Erwin Rommel’s and his dreaded Afrika Korps are poised to invade Egypt. The allied command sends in a British Special Forces unit that includes German Jews which invariable causes friction and distrust with their British commandos. They proceed to kidnap a Canadian officer held prisoner by the Vichy French government in Algeria who is an expert topographer. The officer, Donald Craig, is charged with the daunting challenge of guiding this company of British and German-Jewish commandos through 800 miles of the desolate Sahara. The goal is to aid a planned amphibious landing against the seaport of Tobruk and its massive fuel storage base. The team is forced to confront and overcome various challenges, the final one being the discovery of an undetected German armored force poised to launch into Egypt. Read more…
127 HOURS – A. R. Rahman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The true story of Aron Ralston is one of human fortitude, bravery, defiance in the face of death, and incredible bad luck. A young and healthy daredevil with a penchant for extreme sports, Ralston took a brief weekend hiking trip to the canyons around Moab, Utah in the summer of 2003, and had the singular misfortune of suffering an accident which left his right arm pinned against a canyon wall by a large boulder, with no way of extricating it. After five lonely days, and hovering close to death, Ralston eventually took the unimaginable decision to amputate his own arm – with no anesthetic – using nothing more than a blunt Swiss Army knife, and staggered out of the canyon, where he was rescued and ultimately made a full recovery. Read more…
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART I – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The conclusion of the Harry Potter saga is as much of a cinematic event as it was a literary one when J.K. Rowling’s eagerly-awaited seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released in July 2007 and broke a myriad of records for book sales. The success of the Harry Potter franchise is quite astonishing: it is reportedly responsible for almost single-handedly revitalizing the children’s literature market, brought fantasy fiction out of geekdom and into the mainstream, and of course made Rowling herself a gazillionaire, thanks not only to the book sales but also to the spin off merchandise, theme park rides, and of course the movies and soundtracks based on her work. Read more…
IRON MAN 2 – John Debney
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The sequel to the phenomenally successful super hero movie from 2008, Iron Man 2 sees Robert Downey Jr. returning to don the futuristic red and gold suit as Tony Stark, the multi-billionaire industrialist who saves the world in his spare time as his metallic alter ego. This time around his nemesis is megalomaniacal Russian juggernaut Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), seeking revenge for the death of his scientist father, who helped design the original Iron Man technology. Directed by Jon Favreau, the film also stars Gwyneth Paltrow as Stark’s loyal assistant Pepper Potts, Don Cheadle as Stark’s friend Colonel “Rhodey” Rhodes, and Scarlett Johansson as the sexy undercover agent Nastaha Romanoff, also known as Black Widow. Read more…
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