Archive
DEFINITELY MAYBE – Clint Mansell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A pleasant-natured romantic comedy starring Ryan Reynolds, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin and Rachel Weisz, and directed by Adam Brooks, Definitely Maybe tells the story of a political speech-writer (Reynolds) recounting the stories of how he met his ex-wife, and some of his other earlier romances, to his precocious and inquisitive daughter, Maya (Breslin).
It’s one of those nice, warm-hearted movies in which everyone has a happy ending, and in order to capture the contemporary flavor of the story, the director turned to composer Clint Mansell for the music – an unusual choice, considering Mansell’s background as a musical with the band Pop Will Eat Itself, but one which turns out well. Read more…
JUMPER – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Jumper is an enjoyably dumb action adventure movie about people who can teleport anywhere they wish, and the people who wish to stop them. Star Wars’s Hayden Christensen stars as David Rice, a young man who discovers that, through a genetic anomaly, he can teleport himself anywhere, at any time. After severl years of enjoying the carefree existence, he comes in contact with a fellow jumper named Griffin (Jamie Bell), who tells him that there have been jumpers through time, and that a war has been raging between these people, and a group of people dedicated to exterminating them – one of whom is the ruthless Roland (Samuel L. Jackson). The film was directed by Doug Liman, the director of the original Bourne Identity, and as such brought his regular composer, John Powell, on board with him. Read more…
THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES – James Horner
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Once upon a time, James Horner was considered one of the kings of fantasy film music. Brassy, exciting efforts from the early part of Horner’s career included “Krull”, “Aliens”, “Brainstorm”, “Cocoon”, and two “Star Trek” films. Around the mid-1990’s, Horner seemingly dropped the fantasy genre (and indeed, many other genres) to focus pretty much exclusively on prestigious dramatic efforts. With rare lighthearted exceptions like the “Zorro” films and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, Horner’s writing has been quite serious and introspective. While this certainly isn’t a bad thing, many wondered when the composer would return to something more fanciful. Read more…
FOOL’S GOLD – George Fenton
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A romantic comedy action-adventure directed by Andy Tennant and starring Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson and Donald Sutherland, Fool’s Gold follows the fortunes of Benjamin and Tess Finnegan – soon-to-be-divorced deep sea treasure hunters in the Caribbean who, despite being on the verge of a bitter separation, team up for one last adventure when they find directions to a lost Spanish treasure. Cue the light hearted action, the playful banter between the protagonists, and McConaughey with his shirt off and his abs on display, as is usually the case in films like this. Read more…
IN BRUGES – Carter Burwell
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Acclaimed playwright Martin McDonagh has made the leap to the big screen with his directorial debut, “In Bruges” (which he also wrote, of course). The film stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as a couple of hit men hiding out in the lovely city of Bruges after a hit goes sour. Ralph Fiennes also plays a supporting role, and reviews have mostly been quite positive (including a four-star rave from Roger Ebert). McDonagh seems to be a pretty intelligent guy, and like a lot of intelligent directors in Hollywood (such as Joel and Ethan Coen, Spike Jonze, David Mamet, David O. Russell, and others), he has picked Carter Burwell to provide the score. Only Thomas Newman is able to rival Burwell in his ability to snag high-profile indie film assignments. Read more…
THE EYE – Marco Beltrami
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The remake of a very good Thai horror movie from 2002, directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud, The Eye stars Jessica Alba as a young woman named Sydney Wells, blind from birth, who undergoes a revolutionary new surgical procedure to transplant her corneas, which successfully restores her eyesight. However, before long, Sydney begins to realize that, in addition to having to readjust to life in a sighted world, she has something else to cope with: she can see ghosts. Read more…
MEET THE SPARTANS – Christopher Lennertz
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
These ‘instant spoof’ movies – Scary Movie, Date Movie, Epic Movie and the like – are becoming so tiresome. They wore out their welcome a long time ago, but nevertheless the studios keep churning them out, so someone, somewhere, must like them. Meet the Spartans is the latest such rehash, taking potshots at films such as 300, Spiderman III, Shrek and Ghost Rider – all of which were clearly rife for ridicule (not). Kevin Sorbo, Sean Maguire (a long way from Grange Hill) and Carmen Electra slum it in the cast; Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer direct.
The irony of all this is that Christopher Lennertz’s score is entirely serious – as Elmer Bernstein showed, the best way to score comedy is to not treat it like a comedy – and ends up actually being better than a lot of the scores for the movies this film lampoons Read more…
RAMBO – Brian Tyler
Original Review by Clark Douglas
John Rambo, that complex-political-symbol-turned-pulp-hero played by Sylvester Stallone, is finally back. After a long absence in which nobody really seemed to miss Rambo very much, Stallone has brought the character back to life in an attempt to quench the undying mild curiousity of his fans. His new effort is winning reviews similar to those that greeted the second and third Rambo films, and people generally seem a lot more cynical about seeing 60-year-old Rambo do battle in the jungle than they did about seeing 60-year-old Rocky do battle in a boxing ring. Read more…
UNTRACEABLE – Christopher Young
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Gregory Hoblit’s “Untraceable” was a film that seemed to be made with good intentions, but it never really worked. The film stars Diane Lane as an FBI Agent investigating a website that allows it’s visitors to help kill a victim. How? All they have to do is go to the website. The more hits it gets, the closer some innocent victim comes to their death. The film is essentially a disgusted sermon about our horrible, desensitized culture (which I agree with in principle), but it too willingly revels in the very depraved violence that it seems to be condemning. Read more…
CLOVERFIELD – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A silly but enjoyable monster movie written by JJ Abrams (the creator of Lost) and directed by Matt Reeves, Cloverfield stars Mike Vogel, T.J. Miller, Jessica Lucas, Lizzy Caplan, Odette Yustman and Michael Stahl-David as a group of young twenty-somethings in New York who, while attending a going-away party, become the unwitting observers of a catastrophe when a huge monster of indeterminate origin begins attacking the city. The film then unfolds in pseudo-documentary fashion, as video taped on a hand held camera by one of the group, as they make their way across the increasingly devastated downtown Manhattan, trying to make their way to safety. Read more…
27 DRESSES – Randy Edelman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A breezy romantic comedy starring Grey’s Anatomy’s Katherine Heigl and directed by Anne Fletcher, 27 Dresses is a film about a perennial ‘always the bridesmaid, never the bride’. After serving as a bridesmaid 27 times, Jane Nichols (Heigl) finally resigns herself to her matrimony-less fate when her sister Tess (Malin Åkerman) accepts a proposal of marriage from her boss George (Edward Burns), whom Jane secretly loves. Into the situation comes reporter Kevin (James Marsden), a frustrated serious journalist stuck covering the society pages, and who has a view of marriage as cynical as Jane’s. Of course, this being a romantic comedy, it’s not difficult to predict what happens next. Read more…
HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX – James Hannigan
GAME ZONE REVIEW
Original Review by Joseph W. Bat
Is it really any surprise that one of the most successful book series and now film series has made its entry into the video game domain? Of course we are talking about Harry Potter. Author JK Rowling never thought her book would be as successful as it is or make its way onto the big screen and she probably didn’t think it would be a video game either, but since every film there has seen a video game adaptation. Since the first video game, composer Jeremy Soule had written award winning music till Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which was arguably the best music he had written for the video games. This time around, composer James Hannigan has written the music for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. For a very good reason, the music here has been receiving more attention than previous efforts – read on to find out. Read more…
ALIEN VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM – Brian Tyler
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s interesting how the careers of Brian Tyler and the late Jerry Goldsmith have dovetailed: Tyler replaced Goldsmith on Timeline in 2003, and is scoring the fourth Rambo movie in a series which Goldsmith made his own. On Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, Tyler is not only following in the footsteps of Goldsmith, but also James Horner, Elliot Goldenthal and Alan Silvestri, each of whom left an indelible musical mark on their respective entries into the franchises. What’s most impressive about this score is how Tyler has managed to pay homage to all the composers who preceded him by incorporating some of their compositional stylistics into his own music, while still retaining a great deal of his own voice throughout the score. Read more…
THE BUCKET LIST – Marc Shaiman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s been a while since the world had an original score by Marc Shaiman since he went off to write Hairspray and subsequently become the new darling of Broadway, but when Rob Reiner comes calling, Shaiman usually responds – and so we have The Bucket List, the latest cinematic collaboration between the two. The film stars Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as two old men – both diagnosed with terminal illnesses – who make ‘the bucket list’, outlining the things they want to achieve before they shuffle off the mortal coil and kick the bucket. And so, the film follows their various misadventures as the pair escape from their cancer ward and subsequently tick off all the items on their list by going skydiving, driving stunt cars, traveling the world, and living their lives to the fullest before time runs out on them. Read more…
EL ORFANATO/THE ORPHANAGE – Fernando Velázquez
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A hugely effective mystery/horror/thriller from Spain, El Orfanato is the latest film from Iberia to take the art houses by storm, off the back of the likes of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone. The film, which is directed by Juan Antonio Bayona and stars Belén Rueda, Fernando Cayo and Roger Príncep, tells the story of a woman named Laura, who brings her family back to her childhood home, where she opens an orphanage for handicapped children. Once there, Laura discovers that the new environment awakens her young son’s imagination – but before long, the fantasy games he plays with an invisible friend turn into something much more frightening. Desperate to save her family from the increasingly disturbing occurrences in the house, Laura turns to a group of parapsychologists for help in unraveling the mystery that has taken over the orphanage – but finds something more terrifying than she could have imagined. Read more…
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