Archive
THE ASTRONAUT FARMER – Stuart Matthewman
Original Review by Clark Douglas
The opening image of “The Astronaut Farmer” presents a challenge to the audience… almost a dare. It’s an image of a man in a spacesuit riding a horse across the plains, a bizarre thing that will either inspire curiosity, derision, or laughter from an audience. It’s the film’s way of saying, “get on or get off right now, because you’re in for something pretty unbelievable.” Some will (and have) labeled the film as a ridiculous piece of nonsense, which is understandable. It’s one of those stories that can “only happen in the movies”. Twenty years ago, that might have been a complaint on my end, but these days… I don’t think that’s so bad. Read more…
AMAZING GRACE – David Arnold
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the least worthy aspects of the British Empire was their involvement in and implicit support of the international slave trade in the 1700s. For over one hundred years, thousands upon thousands of west African tribesmen were forcibly removed from their homes and shipped overseas to work as slaves, on sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and in the cotton fields of what would eventually become the United States. This heinous activity, in Britain at least, was eventually abolished due to the tireless activity of one man: William Wilberforce. Amazing Grace, directed by Michael Apted and starring Ioan Gruffudd, tells the life story of Wilberforce: his first hesitant steps into British government as the young member of Parliament from Yorkshire in 1780, his friendship with future Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (Benedict Cumberbatch), his conversion to evangelical Christianity in 1785, his subsequent encounters with Anglican clergyman John Newton (Albert Finney) – the writer of the eponymous hymn Amazing Grace – and his eventual immersion into and leadership of the abolition movement which eventually led to the slave trade being successfully abolished in 1807. In addition to the lead actors, the film boasts a starry supporting cast including Romola Garai, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon, Ciaran Hinds, and Senegalese singer/songwriter Youssou N’Dour as Oloudaqh Equiano, the slave who first inspired Wilberforce to act. Read more…
ANGEL – Philippe Rombi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Angel, also known as The Real Life of Angel Deverell, is a French-English romantic comedy-drama based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor (the writer, not the actress), and is the second English-language feature from the acclaimed French filmmaker François Ozon. Romola Garai stars as the eponymous Angel, a fiery and passionate aspiring writer in late-Victorian England, whose determination, intelligence, and sense of imagination and magic allows her to escape from the dreary tenement where she lived, and fulfill her literary dreams. The film charts Angel’s life, from birth to death, with a sense of satire and a biting wit, and features an outstanding supporting cast, including Sam Neill, Charlotte Rampling, Lucy Russell and Simon Woods. They are accompanied by a truly marvelous score by Ozon’s regular musical collaborator, Philippe Rombi. Read more…
MUSIC AND LYRICS – Adam Schlesinger
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Another Valentine’s Day, another romantic comedy at the movie theatre. Wonders never cease to exist. I’ve lamented the current languishing state of romantic comedies in general, screenwriters have gotten lazier and lazier with the genre, pushing out inane drivel with no romance, no humor, and no feeling. It takes a movie like “Music and Lyrics” to remind us of why the genre can be such fun.
At the center of attention in “Music and Lyrics” is the finest romantic comedy star in movies today, Hugh Grant, who has single-handedly resuscitated countless formulaic films. Here, he plays a washed-up pop singer named Alex Fletcher, one of the two key members in the cheesy 80’s band PoP (we see a hilarious music video of one of the band’s hits over the opening credits). Read more…
GHOST RIDER – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The first of Christopher Young’s two major 2007 releases, Ghost Rider is a super hero movie with a twist. Directed by Mark Steven Johnson and starring Nicolas Cage, Peter Fonda, Eva Mendes, Sam Elliott and Wes Bentley, the film follows the life of daredevil stunt motorcyclist Johnny Blaze (Cage). When his father falls terminally ill with cancer, Blaze strikes a deal with the devil: his soul to save his father’s life. The deal, however, backfires on Johnny, turning him into a skeleton-headed motorbike-riding demon with a blazing inferno raging from his skull and hands! If this sounds all a bit hokey, you could well be right, but the fight between Cage’s urban cowboy superhero and Bentley’s evil son-of-the-devil strikes the right balance between over the top action and downright silliness. Read more…
BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA – Aaron Zigman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Since first emerging as a film music composer in 2002, with his score for John Q, Aaron Zigman has quickly – and somewhat unexpectedly – become a film music everyman, this decade’s version of John Debney, Marc Shaiman or Randy Edelman: a composer who can be relied upon to deliver the goods with the minimum of fuss, but never really drawing attention to himself or his work in the wider world. In 2006 alone Zigman scored an astonishing six movies, including the moderately successful Step Up, Take the Lead and ATL, and shows no sign of slowing down in 2007, with three fairly major studio assignments already in the first couple of months of the year. The second of this trio is Bridge to Terabithia, a new fantasy adventure based on the popular novel by Katherine Paterson. Read more…
BREACH – Mychael Danna
Original Review by Clark Douglas
You have to admire a film that manages to underplay the greatest security breach in U.S. history. Those who follow the news will remember the arrest of F.B.I. Agent Robert Hanssen, who was found guilty of giving top-secret information to the Russians and compromising the safety of all sorts of things, many of them too secret to be revealed. The story could have easily been turned into a sensational thriller full of all sorts of shocking elements, but “Breach” isn’t interested in that. It places all the cards on the table from the very start, taking away suspense and tension and offering the chance to view a carefully designed character study. The trade-off is more than acceptable. Read more…
L’ULTIMO DEI CORLEONESI – Ennio Morricone
Original Review by Clark Douglas
If composers were construction workers, I’m pretty sure that I would want Ennio Morricone to build my house. There is not another composer working today who is as reliable and consistent as Morricone, no one who creates such excellent and admirable music on such a regular basis. At his best, Morricone takes us to the heights of musical ecstasy, showing us levels of beauty that we had previously only fantasized about. At his worst, Morricone writes difficult, challenging, harsh music that is easy to admire but incredibly difficult to listen to. Even if you hate the album, you have a hard time saying anything bad about it, because it’s done so well. Read more…
NORBIT – David Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Pity David Newman. No other working composer in Hollywood today has such a disparity between the size of his composing talent and the quality of the films he is asked, or agrees, to score. It has not always been this way. In late 80s and early 1990s, he scored a succession of generally well-regarded highbrow comedy films such as Throw Momma from the Train, Heathers, The War of the Roses, and even the occasional quality drama, like Hoffa in 1992. His career trajectory finally seemed to be taking an upward turn following his double Oscar nomination for Anastasia in 1997, but since then he has found himself in a continual and inexplicable rut, scoring the most inane comedies Hollywood has to offer: the likes of Daddy Day Care, Death to Smoochy and Monster-in-Law. Once in a while something comes along which briefly makes you think he might have turned a corner – Ice Age, or Serenity, for example – but before you know it he’s back again, scoring the new Eddie Murphy comedy. Which brings us to Norbit. Read more…
HANNIBAL RISING – Ilan Eshkeri, Shigeru Umebayashi
Original Review by Clark Douglas
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a franchise fall as far as this one. “Silence of the Lambs” is often unfairly labeled a horror film, it is so much more than that. It’s a brilliant character study featuring one of the most fascinating characters ever to grace the movie screen. Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter, as played by Anthony Hopkins, was nothing short of pure evil, magnetic and seductive, a layer of intelligent charm covering the terrifying monster underneath. When Hopkins played the role in two sequels, “Hannibal” and “Red Dragon”, the character lost a bit of fascination, but watching Hopkins play the character was so enjoyable that those movies were tolerable, particularly “Red Dragon”. Read more…
DE FORTABTE SJÆLES Ø/ISLAND OF LOST SOULS – Jane Antonia Cornish
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In such a crowded market as the today’s international film music world, it’s difficult to make a splash. Hundreds of films are released each year, many of which never make any kind of box office impact or draw any kind of press, positive or negative. The vast majority of these undiscovered films have scores by jobbing composers, looking to make a name for themselves, looking to be attached to that one, golden movie which can launch a career. One such film is the Danish supernatural fantasy-adventure “De Fortabte Sjæles Ø”, better known internationally as Island of Lost Souls, which could very well be the break-out score for the comparatively little known English composer Jane Antonia Cornish. Read more…
BECAUSE I SAID SO – David Kitay
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A romantic comedy which is one part sweet and entertaining, yet one part highly irritating, director Michael Lehmann’s chick flick was one of the successes of the early part of the year. Mandy Moore stars as Milly Wilder, a young chef whose lackluster love life is cause for concern for her overbearing, overprotective mother Daphne (Diane Keaton); so, in a last-ditch attempt to finally find a dream husband for her daughter, Daphne begins auditioning potential suitors, and forces straight-laced architect Jason (Tom Everett Scott) in Milly’s direction.
Meanwhile, and without Daphne’s knowledge, Milly begins dating jazz musician Johnny (Gabriel Macht) – the polar opposite of Jason, but in whom Milly sees a future… Read more…
SMOKIN’ ACES – Clint Mansell
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Yet another Tarantino-inspired crime flick, Joe Carnahan’s “Smokin’ Aces” is one of the more wildly diverse motion pictures I’ve seen this year. It’s like channel surfing, and the only thing all the channels have in common is that they are violent and full of profanity. Otherwise, the tone flops all over the place… broad comedy, subtle comedy, brutal action, morality tale, anti-morality tale, mystery, drama… ultimately, the movie shoots off it’s climax too early and becomes too confused for it’s own good. Despite solid turns from the likes of Ryan Reynolds and Jeremy Piven, and an otherwise strong supporting cast, it’s just a big mess of a movie. Read more…
EPIC MOVIE – Edward Shearmur
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Does anybody else remember when this sort of movie used to be funny? There was once a time where these silly spoofs of movie genres were guaranteed to offer a few good laughs at worst, and a hysterical time at the movies at best. I suppose the 70’s and 80’s were the heyday for this kind of movie… I’m talking about stuff from Mel Brooks and the Zucker crew like “Young Frankenstein”, “Blazing Saddles”, “Silent Movie”, “Airplane”, “The Naked Gun”, and “Spaceballs”. There were even some okay ones in the 90’s, the first “Scary Movie” was pretty funny. I thought that “Date Movie” was the absolutely worst of these ever to be released, but that has now been topped by “Epic Movie”, which hasn’t got a funny bone in it’s body. Read more…
CATCH AND RELEASE – Brian Transeau, Tommy Stinson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A gentle romantic drama starring Jennifer Garner and directed by Susannah Grant, Catch and Release follows the fortunes of young thirtysomething Gray Wheeler (Garner), whose idyllic life is thrown into turmoil when her fiancé is accidentally killed on his bachelor party weekend. Struggling to come to terms with the loss, as well as the fact that she may not have known her husband-to-be as well as she thought she did, she turns to his three best friends, Fritz (Timothy Olyphant), Dennis (Sam Jaeger) and Sam (Kevin Smith), to help her move on.
Trance music composer Brian Transeau, better known as “BT”, teamed up with Guns ‘n’ Roses bass player Tommy Stinson to write Catch and Release’s score – which, considering the backgrounds of the composers – turned out to be light and undemanding, with little or no influence from either the trance music or metal scene. Read more…
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