Archive
THE GRUDGE – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The story of The Grudge has a long history. Originally conceived as a TV movie in Japan in 2000 by writer/director Takeshi Shimizu, he adapted his own work for the big screen in Ju-On in 2003. Having been earmarked for the American re-make treatment by producers Sam Raimi and Bob Tapert, Shimizu was once again approached to give life to his subject, thereby putting him in the unique position of being the director of the remake of the remake of his own original film! Essentially a haunted house story, The Grudge tells the tale of Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar), an American nurse in Japan who, after visiting a seemingly catatonic patient in a everyday suburban neighborhood, finds herself experiencing terrible visions: a pallid, fish-eyed little boy named Toshio, who is virtually silent except when he meows like a cat, is hiding in a cupboard upstairs – and worse still, a ghastly, shadowy specter is hovering over the prone body of the old woman. Despite Karen fleeing the house, she – and everyone else who it comes into contact with – find themselves being haunted by these unearthly presences. Could it be that the house itself is causing these manifestations? And, if so, does it have anything to do with the murder of a mother and son at the hands of their husband/father there years previously? Read more…
BEING JULIA – Mychael Danna
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A period drama with theatrical overtones, Being Julia is the latest film from respected Hungarian director István Szabó. Based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, and set in London during the 1930s, the film focuses on the popular and successful stage actress Julia Lambert (Annette Bening), a woman in her 50s whose youthful elegance allows her to play roles 20-30 years her junior. Bored with her marriage to theatre director Michael Gaslin (Jeremy Irons), and with her stage career, Julia embarks on a passionate affair with Tom Fennell (Shaun Evans), and young and ambitious American abroad. However, when Julia’s stage performances begin to flounder in the wake of her new ‘interest’, Michael replaces her with up-and-coming actress Avice Crichton (Lucy Punch) – who also happens to be Tom’s girlfriend. Intent on becoming the “next Julia”, Avice shines in her performances – but the current Julia isn’t ready to be replaced, and carefully plots her revenge. Read more…
TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE – Harry Gregson-Williams, Trey Parker, Marc Shaiman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In this post-9/11 world, where the threat of global terrorism looms overhead, where the fate of the people of Iraq hangs in the balance, and where political correctness in relation to sensitive subjects has reached fever pitch, thank God that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are around to bring everything back into perspective. The irreverent duo, who inject more intelligent humor into a single episode of South Park than most comedies can manage in a decade, have turned their satirical attention to the world of the American action movies and George W. Bush’s foreign policy with Team America: World Police. Read more…
ARSÈNE LUPIN – Debbie Wiseman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Regular readers of Movie Music UK will know that I am a big fan of the British composer Debbie Wiseman. Not only is she blazing a trail for female composers in film music at a time when they are still vastly outnumbered in the battle of the sexes, but she has written a number of staggeringly good scores since she burst on the international scene in the mid-1990s: Tom & Viv, Haunted and especially her 1997 masterpiece Wilde are amongst my personal favorite scores. Taking that into account, you will understand what massive praise I am bestowing when I say that, unequivocally, Arsène Lupin is her finest score to date. Read more…
LADDER 49 – William Ross
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
For some reason, there aren’t very many movies made about fire fighters – Ron Howard’s 1991 blockbuster Backdraft being one of the few high-profile exceptions. This phenomenon is odd, as their exploits are inherently cinematic, approaching as they do raging infernos with a degree of selflessness and heroism that makes their exploits an engaging movie-going experience. Also, since many members of the New York Fire Department were killed in the aftermath of 9/11, the lives of the men and women who battle fires on a daily basis have taken on noble, almost mythic proportions in American culture – and it is this angle that director Jay Russell’s film Ladder 49 explores. Read more…
THE FORGOTTEN – James Horner
Original Review by Peter Simons
Having one of the year’s more interesting premises, The Forgotten tells the story of Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore), a mother who is told that her recently deceased son never even existed, and that she merely imagined nine years of her life with him. Unwilling to accept this shocking news and firmly believing that the truth is out there, Telly embarks on a personal quest for her lost child. Written by Gerald Di Pego, the film has a promising scenario, but critics derided it for making a few too many unwelcome plot turns, and eventually leaving the realms of the “intriguing” and becoming “ridiculous”. Nevertheless, the film performed rather well at the box office, taking over $60 million in its first six weeks. Read more…
THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION – Thomas Newman
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
As it is currently enjoying a limited cinematic re-release to celebrate its tenth anniversary, and has recently been released on a special 3-disc collectors DVD, I thought I would take the opportunity re-visit and re-review Thomas Newman’s score for The Shawshank Redemption. When I first saw this film back in March 1995, I thought it to be a worthy, enjoyable film, taking into account my comparative immaturity and lack of experience in things cinematic. Now, a decade later on, I consider it one of the best films I have ever seen; a warm, uplifting, moving tribute to the indomitable human spirit, the power of friendship, and the need for hopes and dreams. Read more…
SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW – Edward Shearmur
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Having recently been forced to suffer the deaths of Jerry Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein – by anyone’s estimation two of the greatest film music composers who ever lived – thoughts within the film music world have quite naturally been turning to wonder who will fill their shoes. One name which keeps re-occurring as a possible future ‘great’ is that of Edward Shearmur, the young English composer who began his career shuffling papers for Michael Kamen, and who now has carved out a solid career for himself through recent scores such as Reign of Fire, The Count of Monte Cristo and Johnny English. As talented as he has shown he can be in the past, nothing will quite prepare you for how good his latest score, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, is. Read more…
RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE – Jeff Danna
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
As the second in a projected series of movies spinning off from the classic Capcom computer game Biohazard, Resident Evil: Apocalypse has a big reputation to live up to. The original game is one of the most-played and best-loved survival horror games in history, and is credited as being the inspiration for an entire genre of similar experiences. The first Resident Evil movie made $101 million worldwide in 2002, and was the highest-grossing movie of the year for the Sony subsidiary Screen Gems. Apocalypse, which is once again is written by British sci-fi specialist Paul W.S. Anderson, essentially picks up where the first movie left off, with ass-kicking heroine Alice (Milla Jovovich), having battled hordes of virus-infected zombies and other assorted nasties, escaping alive from the Hive of the Umbrella Corporation building, only to find Raccoon City a desolate wasteland. With the deadly T-virus on the loose and turning the good citizens of the city into slavering zombies, Alice and the other survivors she encounters (Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Zack Ward) must fight their way through the hordes to safety. However, their biggest challenge lies with the seemingly unstoppable Nemesis, a super-human mutation created by the virus, whose sole goal is to kill every living thing… Read more…
ANACONDAS: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID – Nerida Tyson-Chew
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Quite why anyone made a sequel to the 1997 minor hit Anaconda is beyond me. The original, directed by Luis Llosa, was famous for featuring early star turns from Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson, for the ‘Jon Voight leer’, and (amongst score fans at least) for having a serviceable score by Randy Edelman. Now, seven years after the fact, journeyman director Dwight H. Little has resurrected the franchise, and turned out one of the most critically derided movies of 2004 – an over-egged pudding that threatens to destroy the fledgling movie careers of stars Johnny Messner, Kadee Strickland and former Coronation Street actor Matthew Marsden almost before they have begun. Read more…
ALIEN VS. PREDATOR – Harald Kloser
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In an attempt to breathe life into the franchises, Twentieth Century Fox have done what Universal did over half a century ago by pitching two of their greatest monster creations against each other in a single motion picture. But this is not Frankenstein, Dracula or The Wolfman: the monsters here are Predators and Aliens. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, Alien vs. Predator stars Lance Henriksen as Charles Weyland, a billionaire industrialist leading an archaeological expedition in Antarctica in the not-so-distant future. When the team unearths the ruins of an ancient pyramid buried beneath the ice, it is hoped that a great breakthrough in human history has been reached. However, the team soon find themselves unwittingly caught in the middle of an intergalactic war in which the fearsome Predators come to earth to take part in a coming-of-age ritual that involves them hunting and killing a group of fully-grown Aliens, who have also been buried under the ice for the past few millennia… Read more…
THE VILLAGE – James Newton Howard
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
With the exception of The Sixth Sense, which was brilliant on all fronts, I have never been that fond of M. Night Shyamalan’s slow-moving thrillers, or of the scores his regular composer James Newton Howard wrote for them. Unbreakable was sub-par, and Signs was a fairly good film but I was one of the few who did not connect with the score. Shyamalan’s fourth and latest film is The Village, a mysterious tale set in Covington, a hamlet in 19th century Pennsylvania. Creatures dwell in the woods near the village, and an unspoken truce has existed between the humans and the creatures for decades – essentially, we won’t disturb you, if you don’t disturb us. However, things change for the worse when young Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) ventures beyond the boundaries and into the domain of ‘Those We Don’t Speak Of’ and incites their wrath. With a cast that includes Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt and Adrien Brody, the film has the right credentials to be a success, while the score is a rarity in that, already, it is by far the best for a Shyamalan film to date. Read more…
THE BOURNE SUPREMACY – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When The Bourne Identity, the first film based upon Robert Ludlum’s massively successful spy novels, grossed almost $122 million at the US box office, a sequel was inevitable. The Bourne Supremacy sees Matt Damon returning as the eponymous Jason Bourne, the former CIA assassin who, following the exploits of the last film, has settled down with a new identity in a tropical paradise with his girlfriend Marie (Franka Potente). However, when the CIA comes knocking on Bourne’s door once more, trying to frame him for a bungled operation, Bourne decides to fight back and clear his name. The film is directed by Englishman Paul Greengrass, making his Hollywood debut following years of sterling work creating top-notch dramas for British TV, and co-stars Joan Allen, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles and Karl Urban. Read more…
I, ROBOT – Marco Beltrami
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Marco Beltrami was a late addition to the creative team of I Robot, following the dismissal of original composer Trevor Jones by director Alex Proyas. Beltrami had just nineteen days to write and record his replacement score – no mean feat to accomplish in such a short space of time, and with the added pressure of knowing that the film was one of 2004’s most anticipated summer releases. His success is nothing short of remarkable, and it’s quality is testament to his increasing stature as one of film music’s true emerging talents. Read more…
KING ARTHUR – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I was going to open this review by saying something along the lines of “Can Media Ventures sink any lower than this, yet another tepid regurgitation of past scores?”, but in actual fact, the more I have listened to King Arthur, it seems less terrible than it did on that first spin. It’s certainly not a great score: it’s unoriginal, clichéd, and at times quite laughably predictable in its construction and execution. But, mixed in with all the familiarity, there’s a great score trying to break out. Zimmer only lets it shine in brief, so-near-and-yet-so-far snippets, which tantalise the listener into wondering what this score could have been, if only… Read more…
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