Archive
THE BISHOP’S WIFE – Hugo Friedhofer
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Samuel Goldwyn came across the novella “The Bishop’s Wife” (1928) by Robert Nathan and decided its tender family tale would translate well to the big screen. He would manage production using his own production company to fund the project, with RKO Pictures distributing. The film suffered repeated setbacks that led to Goldwyn sacking his director William A. Seiter and replacing him with Henry Coster, switching the actors for the two male lead roles, tearing down and rebuilding all the sets, and rewrites of the original screenplay of Leonardo Bercovici and Robert Sherwood, by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. A fine trio of actors were cast, including Cary Grant as Dudley the angel, Loretta Young as Julia Brougham, and David Niven as Bishop Henry Brougham. Read more…
CLIFFHANGER – Trevor Jones
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the silliest, but most enjoyable, action adventure movies of the early 1990s was the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Cliffhanger – aka the film that put many people off mountain climbing for life. Sly plays Gabe Walker, a park ranger and expert mountaineer working in the Colorado Rockies. Walker is left traumatized after the wife of his best friend Hal (Michael Rooker) falls to her death during an ill fated rescue; he plans to retire and tries to convince his girlfriend, fellow ranger Jessie (Janine Turner) to come with him. However, his plans for a quiet life are put on hold when they receive a distress call from the mountain, and Gabe and Hal set off to help – only for them to discover that the distress call was a fake placed by Eric Qualen (John Lithgow), a psychopathic British former military intelligence officer, now the leader of the gang of thieves trying to rob $100 million from the U.S. Treasury. Their plane has crashed on the mountain, and the money is scattered all over the area, and Qualen wants Gabe to retrieve it for them. The film was directed by Renny Harlin and was a major box office hit in the summer of 1993. Read more…
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS – Erich Wolfgang Korngold
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
The play 1923 Outward Bound by Sutton Vane enjoyed successful theatrical runs in London and later on Broadway, where it achieved 144 performances. In 1943 Warner Brothers Studios decided to embark on a remake of their original fantasy film version of Outward Bound from 1930. Jack Warner and Mark Hellinger took charge of production, Edward A. Blatt was tasked with directing, and Daniel Fuchs was hired to write a new screenplay, incorporating story elements from both the original 1924 Broadway play and the 1930 film. A stellar cast was hired, including Paul Henreid as Henry Bergner, Eleanor Parker as Ann Bergner, Sydney Greenstreet as the Examiner, the Reverend Tim Thompson, Edmund Gwenn as Scrubby, John Garfield as Tom Prior, George Coulouris as Lingley, Faye Emerson as Maxine, Sara Allgood as Mrs. Midget, Dennis King as the Reverend Duke, Isobel Elsom as Genevieve Cliveden-Banks and Gilbert Emery as Benjamin Cliveden-Banks. Read more…
DAVE – James Newton Howard
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There’s an old adage, which I’m paraphrasing, which says something like: “those who seek out power are the ones to whom it should not be given”. This philosophy is the heart of Dave, one of the best and most interesting comedy-dramas of the 1990s. The film stars Kevin Kline as Dave Kovic, the pleasant and genial owner of a temp agency in Washington, D.C., who, as a side job, capitalizes on his remarkable resemblance to US President Bill Mitchell by comically impersonating him at events. Dave is even occasionally hired by the Secret Service to impersonate the real Mitchell to allow him to carry out an extramarital affair – and it is while at one of these ‘clandestine’ events that Mitchell suffers a massive stroke and is left incapacitated. To cover it up, and to further his own political aspirations, Mitchell’s chief of staff Bob Alexander (Frank Langella) cooks up a scheme where Dave will continue to act as President, implicate the Vice President (Ben Kingsley) in a scandal, appoint Alexander in his place, and then ‘die’ for real, leaving Alexander in the oval office. However, Dave proves to be unexpectedly excellent at the top job, even reconciling with President Mitchell’s estranged wife Ellen (Sigourney Weaver), to the point where Dave wonders whether he shouldn’t have the job for real. The film co-stars Kevin Dunn, Ving Rhames, and Charles Grodin, and was directed by Ivan Reitman. Read more…
THE CONSTANT NYMPH – Erich Wolfgang Korngold
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
The 1924 novel The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy was a popular sensation, which spawned a successful play by Basil Dean in 1926, and two movie incarnations; a 1928 silent film starring Ivor Novello and a 1933 talkie with Brian Aherne. Warner Brothers decided that they could offer a definitive film version and so bought the film rights from 20th Century Fox in 1940. The studio secured support from Kennedy to proceed and Henry Blanke and Hal B. Wallis were assigned production with a $1.1 million budget, Edmund Goulding was tasked with directing, and Kathryn Scola was hired to write the screenplay based on Basil Dean’s 1926 version. A superb cast was assembled, including; Joan Fontaine as Tessa Sanger, Charles Boyer as Lewis Dodd, and Alex Smith as Florence Creighton. Read more…
DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY – Randy Edelman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Certain film stars, especially those who die young, often attain a mythical status in popular culture after their death. James Dean is one of these figures. Marilyn Monroe is another. More recently, people like Chadwick Boseman are likely to maintain a significant profile for many years to come. For Asian Americans, their iconic star who died too soon is Bruce Lee, the San Francisco-born actor whose passion for martial arts – and his combining of those two things on film – made him a star. Lee died from a cerebral edema in July 1973 at the age of 32 with just a handful of released films – including The Big Boss and Fist of Fury – to his name; Enter the Dragon, his most famous film, and Game of Death, would be released posthumously. Despite his brief period of stardom, Lee’s movies revolutionized martial arts cinema, with their blend of realistic fight scenes and philosophical overtones. Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is a biopic based on his life; it stars Jason Scott Lee (no relation) in the title role, co-stars Lauren Holly as his wife Linda, and features Nancy Kwan, Robert Wagner, and Michael Learned in supporting roles. The film is directed by Rob Cohen, and has an original score by Randy Edelman. Read more…
CHEVALIER – Kris Bowers and Michael Abels
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Think of a classical composer. Any classical composer. What sort of face springs to mind? White. Male. Middle Aged. Some sort of imposing hairdo, probably a beard. Formal clothes. A facial expression that combines seriousness with intelligence. It’s the sort of face we’ve all seen for hundreds of years, from Mozart to Beethoven to Brahms, to Tchaikovsky and beyond. It’s what we’re all accustomed to seeing and thinking of when western classical music is mentioned. However, the truth is that there is, and has always been, more diversity than that, both in terms of gender and race, but most of the music of non-white non-male composers was overlooked and, at times, intentionally suppressed in the past, to the point that today very few of us know, and can name, any composers outside those gender-based and race-based confines. This new movie, Chevalier, attempts to redress some of that a little. Read more…
DEVOTION – Erich Wolfgang Korngold
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1942 Warner Brothers decided to embark upon opulent period piece involving a fictionalized biopic of the renown Brontë sisters. Robert Buckner was assigned production with Keith Winter and Edward Chodorov hired to write the screenplay. Curtis Bernhardt was tasked with directing a lavish and opulent tale and a stellar cast was assembled, including Olivia de Havilland as Charlotte Brontë, Ida Lupino as Emily Brontë, Nancy Coleman as Anne Brontë, Paul Henreid as Reverend Arthur Nicholls and Sydney Greenstreet as the renowned publisher William Makepeace Thackeray. Read more…
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING – Patrick Doyle
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I will always maintain that, with the possible exception of Sir Laurence Olivier, the only director who can successfully translate Shakespeare to the big screen is Kenneth Branagh. His 1989 cinematic debut Henry V was a lightning bolt, doing away with stuffy line readings and instead embracing rich and complex emotions, thereby making the Bard’s prose modern and invigorating. He brought scenes to life with lavish settings and action sequences, and surrounded it all with rich, bold music. His second Shakespeare adaptation after Henry V was this one: Much Ado About Nothing, a romantic comedy first published in 1599. Read more…
PETER PAN & WENDY – Daniel Hart
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I have lost count of how many Peter Pan movies there have been since the work was first published by Scottish author J. M. Barrie in 1904, such is its enduring popularity with audiences across the world. It’s a timeless story of Victorian children who yearn for adventure, of pirates and fairies, of lost boys and native princesses, and of a little boy who can fly and who refuses to grow up. One of the most popular big-screen versions of the story was the 1953 animated film produced by Walt Disney, and now as part of their ‘live action remakes’ series that film has been re-imagined as the magical adventure Peter Pan & Wendy. The film is directed by David Lowery – who also helmed the live-action Disney remake of Pete’s Dragon in 2016 – and stars Alexander Molony and Ever Anderson as the title characters Peter Pan and Wendy Darling, plus Jude Law as Captain Hook, Yara Shahidi as Tinker Bell, and Alyssa Wapanatahk as Tiger Lily. Read more…
DECEPTION – Erich Wolfgang Korngold
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Warner Brothers Studios was searching for a film that would showcase two of their leading actors, Barbara Stanwyck and Paul Henried. To that end, late in 1943 they purchased the film rights to the 1927 two-character French play “Monsieur Lamberthier” by Louis Verneuil. They believed that the film noir drama would translate well for a suspenseful big screen adaptation. Henry Blanke was assigned production, provided a $2.882 million budget, and John Collier and Joseph Than were hired to write the screenplay. Irving Rapper was tasked with directing and a powerhouse cast for the ages was assembled, including luminaries; Bette Davis as Christine Radcliffe, Paul Henreid as Karel Novak, and Claude Rains as Alexander Hollenius. In the three years it took to launch the project, Bette Davis, whose star was ascendant, replaced Stanwyck for the lead role. Read more…
ON DANGEROUS GROUND – Bernard Herrmann
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1951 director Nicholas Ray had just wrapped up shooting the WWII action film “The Flying Leathernecks” and decided that his next project would a film noir melodrama based on the 1945 novel “Mad With Much Heart” by Gerald Butler. RKO Pictures executives were initially resistant, finding the novel “unpleasant and uncommercial”, but were ultimately persuaded by Ray’s vision and passion. John Houseman was assigned production and A. I. Bezzerides was tasked with adapting Butler’s novel and writing the screenplay. For the cast, Ray hired Ida Lupino as Mary Malden, Robert Ryan as Jim Wilson, and Ward Bond as Walter Brent. Read more…
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH – Bernard Herrmann
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Alfred Hitchcock had directed in England, the film “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1934). In 1941 he decided on a new American incarnation, but it did not come to fruition until 1956 when Paramount Pictures agreed it was a movie that could be well-adapted to the new decade. Filwite Productions joined with Paramount and provided a $1.2 million budget. Hitchcock would manage production and direct, and Charles Bennett and D. B. Wyndham-Lewis were tasked with writing the screenplay. A fine cast was assembled with James Stewart as Dr. Benjamin McKenna, Doris Day as Josephine Conway McKenna, Bernard Miles as Edward Drayton, Brenda de Banzie as Lucy Drayton Christopher Olsen as Henry McKenna, and Daniel Gélin as Louis Bernard. Read more…
ANCHORS AWEIGH – Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn, and Georgie Stoll
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Gene Kelly caught the eye of Hollywood studios who were impressed by his athletic American style of dancing, as well as his talent as a choreographer. Seeking to capitalize on his talent, MGM studios offered him a contract. This led them to task him to choreograph, dance and star in the studio’s next planned musical – “Anchors Aweigh”. The film was yet another one of MGM Studios penchant for musicals. It would be the first of three “Buddy” films, which teamed Gene Kelly with Frank Sinatra. Production was assigned to Joe Pasternak with a budget of $2.6 million, Natalie Marcin was hired to write the story, with Isobel Lennart writing the screenplay, and George Sidney was tasked with directing. For the cast, Frank Sinatra would star as Clarence “Brooklyn” Doolittle, Gene Kelly as Joe Brady and Kathryn Grayson as Susan Abbott. Read more…
INDECENT PROPOSAL – John Barry
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
What would you do for a million dollars? That was the question on everyone’s lips following the release of Indecent Proposal, one of the most talked-about films of 1993. The film is directed by Adrian Lyne – the man behind such equally controversial fare as 9½ Weeks and Fatal Attraction – and stars Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson as Diana and David, a young couple who are deeply in love but in severe financial straits. In a final act of desperation they travel to Las Vegas and invest everything they have in a high-stakes game of poker – but they end up losing it all. Enter John Gage (Robert Redford), a handsome billionaire, who comes to David with the indecent proposal in question: one million dollars, in exchange for one night with Diana. What happens in the aftermath of this will test Diana and David’s relationship to its limits, and the film asks interesting questions about love, temptation, and the consequences of making choices based solely on money. Read more…
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