Archive
THE RAINMAKER – Alex North
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Producer Hal B. Wallis took notice of the success of “The Rainmaker” play by N. Richard Nash, which had a 125-performance run on Broadway. He believed that its story would translate well to the big screen and so entered a bidding war with RKO Pictures in which he outbid them and secured the film rights for $300,000. Paramount Pictures agreed to finance and distribute the film, and N. Richard Nash was hired to adapt his play. Joseph Anthony was tasked with directing and a stellar cast was assembled, which included; Burt Lancaster as Bill Starbuck, Katherine Hepburn as Lizzie Curry, Wendell Corey as Deputy Sheriff J. S. File, Lloyd Bridges as Noah Curry, Cameron Prud’Homme as patriarch H.C. “Pop” Curry, and Earl Holliman as Jim Curry. Hepburn, who was forty-nine, was terribly miscast as the young Curry daughter Lizzie who was supposed to be in her late twenties. Despite this, she turned in a stellar performance that earned her an Academy Award nomination. Read more…
THE HANDLER – Grant Kirkhope
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Handler is a low-budget action thriller written and directed by Michael Matteo Rossi. It stars Chris Levine as Ryker Dune – what a name! – a mercenary-for-hire who turns against his boss Vinnie Fiore (Michael Pashan) after a job pushes his morality buttons one too many times. Ryker looks for a way out of the contract killer life for good, but Vinnie has other ideas; eventually Ryker finds himself holed up in a house as wave after wave of Vinnie’s men try to kill him. Cue the gun fights, fist fights, and bone-crunching action. Normally this is the type of film that would pass under my radar entirely; the director is a relative newcomer, the cast is full of unknowns, and the plot makes it sound like a cut-price version of any number of video-on-demand action thrillers that are released in a seemingly endless stream. The difference is that The Handler marks the mainstream theatrical film music debut of Grant Kirkhope, one of the most high-profile and acclaimed composers from the world of video games. Read more…
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST – Alan Menken and Howard Ashman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When looking back at the period now, considering their enormous success and influence, it’s easy to forget that Disney was a film studio in trouble in the 1980s. Their first four animated films during the decade – The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, and Oliver & Company – had not been particularly well-received, while the success of the fifth, The Little Mermaid in 1989, was certainly not seen as a guarantor of future achievement. Everything changed with the 1991 release of Beauty and the Beast, which became the first animated film ever to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, and subsequently set in motion a decade of almost unparalleled cinematic dominance for the house that Walt built. Read more…
LAST NIGHT IN SOHO – Steven Price
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
London in the 1960s was arguably the coolest place in the world at that time. Michael Caine and Sean Connery on the silver screen. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Dusty Springfield, and Petula Clark on the radio. Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton sashaying down Carnaby Street wearing fashions by Mary Quant. At least that’s how it seems to Eloise, the protagonist of Edgar Wright’s new psychological horror/thriller Last Night in Soho. Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is an aspiring fashion designer obsessed with the Swinging Sixties who moves from her country home to London to attend college. After a rocky start, she eventually settles into a bedsit flat owned by Miss Collins (Diana Rigg), but before long strange things start happening. Eloise had always had a connection to the supernatural – she has visions of her deceased mother – but now she is having vivid dreams where she travels back in time to Soho in the 60s, and observes a beautiful young nightclub singer named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) and her roguish boyfriend/manager Jack (Matt Smith). Although she is initially charmed and excited to be “living” in the time period she adores, things quickly turn sour as Eloise experiences the seedy underbelly of London through Sandie’s eyes, and her dreams quickly turn into nightmares. Read more…
GIANT – Dimitri Tiomkin
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Renowned author Edna Ferber sought to have her 1952 novel “Giant” brought to the big screen. She found willing partners in producer Henry Ginsberg and director George Stevens, and they formed Giant Productions to produce the film. They sold their film idea to Warner Brothers Studios who provided a budget of $2.0 million and agreed distribute. Stevens collaborated with screenwriters Ivan Moffat and Fred Guiol to write the screenplay, with some edits by author Ferber. Stevens took the reins to direct the film and assembled a magnificent cast including Elizabeth Taylor as Leslie Lynnton Benedict, Rock Hudson as Jordan “Bick” Benedict Jr., James Dean as Jett Rink, Carroll Baker as Luz Benedict II, Jane Withers as Vashti Hake Snythe, Chill Willis as Uncle Bawley, Mercedes McCambridge as Luz Benedict, Sal Mineo as Nagel Obregón, Dennis Hooper as Jordon “Jordy” Benedict II, Elsa Cárdenas as Juana Villalobos Benedict, and Earl Holliman as Robert “Bob” Dace. Read more…
THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE – Theodore Shapiro
Original Review by Christopher Garner
The Eyes of Tammy Faye tells the true story of the rise and fall of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (played by Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain). It follows the pair from their humble beginnings running a local tv station’s Christian-themed puppet show, to becoming superstars within the world of Christian televangelism (even opening a big Christian theme park), to Jim Bakker’s fall from grace due to rape allegations and accounting fraud (he was convicted for the latter and spent nearly five years in prison). The film is directed by Michael Showalter (of The Big Sick fame). Critics have been mostly positive about the film, with particular praise being lavished upon Jessica Chastain, whose transformation to play Tammy Faye across multiple decades has generated some Oscar buzz. Read more…
DYING YOUNG – James Newton Howard
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Dying Young is a romantic drama directed by Joel Schumacher, based on the novel by Marti Leimbach, starring Julia Roberts and Campbell Scott. Roberts stars as Hilary, a young woman who is hired to be a live-in nurse for Victor (Scott), a wealthy and well educated young man who is dying of leukemia. Of the course of a summer Hilary and Victor slowly fall in love – much to the disapproval of her mother (Ellen Burstyn) and his father (David Selby), neither of whom want to see their children get hurt – and decide to make the best out of life in whatever short period they may have together. The whole thing was designed to be a three-hanky weepie for incurable romantics who revel in tragic love stories, and it helped push Julia Roberts’s star even further into the stratosphere, considering that this was her fourth starring role in two years after Pretty Woman, Flatliners, and Sleeping With the Enemy, but it was not a hit with the critics – Roger Ebert said it was “a long, slow slog of a movie, up to its knees in drippy self-pity as it marches wearily toward its inevitable ending,” while Janet Maslin in Variety wrote simply said “Julia’s hot; Dying Young is lukewarm”. Read more…
DUNE – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In the years since it was first published in 1965, Frank Herbert’s Dune has grown consistently in stature and acclaim, and is now considered one of the greatest works of science fiction in the history of the genre. It’s a story about intergalactic power and control, alliances and betrayals, prophecy and mysticism, and is focused on events on the desert planet Arrakis. Arrakis is the sole source of ‘spice,’ a hallucinogenic spore naturally found in the sands of Arrakis, the use of which is what makes interstellar space travel possible; as such, spice is the most valuable commodity in the universe. Mining spice is a dangerous task, due to the inhospitableness of the planet, the presence of giant deadly sand worms, and the constant attacks by the native Fremen population, who despise their off-world colonizers. The main crux of the story follows the noble house of Atreides, which is sent to Arrakis by the Emperor of the galaxy to take over the running of the spice mines from the house of Harkonnen, their bitter rivals. What follows is essentially a power struggle for overall control of the galaxy between the Emperor, House Atreides, House Harkonnen, and the mysterious female-led religious order of the Bene Gesserit, with Paul Atreides, the young son of the duke of House Atreides, as the focal point of it all. Read more…
ANASTASIA – Alfred Newman
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1955 three Hollywood studios, Warner Brothers, MGM, and 20th Century Fox, entered into a bidding war to secure the film rights to the popular 1952 Broadway play Anastasia by Marcelle Maurette. They all believed that the tragedy that befell the Russian Romanov dynasty and the mystery of Anastasia would resonate with the public. In the end 20th Century Fox prevailed and paid Maurette £20,000. Buddy Adler was assigned production with a $3.5 million budget, Arthur Laurents was hired to write the screenplay, and Anatole Litvak was tasked with directing. A stellar cast was hired with Ingrid Bergman making her Hollywood return after seven years of being black-listed for her romance and marriage with director Roberto Rossellini. She would play Anna Koreff/Anastasia, and joining her would be Yul Brynner as General Bounine, Helen Hayes as Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, Matitia Hunt as Baroness Elena von Livenbaum, Ivan Desny as Prince Paul von Haraldberg, and Akim Tamiroff as Boris Andreivich Chernov. Read more…
THE LAST DUEL – Harry Gregson-Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Last Duel is a historical epic drama for the Me Too generation, a truly harrowing look at the powerlessness, lack of agency, and mis-treatment of women throughout time, and how comparatively little has changed over the course of the past several centuries in terms of how sexual assault is viewed differently by men and women. The film is directed by Ridley Scott and is based on the 2004 book of the same name by Eric Jager; ostensibly it looks at the circumstances leading up to, and the aftermath of, one of the last legally-sanctioned trial-by-combat duels, which took place in Paris in the year 1386. Matt Damon stars as Jean de Carrouges, a medieval knight in service to King Charles VI, who is married to the daughter of a nobleman, Marguerite de Thibouville, played by Jodie Comer. When Marguerite claims to have been raped by her husband’s best friend and squire Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), it sets circumstances in motion that result in De Carrouges and Le Gris facing off in battle – with the fate of Marguerite being decided by which of the pair lives, and which one dies. The film co-stars Ben Affleck as Le Gris’s benefactor, Count Pierre d’Alençon, as well as Harriet Walter and Alex Lawther; it was co-written by Nicole Holofcener with Damon and Affleck, for whom this is the first screenplay since their Oscar-winning effort Good Will Hunting in 1997. Read more…
CURLY SUE – Georges Delerue
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Curly Sue is a warm-hearted family comedy written and directed by John Hughes – the last film Hughes directed prior to his death in 2009, although he did write and produce others. The film stars James Belushi as Bill, a drifter and scammer who swindles strangers out of money to support himself and his partner in crime, a cute moppet orphan girl he calls Curly Sue (Alisan Porter). After moving from Detroit to Chicago, Bill and Curly Sue find their next target in Grey Ellison (Kelly Lynch), a yuppie lawyer. However, things take an unexpected turn when Grey learns about the con, but falls in love with Bill anyway when she learns the truth about their past, and how much he genuinely cares for Curly Sue. Grey asks Bill and Curly Sue to move in with her – a decision which sparks the ire of Grey’s jealous, vindictive ex-boyfriend Walker (John Getz), who plots revenge against the man who he believes broke up his relationship. Read more…
VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE – Marco Beltrami
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A slightly belated sequel to the fun but curiously overlooked original, Venom: Let There Be Carnage is the black sheep of the Marvel Cinematic Universe family – although this is likely to be change as the characters are absorbed into the mainstream MCU going forward. The film picks up the story immediately after the events of the first film, and sees San Francisco journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) living his new life in the company of the wisecracking brain-munching alien symbiote Venom, who now shares Eddie’s body – and occasionally takes over control of it, giving Eddie super-human powers. The plot of the film revolves around Eddie’s relationship with the incarcerated serial killer Cletus Kasady, played by Woody Harrelson, who appeared in the first film’s post-credits scene. After some exposition backstory involving Kasady’s adolescence in a home for unwanted children, and his relationship with Frances (Naomi Harris) – a young girl who has the power to generate a ‘sonic scream’ – the main crux of the story involves Kasady being infected by a second symbiote, named Carnage, breaking out of prison during his execution, and rampaging across the city – with only Eddie and Venom able to stop him. The film co-stars Michelle Williams and Stephen Graham, and is directed by actor and motion capture pioneer Andy Serkis. Read more…
ABOVE AND BEYOND – Hugo Friedhofer
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Hollywood screenwriter Beirne Lay Jr., a retired USAF bombardier, gained fame after the war for his screenplay to the 1949 film 12 O’Clock High. In 1951 he conceived a new screenplay for a WWII story he felt needed to be told. To that end he met with Air Force General Curtis LeMay, commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). He suggested a new film that would explore the experiences of Colonel Paul Tibbets, the commander of the historic 509th Composite Group, which was responsible for dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima during WWII. LeMay fully supported this, gave his consent, and Lay provided his outline to screenwriters Melvin Frank and Norman Panama who collaborated with USAF technical advisors Lt. Colonel Charles F.H. Begg, Major Norman W. Ray and Major James B. Bean to write the screenplay. With USAF backing Frank and Panama impressed MGM studio executives with their story, and they were given reins to produce the film with a budget of $1.4 million. Frank and Panama would also take on co-director duties and a fine cast was hired, including Robert Taylor as Tibbets, Eleanor Tibbets as Lucy Tibbets, and James Whitmore as Major Bill Uanna. Read more…
SHATTERED – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Shattered is a twisty-turny psychological thriller written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, based on the popular novel ‘The Plastic Nightmare’ by Richard Neely. The film stars Tom Berenger as Dan Merrick, a successful architect who is involved in a major car accident with his wife Judith (Greta Scacchi). Judith survives relatively unharmed, but Dan suffers major injuries and brain trauma, including amnesia, and needs plastic surgery. As he recuperates at home afterwards, with the help of his friend Jeb (Corbin Bernsen) and Jeb’s wife Jenny (Joanne Whalley), Dan slowly starts to feel that things are not quite what they appear to be, and begins to make some inquiries into his own past. These inquiries eventually lead Dan to private detective Gus Klein (Bob Hoskins), whose explosive revelations change Dan’s life forever. Read more…
THE STARLING – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Starling is a comedy-drama film from Netflix, directed by Theodore Melfi, starring Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd, and Kevin Kline. The film is an examination of the grief suffered by the parents after the loss of a child; McCarthy and O’Dowd play Lily and Jack, a husband and wife couple whose new baby dies of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which results in Jack having a nervous breakdown and requiring a stay in a mental health facility. As Lily focuses all her attention on Jack, preparing for his imminent return home, she neglects her own mental health needs; to compound matters, a starling has made a nest in a tree in their back garden, which starts to dive-bomb and attack her every time she comes near it. Eventually, things change for the better for Lily when she meets Larry Fine (Kline), a former psychologist turned veterinarian, who becomes an unexpected confidant. Read more…
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