Archive
RUDOLF THE BLACK CAT – Naoki Sato
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Rudolf the Black Cat is a Japanese animated family adventure film directed by Kunihiko Yuyama and Motonori Sakakibara. It follows the adventures of a suburban ‘indoor kitten’ named Rudolf, who has always longed to roam the streets of his little neighborhood. However, when Rudolf gets his wish and is accidentally abandoned miles away from his home in an unfamiliar big city by his owner, he must team up with a street cat called Gottalot in order to find his way back home. Read more…
LIGHTS OUT – Benjamin Wallfisch
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There has been a trend in recent years towards more thoughtful, creative, innovative horror films. Acclaimed works like The Babadook, It Follows, Under the Skin, and others, have begun to push the boundaries of the genre, blending art and terror together, while remaining cognizant of many of the classics that preceded it. Lights Out is another one of those films which may soon join that list of outstanding contemporary chillers by playing on one of the most innate and universal fears of them all: fear of the dark. Directed by Swedish filmmaker David Sandberg – remaking his own acclaimed 3-minute Youtube short film – the film stars Maria Bello, Teresa Palmer, and Gabriel Bateman as members of a family who are terrorized by a supernatural being which only appears when the lights are out. Read more…
FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A science fiction film for children, Flight of the Navigator was a popular hit at box offices during the late summer of 1986. Directed by Randal Kleiser, the film starred 12-year old Joey Kramer as David, a young boy who lives in Florida in 1978 with his parents and young brother. After accidentally falling into a ravine near his home on the evening of the fourth of July, David awakes to find that eight years have passed, but he has not aged a day; he returns home to his shocked parents, who believed he was dead. Before long, various government agencies come knocking on David’s door, revealing that he was apparently abducted by an alien spaceship on the night of his disappearance, and that the spaceship – which subsequently crashed, and is now being held by NASA – appears to be trying to communicate with him telepathically. The film co-stars Cliff De Young, Veronica Cartwright, Howard Hesseman, a young Sarah Jessica Parker, features the voice of Paul Reubens, and has an original score by Alan Silvestri. Read more…
JASON BOURNE – John Powell, David Buckley
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Jason Bourne is the latest film in the series of action-espionage films based on the novels by Robert Ludlum, after the original Bourne Identity in 2002, The Bourne Supremacy in 2004, The Bourne Ultimatum in 2007, and the spin-off Bourne Legacy in 2012. Paul Greengrass returns to the director’s chair and Matt Damon returns to play one of his iconic roles one more time; this time, the plot revolves around Bourne, a former CIA assassin, finding out more about his past, how he was first recruited into the ultra-secret black ops Treadstone programme in the first place, and how these things relate to the death of his father. The film co-stars Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander, Tommy Lee Jones, Bourne veteran Julia Stiles, Vincent Cassel, and Riz Ahmed, and allows Bourne to trek across the globe from Athens to Berlin to London and Las Vegas, as he searches for answers about his past. Read more…
KINGS ROW – Erich Wolfgang Korngold
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1940 the publication of Henry Bellamann’s provocative novel “Kings Row” took the American public by storm, soaring to #1 on the best seller list. Producer Hal Wallis of Warner Brothers saw a powerful social narrative after reading the novel and immediately purchased the film rights for $35,000. Sam Wood was brought in to direct and Casey Robinson was given the unenviable Herculean task of adapting the massive 674-page novel to the screen. He rose to the task, and when compared to the novel, the film is tame, as the Joseph Breen, director of the Hays Code censored most of the more sordid and controversial elements of the plot, including all references to incest, nymphomania, euthanasia, sadism, homosexuality, casual sex and nude bathing. Wood brought in a stellar cast which included; Ann Sheridan as Randy Monaghan, Robert Cummings as Parris Mitchell, Ronald Reagan as Drake McHugh, Betty Field as Cassandra Tower, Charles Coburn as Dr. Henry Gordon, Claude Rains as Dr. Alexander Tower, Judith Anderson as Mrs. Harriet Gordon and Maria Ouspenskaya as Madame von Ein. Read more…
LEAGUE OF GODS – John Debney
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
League of Gods is an epic Chinese action fantasy film, directed by Koan Hui, based on a novel by Xu Zhonglin. It tells the story of King Zhou (Tony Leung), the last ruler of the Shang dynasty, who as a young man was bewitched by his concubine Daji (Fan Bingbing), an evil ‘vixen spirit’ in disguise as a beautiful woman. Zhou oppresses his people and persecutes those who oppose him. Ji Fa (Andy On), a rival king, assisted by his strategist Jiang Ziya (Jet Li), rallies an army to overthrow the tyrant and restore peace and order. Throughout the story, battles are waged, with both sides calling upon various supernatural beings – deities, immortals, demons, spirits, and humans with magical abilities – to aid them in the war. Read more…
THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Secret Life of Pets is the latest animated film from Illumination Entertainment, the successful studio behind the smash hits Despicable Me and Minions. Directed by Chris Renaud and Yarrow Cheney, it follows the escapades of Max, a terrier who lives a life of luxury in an upscale New York tenement building with his owner. However, Max’s perfect life is spoiled when his owner adopts a new dog: Duke, a large and accident prone mongrel mutt who quickly makes Max’s life a misery. Before long, Max and Duke are involved in all manner of escapades, including a trip to the pound, a jailbreak masterminded by a streetwise bunny named Snowball, and a devilish plan to get revenge on the former owners of the city’s abandoned animals. The film features the voice talents of Louis CK, Eric Stonestreet, and Kevin Hart, among others, and has a score from an unlikely source: Oscar-winning French composer Alexandre Desplat. Read more…
HOWARD THE DUCK – John Barry
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Howard the Duck was one of the most critically lambasted films of 1986, and probably represents the low point of George Lucas’s entire career as a filmmaker. The film was adapted from a cult comic book by Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik by screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, and was originally intended to be an animated film, but became live-action because of a contractual obligation, a decision which rendered much of the original comic book’s surrealist imagery difficult to convey. Despite being about a walking, talking, anthropomorphic duck, the comic book was essentially a satire on the human condition; desperate to appeal to a larger audience, Huyck and Katz stripped away most of Gerber’s scathing social commentary and adult story elements, and reduced it to an absurdist action-buddy-comedy – as such, it failed to satisfy fans of the original comic, nor did it have any real crossover appeal with the general public, and unsurprisingly it failed miserably at the box office. Read more…
STAR TREK BEYOND – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Star Trek Beyond is the third film of the ‘rebooted’ Star Trek series, and the thirteenth film overall since the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. Directed by Fast and the Furious veteran Justin Lin – taking over the helm from J. J. Abrams – the film sees the crew of the starship Enterprise half way through their five year mission to explore the farthest reaches of space, under the command of Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine). After briefly docking at the new starbase Yorktown, the Enterprise is dispatched to conduct a rescue mission inside a previously uncharted nebula, but falls victim to a surprise attack by a lizard-like warrior named Krall (Idris Elba), and crash-lands on a mysterious world. Left stranded in a rugged wilderness, Kirk, Spock (Zachary Quinto), McCoy (Karl Urban), Scotty (Simon Pegg), and the rest of the crew must now battle a deadly alien race while trying to find a way off the hostile planet. Read more…
THE MONKEY KING 2 – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Xi You Ji Zhi: Sun Wukong San Da Baigu Jing – known in English as The Monkey King 2 – is the second in the series of Chinese films based on “Journey to the West,” one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature, which was written in the 16th century during the Ming Dynasty by Wu Cheng En. Directed by Cheang Pou-Soi, the film continues the adventures of Sun Wukong, a monkey born from a magical stone who acquires supernatural powers. Following the events of the previous film, when he rebelled against heaven and was subsequently imprisoned under a mountain for 500 years, Sun Wukong (Aaron Kwok) is released and becomes the companion of a monk named Tang Sanzang (Shaofeng Feng), who is on a journey to India on a quest for enlightenment. However, their journey is fraught with danger, not least from Baigujing, White Bone Spirit (Gong Li), a demon who seeks immortality, and believes Tang Sanzang has the power to grant it to her. Read more…
ALIENS – James Horner
THROWBACK THIRTY
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien was a watershed landmark, a seminal film that forever changed the genre, so it was something of a surprise that a sequel was not forthcoming straight away. With behind-the-scenes wrangling between executives at 20th Century Fox, and a script that languished in development hell, it actually took almost seven years for Aliens to hit the big screen, but with hindsight it was more than worth the wait. For me, Aliens is one of the greatest action films ever made; a blockbuster war movie allegory about the Vietnam War, inspired by several seminal works in classic sci-fi literature, written and directed by the young and hungry auteur behind the 1984 hit The Terminator. In James Cameron’s capable hands, Aliens became a masterpiece of tension and horror, pulsating adventure, and noble sacrifice. Read more…
GHOSTBUSTERS – Theodore Shapiro
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Plans for a third Ghostbusters movie have been floating around Hollywood since the 1990s, but for a variety of reasons a true continuation of the story never materialized. Incomplete screenplays, lack of money, and reluctance from the stars of the original film – Bill Murray, especially – frustrated fans for decades, and the death of original cast member Harold Ramis in 2014 seemingly put an end to the possibility. However, in early 2015, it was unexpectedly announced that a complete reboot of the franchise had been green-lit, with Paul Feig directing a screenplay by Katie Dippold, and a brand new all-female leading cast comprising Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon. That there was uproar about this is an understatement; almost from the moment the project was announced, there was a social media backlash, much of it aimed, somewhat misogynistically, at the fact that the leads were women, combined with the fact that the story completely ignored the characters and heritage of the first two films. Read more…
THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER – Bernard Herrmann
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
1941 would prove to be a banner year for Bernard Herrmann as he was honored with two Academy Award nominations. Having completed Citizen Kane, what many believe to be his Magnum Opus, RKO Studios tasked him with a new project The Devil and Daniel Webster for director William Dieterle. Note that the studio later changed the title to “All That Money Can Buy”. From both Herrmann’s and Dieterle’s perspectives, the collaboration was collegial, and in the end, The Devil and Daniel Webster triumphed over Citizen Kane, earning Herrmann his only Academy Award win. Herrmann’s entry into the realm of film score music atop two nominated scores and an Oscar win was an outstanding achievement. Herrmann would later relate that he believed Citizen Kane was a superior score in that it was more original and better integrated into the film’s narrative – your author agrees. Read more…
SWISS ARMY MAN – Andy Hull, Robert McDowell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the strangest films in recent memory, Swiss Army Man is a surreal comedy-drama written and directed by two ‘Daniels’, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. The film stars Paul Dano as Hank, a depressed young man who has been stranded on an island for an indeterminate length of time, and who has decided to commit suicide. However, before he can end it all, Hank’s life is saved when he finds a dead body (Daniel Radcliffe) on the beach; incredibly, Hank discovers that the gases inside the decomposing body – who he has named Manny – are so powerful and potent, he can literally ride him like a jet-ski, thrust across the water by Manny’s forceful farts. After they wash up on a remote part of the mainland, Hank is even more astounded to discover that Manny is capable of speech, although he has no memory of who he was before he died. So begins the story of an incredible friendship, as Hank discovers that Manny has even more incredible powers, including the ability to vomit fresh water, the ability to shoot projectiles from his mouth, and – best of all – erections which act like a compass guiding him home. In return, Hank begins to educate Manny about life itself, imparting words of wisdom on love and friendship, as they slowly make their way back towards civilization. Read more…
THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE – Henry Mancini
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Looking back from the vantage point we have now, thirty years into the future, it’s difficult to picture just how much trouble Walt Disney’s animated feature film department was in during the 1980s. A world away from their heyday of Snow White, Bambi, and Cinderella, Disney’s output in the late 1970s and early 1980s comprised some of their most forgettable works, ranging from The Rescuers in 1977 to The Fox and the Hound in 1981, The Black Cauldron in 1985, and Oliver & Company in 1988 – a year before everything changed with the release of The Little Mermaid in 1989. Released right in the middle of this lackluster phase, The Great Mouse Detective was Disney’s attempt to capture the essence of Sherlock Holmes in an animated film. Based on the popular children’s books by Eve Titus, the film is set in a version of Victorian England populated by anthropomorphic mice and rats, and follows the adventures of the famous detective Basil of Baker Street, who is hired by a young mouse named Olivia to investigate the disappearance of her toymaker father, who has been kidnapped by the evil Professor Ratigan as part of a fiendish plot involving robot clones and the Queen of England. The film was directed by Ron Clements, Burny Mattinson, David Michener, and John Musker, and features the voice talents of Barrie Ingham and Vincent Price, among others. Read more…
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