PROVIDENCE – Miklós Rózsa
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Providence served as the first English-language film from renowned French director Alain Resnais. True to form Resnais provides us with a drama about an unsympathetic, spiteful, alcoholic novelist, which again features his trademark playful surrealist touches and recurring use of characters shackled by recurrent memories. The story reveals Clive Langham (Sir John Gielgud) spending a painful night in his bed suffering from age ending health problems, vainly trying to create a final story based on his family played by Ellen Burstyn (Sonia), Dirk Bogarde (Claude) and David Warner (Kevin). He is an incredibly bitter man, drunken and tormented, who reveals through a series of flashbacks an unsympathetic, spiteful, conniving family. Clive makes each of his family members interact in a variety of bizarre settings – courtrooms, mortuaries and werewolf-haunted forests. It is apparent that his perceptions are distorted by a terrible bitterness and guilt, the full extent of this is not made clear until the end, when his “real” family members come to his house to celebrate his 78th birthday. The film was both a commercial and a critical success, earning the 1978 César Award for Best Film. Read more…
Passionata Film Scoring raising funds for Oklahoma Tornado Relief
The tornado which devastated parts of Oklahoma the other day has left many people dead and thousands homeless. My friend Phil Watkins, of Passionata Film Scoring, is currently running a silent auction to raise money for the American Red Cross and the Oklahoma Tornado Relief Fund.
Please see the following message from Phil for further details on how to donate to this worthy cause. Read more…
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVE NOT YET SEEN THE FILM, YOU MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER WAITING UNTIL AFTER YOU HAVE DONE SO TO READ IT.
The second of director J.J. Abrams’ newly-revamped “alternate timeline” Star Trek movies is Star Trek Into Darkness, one of the most anticipated films of the early summer months of 2013. Set one year after the events of the last Star Trek film, Into Darkness finds Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and the crew of the Starship Enterprise – First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto), Chief Medical Officer Bones McCoy (Karl Urban), Chief Engineer Scott (Simon Pegg), Navigation Officer Sulu (John Cho), Communications Officer Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Ensign Chekov (Anton Yelchin) – on a mission to observe a primitive humanoid race on a distant planet. When one of the crew members finds his life in jeopardy Kirk is forced to violate the Starfleet prime directive of non-interference in order to rescue him, and upon his return to Earth is demoted by his commanding officer, Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood). However, things suddenly change when a mysterious terrorist named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) attacks a Starfleet installation and murders several high ranking officers, before fleeing to Kronos, the home world of the brutal and warlike Klingon race. Given permission to go after Harrison by Starfleet Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller), and with a cache of prototype photon torpedos on board, Kirk and the crew sets off on a covert mission… but before long doubts about Harrison’s identity, and his motivations, begin to surface. Read more…
LA MULA/THE MULE – Óscar Navarro
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
La Mula is a drama based on the novel by Juan Eslava Galán, written and directed by Michael Radford, which tells the story of a soldier named Castro (Mario Casas) who finds a mule on the battlefields and travels through the country with it, observing the effects and aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. The film, which was disowned by its director during post-production, was actually completed in 2010, but sat on a shelf for almost four years, until all its legal and distribution issues were resolved. Thankfully, for score fans, the film was released in 2013, which gave us the chance to hear its wonderful music, written by young Spanish composer Óscar Navarro – this is his debut feature score, and it’s a gem. Read more…
OSZUKANE/DECEIVED – Bartlomiej Gliniak
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Oszukane – known in English as “Decieved” – is a Polish drama film directed by Marcin Solarz. It stars Sylwia Boroń and Carolina Chapko as Aneta and Natalia, two teenage girls who meet by chance, but then discover that they are actually twin sisters, separated at birth as a result of a mistake made by the hospital in which they were born. The score for the film is by a young, exceptionally talented Polish composer, Bartlomiej Gliniak, who impressed with his breakout score Teah in 2008, and is building quite a reputation for himself as one of the rising stars of Polish film music. Read more…
THE RIGHT TO LOVE: AN AMERICAN FAMILY – Edwin Wendler
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In The Right to Love: An American Family director Cassie Jaye, along with support from her sister and mother, sought to chronicle a family’s story of courage during the highly charged, divisive and controversial California Proposition 8 election in 2008. Bryan and Jay Leffew, a Californian married gay couple and their two adopted children Daniel and Selena chose to fight against the ballot initiative whose passage would end marriage equality. They decided to put a human face on this important issue by posting their home videos on their YouTube channel, “Gay Family Values”. It was hoped that these videos would break down stereotypical misconceptions and reveal that in the final analysis the sum of our similarities exceed the sum of our differences. Despite their heroic efforts the proposition passed and marked the first time in the history of the United States that a majority of citizens voted to strip fellow citizens of equal rights under Law. The film earned one Silver and three Bronze awards during the 33rd Annual Telly Awards. Read more…
KON-TIKI – Johan Söderqvist
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Norwegians have always been great explorers, from the days of Viking invasions almost a thousand years ago, all the way through to the Antarctic voyages of Roald Amundsen, who in 1911 led the first team to reach the South Pole. One of the less well-known but no less heroic figures was Thor Heyerdahl, who in 1947 was the captain of a team of adventurers who successfully sailed across the Pacific Ocean from Peru to the Tuamoto Islands on a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki to prove a scientific point. Heyerdahl’s exploits were captured in a famous 1951 documentary which won an Academy Award, and this new film – also called Kon-Tiki – is a dramatic reconstruction of the story for modern audiences. The film, which was filmed simultaneously in both Norwegian and English for domestic and international audiences, was directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, stars Pål Sverre Hagen in the leading role, and went on to be nominated as Best Foreign Language film at the 2012 Oscars, as well as one of the biggest-grossing Norwegian films of all time. Read more…
STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT – Jerry Goldsmith
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
As is consistent of the ethos of the Star Trek universe, we are again treated to a classic morality play that speaks to obsession and the powerful, yet ultimately self-destructive drive for vengeance. The script purposely draws upon classical references of Herman Melville’s great novel “Moby Dick”, which lends a potent gravitas to this latest voyage. The story reveals a bold attack by the Borg to destroy humanity by conquering it not in the present, but instead by destroying its past. Through use of a temporal vortex, the Borg time travel backwards to 21st century Earth, which lays vulnerable having been decimated by a third World War. Their plan hinges on destroying the Phoenix, Earth’s first warp capable ship. History reveals that its inaugural flight elicited a first contact encounter with the Vulcans who happened to be exploring the Terran system. This first contact laid the seed from which arose the United Federation Of Planets. Captain Picard follows the Borg back through time and must overcome his personal demons having been once assimilated by the Borg, as well as his obsession for revenge to save humanity’s future. The film was a critical success earning many awards as well as the most profitable Star Trek film of the franchise. Read more…
42 – Mark Isham
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Growing up in England, you don’t really get to know much about the history of baseball. Obviously, we know that the sport exists (even though it is nothing more than fancy rounders!), and having lived in the United States for as long as I have now, I can now throw out some of the most famous names – Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson – and have a basic idea of who they were and what they did. Beyond that paltry smattering, however, the details of most of the rest of baseball lore is still unknown to me, and prior to watching 42 I knew as much about the life of Jackie Robinson as I would expect the average American to know about, say, Laurie Cunningham – and if you just had to Google him you just proved my point. Read more…
OBLIVION – Anthony Gonzalez, Joseph Trapanese
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the things I love most about being a film score reviewer is the opportunity to discover new composers at the beginning of their careers. It’s even more exciting when the said composers find themselves attached to a potential box office smash – which is exactly what has happened to Anthony Gonzalez and Joseph Trapanese with Oblivion. Both these composers worked on the soundtrack for Tron Legacy a couple of years ago, with Trapanese orchestrating and conducting Daft Punk’s score, and Gonzalez having some fun with various remixes via his band M83, and Tron’s director Joseph Kosinski has continued his mini-oeuvre of taking a popular electronica band and translating their music to film with a larger orchestral component. French-born Gonzalez’s band M83 is already pretty well-established, having had several successful albums over the past decade or so, but this is his first film project as a composer in his own right. Similarly, New Jersey-born Trapanese had only orchestrated for Daniel Licht on the TV show Dexter before working on Tron Legacy, which was his first major motion picture experience. Read more…
DIE NORDSEE: UNSER MEER/SECRETS OF THE NORTH SEA – Oliver Heuss
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Die Nordsee: Unser Meer is a feature-length nature documentary directed by Klaus Müller, which looks as the fauna and flora that resides in the water and along the coastlines of the North Sea in northern Europe; from gray seals swimming in the waters off Heligoland in Germany or basking on the chalk cliffs of Dover in England, to large squid in the Dutch Oosterschelde, the film uses helicopters and underwater cameras to observe these lovely creatures from all possible perspectives. Nature documentaries have often elicited some excellent music, ranging from George Fenton’s scores for the BBC over the course of the last 20 years, to Finnish composer Panu Aaltio’s exquisite score for the documentary Metsän Tarina last year, and Die Nordsee: Unser Meer continues the trend. Read more…
EVIL DEAD – Roque Baños
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The original Evil Dead was a groundbreaking and convention-shattering horror movie when it was first released in 1981; it launched the career of director Sam Raimi as a new and exciting voice in genre cinema, and the film itself became notorious as a bloody, darkly funny, brilliant assault on the senses – so much so that, in the UK, it became the poster child of the ‘video nasty’ campaign initiated by the self-appointed monitor of British morals, Mary Whitehouse, and was banned on VHS in England for quite some time. 35-year-old Uruguayan filmmaker Fede Alvarez’s new version of the film takes what is essentially the same story – a group of friends make their way to an isolated cabin in the woods, and inadvertently release a terrifying demon into the world by way of an ancient book – but dispenses with much of the original film’s gallows humor, while simultaneously increasing the gore content exponentially for jaded new millennium audiences. Blood, guts, vomit, and other assorted entrails splatter the screen for 92 stomach churning minutes, but somehow the film feels less satisfying than the original, taking itself a little too seriously, and in no way living up to its hyperbolic publicity tagline of being “the most terrifying film you will ever experience”. The film stars Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas and Elizabeth Blackmore, and is produced by Raimi and the original film’s star, Bruce Campbell. Read more…
IN COUNTRY – James Horner
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
For years Director Norman Jewison had eschewed making a film about the Vietnam War. Yet with over a decade passing since the fall of Saigon in 1975 he felt the time was at last right to address the war. As such, he chose to adapt Bobbie Ann Mason’s celebrated novel “In Country” for the screen. He did not wish to comment on the politics of the war, instead choosing to embark on a more intimate exploration of the lives of the men who fought bravely and honorable for their country. For his film he chose to explore the aftermath of the war on four men who fought it, as well as their families. The story reveals teenager Samantha Hughes (Emily Lloyd) who yearns to fill the void left by her father’s (Dwayne) death in Vietnam, or “In Country” as veterans describe. She also seeks to better understand her uncle Emmett and his friends Tom, Earl and Pete. Each man has returned home scarred and damaged by their tour of duty and unable to discuss their war experiences. Ultimately Samantha’s unyielding quest to discover her father initiates a liberating catharsis when she and Emmett visit the Vietnam War memorial in Washington D.C. Regretfully the film was a box office disaster and also failed to evoke any critical acclaim. Read more…
THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES – Mike Patton
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Place Beyond the Pines is a crime drama directed by Derek Cianfrance and starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Rose Byrne and Ray Liotta. Set in Schenectady, New York, over a 20-year period, the film is a riveting drama about fathers and sons, and the ramifications that the actions of one generation can have on the next. Gosling stars as motorcycle daredevil Luke Glanton, who turns to a life of crime robbing banks in order to provide for his baby son, Jason, and the mother, Romina (Mendes), who accepts Luke’s help only reluctantly. Luke’s increasing desperation brings him into contact with Avery Cross (Cooper), a Schenectady cop with a family history of running for political office, who is dealing with a shaky marriage to his wife Jennifer (Byrne) and a young son named AJ, pressure from his own father, and his own discovery of corruption among his colleagues. The film takes some unexpected twists and turns in its second half – which I won’t reveal here – suffice to say that Cianfrance’s measured direction and languid pacing allows the film to develop into a slow-burning familial drama that is both hypnotic and engrossing, especially as the true depth of the generational secrets are revealed. Read more…
OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN – Trevor Morris
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Olympus Has Fallen is essentially “Die Hard in the White House”, an action thriller set in America’s capital. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, it stars Gerard Butler as Secret Service Agent Mike Banning, who is ‘relieved of duty’ from guarding President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) following an accident in which the first lady (Ashley Judd) is killed. Flash forward a year, and Banning – twiddling his thumbs at a desk job – is suddenly called into action once more when North Korean terrorists led by the ruthless Kang (Rick Yune) manage to successfully capture the White House and take the President and his senior staff hostage. Working alone inside enemy territory, Banning manages to contact acting-President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman), and keeps them appraised of the situation behind enemy lines, while he picks off the North Koreans one by one, attempting to get the President to safety. Read more…
Shop at the Movie Music UK Store
Member of the
MOVIE MUSIC UK 