TWILIGHT – Carter Burwell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It has recently become apparent to me that, without my knowledge or active participation, I have become old and out of touch. I had this revelation when I realized that, until about three weeks ago, I had never heard of Twilight. I knew nothing about Stephenie Meyer’s novels. I had never heard of Edward Cullen or Bella Swan. I had no clue that teenage girls the length and breadth of America were going to bed at night dreaming of being swept up into the arms of a hunky young vampire and being made one of the sexy undead. I guess this is what happens when you turn 33 and you realize that all your cultural touchstones now date back almost 20 years. Read more…
QUANTUM OF SOLACE – David Arnold
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The re-boot given to the James Bond franchise with Casino Royale in 2006 was possibly the best thing that could have happened to 007. The film itself was arguably the best Bond movie since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969, and Daniel Craig’s gritty, wounded portrayal of MI6’s finest brought him firmly into the new millennium. Quantum of Solace, the second movie in the new rebooted series, continues the story from the immediate point where Casino Royale concluded; it’s essentially a revenge film, with Bond attempting to bring the killers of Vesper Lynd from the previous film to justice, while locking horns with a new adversary – evil multimillionaire businessman Dominic Greene (Mathieu Almaric). The film is directed by Marc Forster, also stars Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton as the new Bond girls, Camilla Montes and Strawberry Fields, and features Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright and Giancarlo Giannini in recurring supporting roles. Read more…
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE – A. R. Rahman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Bollywood music has never really crossed over into the film music mainstream, despite being an enormous industry on the Indian sub-continent; the closest Bollywood has to a composer superstar is A.R. Rahman, so it perhaps stands to reason that he should really be the first one to make any kind of impact on the Hollywood mainstream. Rahman has worked in the Indian film industry since the early 1990s, and has since gone on to score over 100 films, some of which – Taal from 1999, Lagaan from 2001, Rang De Basanti from 2006, and Jodhaa Akbar from earlier this year – have enjoyed a modicum of international success. He has even dabbled in the Hollywood world before, working with Mychael Danna on Water in 2006 and with Craig Armstrong on Elizabeth: The Golden Age in 2007. In his homeland, however, Rahman is revered: he has personally sold 100 million records of his film scores and soundtracks worldwide, and sold over 200 million solo albums, officially making him one of the world’s all-time top selling recording artists. No wonder he is often called the “John Williams of Bollywood” and the “Mozart of Madras”. It’s just surprising that it has taken this long for the West to recognize him. Read more…
MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Yikes, what on earth happened with this album? “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” may very well be the worst score that composer Hans Zimmer has ever been involved with (I hesitate to say “written”, as the score was created by the usual gang of Remote Control affiliates). The film is a sequel to the popular Dreamworks animated film “Madagascar”, which was also scored by Zimmer and co.
That disappointing album featured some pleasant yet insubstantial scoring alongside some dull pop songs and a nice performance of John Barry’s “Born Free”. That album was bliss compared to what Zimmer has produced this time around. Things actually start out well enough, with a typical little action piece called “Once Upon a Time in Africa”. The score never hits that level of satisfactory banality again. Read more…
THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS – James Horner
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, directed by Mark Herman from the novel by John Boyne, is a harrowing, yet life-affirming drama set in the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is the 9-year old son of the camp commandant (David Thewlis); not understanding where he is or why he is there, and bored with his life away from the city where he used to live, Bruno makes friends with a young boy named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), who lives on the other side of a wire fence and wears ‘striped pyjamas’. The innocence of their friendship soon becomes strained, however – Shmuel is Jewish, and is of course scheduled to die in a gas chamber. Critics have lauded the film, both for its delicate handling of the difficult subject matter, and for its performances. Similarly, James Horner’s score has been pretty much roundly praised, especially during the emotionally overwhelming finale. Read more…
DANCES WITH WOLVES – John Barry
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
By the mid-1980s the cinematic western was almost dead, a relic of an older, less sophisticated Hollywood, which had long since left behind icons such as John Wayne and Gary Cooper. Thankfully, nobody told Kevin Costner. In 1989 Costner was one of Hollywood’s upcoming leading men, having starred in successful and popular movies such as Silverado, Bull Durham, No Way Out and Field of Dreams. When it was announced that he would direct, produce and star in a big screen version of Michael Blake’s novel Dances With Wolves, at first the news was treated with incredulity; later, with stories of spiraling costs and unconventional on-set activities, the film was expected to be a vanity project at best, a laughing stock at worst. No-one expected the film to be one of the best westerns ever made, but that is ultimately what happened. Read more…
SPLINTER – Elia Cmiral
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Czech/Swedish composer Elia Cmiral has fallen a long way down the film music pecking order since the comparative heights of Ronin in 1998 and Battlefield Earth in 2000, to the point where is now a go-to guy for a large number of low budget horror directors. Cmiral’s latest film, Splinter, is another one in a long list of gore-fests: directed by Toby Wilkins, it stars Shea Whigham, Paulo Costanzo and Jill Wagner as a young couple and an escaped convict who find themselves trapped in an isolated gas station by an evil parasite which, when contracted, mutates the body of the host into something resembling a human porcupine. Read more…
TINKER BELL – Joel McNeely
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A very belated prequel to one of Disney’s best-loved classics, Peter Pan, the 3D animated movie Tinker Bell tells the story of what life was like for the green dress-clad pixie before she started having her adventures with Peter, Wendy and the Lost Boys, and dueling with Captain Hook. The film is directed by Bradley Raymond, and features a surprisingly high profile all-female voice cast including Mae Whitman, Kristen Chenoweth, Raven-Symoné, Lucy Liu, America Ferrara, Jane Horrocks, Anjelica Huston.
The film is scored by Joel McNeely, who seems to be making something of a mini-career scoring Disney animated sequels, having already turned in work on sequels to Cinderella, The Fox and the Hound, Lilo & Stitch and Mulan. Read more…
LEGENDS OF THE FALL – James Horner
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
On 29 April 1995, I went to the Warner Village Cinema at the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield to see Legends of the Fall. 133 minutes later, my life had been changed forever. You see, that day was the day I fell in love with film music; absolutely, head over heels in love. As a result of seeing this film, and hearing this score, I embarked on a relationship which has since played an enormous part in my life for the past decade, and will likely continue to do so for the rest of my life. I had been aware of film music prior to this day, of course; I knew about Star Wars, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Superman, and all the other classic John Williams scores that most children of the late 1970s know. But it was only after seeing Legends of the Fall was I ever actually aware of the effect the music was having on me in the cinema; that a creative artist was actually creating this incredible sound, making me feel these emotions. I was hooked. I wanted to know more. After the film ended, I immediately went to the HMV in Meadowhall and bought the soundtrack CD – my first – and in doing so became a film music fan. Read more…
SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK – Jon Brion
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A typically twisted and mind-bending drama from writer/director Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche New York is a film about a self-absorbed theater director played by Philip Seymour Hoffman who, as his real personal life crashes down around him, sets to creating a theatrical masterpiece about life mimicking art mimicking life, with a life-sized replica of New York City inside a huge warehouse. It’s all very existential and difficult, but it has an astonishing supporting cast – Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Hope Davis, Tom Noonan, Emily Watson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dianne Wiest, Michelle Williams – and has been the recipient of a great deal of praise from various critics groups. Read more…
CHANGELING – Clint Eastwood
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Clint Eastwood’s latest film, “Changeling”, tells the story of Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), a single mother attempting to raise a young son in Los Angeles during the late 1920s. She is a good mother, and she actually has a reasonably successful career as a supervisor at a telephone company. One night, she comes home from work, and discovers that her son is missing. She has no idea where he could have gone. She calls the police, who inform her that her son will probably be back home within 24 hours. If not, they’ll look into it. The next day, her son has still not returned. Read more…
LÅT DEN RÄTTE KOMMA IN/LET THE RIGHT ONE IN – Johan Söderqvist
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When I was a kid, vampires were evil creatures; dark and shadowy figures, middle-aged men clad in cloaks and cowls who could turn into bats. They were things which were to be feared, and to be reviled. Nowadays, in this era of goths and emos, of Buffy and Angel, and main street stores like Hot Topic, vampires are suddenly chic – they’ll still creep into your room at night and suck blood out of your neck, but instead of looking like Bela Lugosi they look like Brad Pitt, and are more likely to be found brooding in a corner somewhere, contemplating their hidden depths and exuding a dark, enticing sexuality. How times change. Read more…
PASSENGERS – Edward Shearmur
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An interesting horror/thriller which slipped under the radar despite starring Anne Hathaway, Passengers is directed by Rodrigo García and follows the increasingly disturbing life of a grief counselor (Hathaway) working with a group of plane-crash survivors (including Patrick Wilson, Dianne Weist and David Morse), who finds herself drawn into a dangerous mystery when her clients begin to disappear without explanation.
The score for Passengers is by Edward Shearmur, who has spent most of 2008 inexplicably scoring a series of crappy comedies – College Road Trip, Meet Bill – which are significantly beneath a man of his talents. Musically, Passengers is a world away from the heady heights Shearmur attained on Reign of Fire and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Read more…
PRIDE AND GLORY – Mark Isham
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A dark, gritty thriller directed by Gavin O’Connor, Pride and Glory stars Edward Norton as Ray Tierney, a New York cop from a long line of New York cops who discovers a police corruption scandal involving his own brother-in-law that threatens to tear his family apart. The film, which also stars Colin Farrell, Jon Voight, Noah Emmerich and Jennifer Ehle, is scored by Mark Isham, who previously worked with O’Connor on Miracle in 2004. Read more…
MAX PAYNE – Marco Beltrami, Buck Sanders
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The latest video game to become a big-budget action movie, Max Payne is directed by John Moore and stars Mark Wahlberg as the eponymous lead character, a DEA agent whose family was slain as part of a conspiracy who, while investigating the shadowy criminal underworld whi may be responsible for his wife’s murder, teams up with a sexy assassin (Mila Kunis), who is herself trying to avenge her sister’s death. While the video game received a superb noir score from Finnish composers Kärtsy Hatakka and Kimmo Kajasto, Max Payne’s cinematic cousin is scored by Marco Beltrami in collaboration with his long-time assistant and sound designer Buck Sanders. Read more…
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