THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE – Mark Snow
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A very belated second sequel to the classic X-Files sci-fi TV series, “I Want to Believe” reunites director Chris Carter with stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson who, as paranormal investigators Mulder and Scully, are seeking to uncover the details of a mystery involving defrocked priests, missing FBI agents, and black market organ donation rings. Also returning to his most celebrated project is composer Mark Snow, for whom this the most high-profile cinematic score since the teen thriller Disturbing Behavior back in 1998.
Outside of the classic whistled main theme, I’ve never been a fan of Snow’s dark, synthetic music for the original X-Files series or the subsequent movie, and this is no exception. Read more…
THE DARK KNIGHT – Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Dark Knight, the second film in the new rebooted Batman franchise, is a truly great motion picture. Since Christopher Nolan picked up the twitching remnants of the series from out of the hands of Joel Schumacher in 2005’s Batman Begins, the character has again become a cinematic force, free of the gaudy neon excesses of Batman & Robin, and back to the dark, gritty, tortured origins people like Bob Kane and Frank Miller envisaged.
Christian Bale again returns as the caped crusader, who this time has to save Gotham from a villainous new adversary: the Joker (a superb Heath Ledger), whose anarchic reign of terror and seemingly mindless spates of violence is causing chaos in the city. Read more…
MAMMA MIA! – Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Mamma Mia was one of the first of the current spate of “jukebox musicals”, which take existing pop or rock music – in this case from 70s Swedish super-group ABBA – and write a loose story around a framework of songs by the band in question. Since Mamma Mia premiered on stage in 1999 it has been followed by productions featuring music by everyone from Rod Stewart to Queen and Elvis Presley, but Mamma Mia is also the first one to jump to the big screen. The film stars Meryl Streep as Donna, a middle-aged woman who owns a taverna on a Greek island, whose daughter (Sophie) is getting married. Sophie harbors dreams of having her father walk her down the aisle, but Donna has never revealed who her real father is; despite this, Sophie has tracked down the three men who could possible be the father – Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Harry (Colin Firh) and Bill (Stellan Skarsgård) – and invited them all to the wedding, much to Donna’s dismay. Read more…
DEATH DEFYING ACTS – Cezary Skubiszewski
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Death Defying Acts is a romantic thriller directed by Gillian Armstrong and starring Guy Pearce and Catherine Zeta Jones, which charts the life of the legendary escapologist and illusionist Harry Houdini in the height of his career in 1920s England, and specifically his relationship with Scottish con artist Mary McGarvie.
The music for Death Defying Acts is by Polish/Australian composer Cezary Skubiszewski; despite having worked in the Australian film industry since the mid 1990s, this film represents one of his first internationally recognized works. Surprisingly, there is quite a bit of Philip Glass in Skubiszewski’s work, from the precise rhythmic element that runs through the score, to the little thematic blocks from which the melodic element of the score is derived. Read more…
HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY – Danny Elfman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
After my first few listens through Danny Elfman’s score for Hellboy II: The Golden Army, I had pretty much decided that too much of it was unfocused noise; it was certainly written in Elfman’s easily-identifiable sound, but never quite seemed to gel together as a cohesive score. But then, quite suddenly, the whole thing opened up, and it hit me. I got it, and the wonders of this quite excellent work were revealed. This is probably the best Elfman super-hero score since Batman Returns some fifteen years ago, eclipsing such fan-favorites as Hulk, and his two massively popular Spider-Man scores. Read more…
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH – Andrew Lockington
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The last time a major movie was made of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth was 1959, and the composer was Bernard Herrmann. It’s a big pair of shoes for composer Andrew Lockington to step into, but step into them he has, and although his score for the 2008 version certainly does not emulate or surpass Herrmann’s excellent work, the young Canadian has nevertheless created a fun, exciting, enjoyably old-fashioned score which stands as an unexpected highlight in what has otherwise been a largely lackluster summer. Read more…
MEET DAVE – John Debney
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A desperately unfunny sci-fi comedy, Meet Dave is the latest box office disaster from Eddie Murphy, who seems to have squandered all the goodwill he received for his performance in Dreamgirls in just three short years. Directed by Brian Robbins, Meet Dave stars Murphy as the captain of a crew of miniature aliens, who operate a spaceship that looks like a human (also Murphy), and who have come to Earth to find a way to save their dying planet. However, things start to go wrong for the captain and his crew when, somewhat inexplicably, the spaceship falls in love with an Earth woman named Gina (Elizabeth Banks). Read more…
WALL·E – Thomas Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
If one was to try to work out the most financially successful film production company (adding up all the grosses, and dividing by the number of films), I would hazard a guess that Pixar would be up there with the most successful of all time. Since first appearing on the scene in 1995 with Toy Story, every single one of their films has grossed over $200 million at the US box office, with the highest – Finding Nemo – ratcheting up $389 million in 2003. Similarly, the scores for Pixar films have been almost universally lauded amongst critics; seven of the eight films to date have received Oscar nominations for score, or song, or both. Randy Newman won his first (and only) Oscar for Monsters Inc in 2001. The only score to miss out was Michael Giacchino’s The Incredibles in 2004. Read more…
WANTED – Danny Elfman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Wanted is the American directorial debut of Timur Bekmambetov, the Kazakh director of the cult Russian-language science fiction action hits Night Watch and Day Watch. The film stars James McAvoy as Wesley Gibson, an office drone cube-jockey who lives a life of never-ending day-to-day tedium. However, everything is turned upside down when Wesley meets Fox (Angelina Jolie), a sexy assassin, who recruits Wesley into ‘The Fraternity’, an ages-old brotherhood of assassins.
Bekmambetov’s film is a flashy, glitzy, souped-up action flick, completely unlike anything one would expect from a filmmaker from the former Soviet Union, and although the film was not a groundbreaking box office success, it more than illustrates the way in which the language of cinema is becoming less and less separated. Read more…
GET SMART – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Get Smart is a remake of the classic 1965 action/comedy TV series of the same name, which followed the comic misadventures of bumbling spy Maxwell Smart as he unintentionally outwits Russian agents and various bad guys without really having the faintest idea of what he’s doing. This version, which is directed by Peter Segal, stars Steve Carell as Smart and Anne Hathaway as his sexy partner Agent 99, plus Alan Arkin, The Rock, James Caan, Terence Stamp and Bill Murray in supporting roles.
The music for Get Smart is by Trevor Rabin, who is going through a quiet period in his career; the score is entertaining enough, but rather throwaway, consisting mainly of faux-heroic martial anthems Read more…
THE HAPPENING – James Newton Howard
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s unfortunate that the former wunderkind M. Night Shyamalan’s career seems to be on a downward spiral. The Happening is probably his worst film yet – a bizarre, disconnected ‘thriller’ starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo and Betty Buckley about the onset and effects of a mysterious air-borne virus which seems to make people want to commit suicide. Much was made of the fact that The Happening was Shyamalan’s first R-r ated film, when in reality the film was little more than a series of peculiar sequences in which people try to outrun the wind while talking in an oddly unrealistic manner, and occasionally suffering gruesome deaths. Read more…
THE INCREDIBLE HULK – Craig Armstrong
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Incredible Hulk is the second time they’ve tried to kickstart Marvel’s ‘Hulk’ character with a big-screen adventure after the popular 1970s TV series starring Bill Bixby; the first, critically maligned movie starred Eric Bana as the ill-fated scientist who turns into a green-skinned monster when he gets angry. This new version is directed by Louis Leterrier stars Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, William Hurt and Tim Roth, and stays more within the traditional realms of the accepted comic book history, with Dr Bruce Banner on the run from the US Government after experiments in gamma radiation and military weaponry left him susceptible to his little problem. Read more…
KUNG FU PANDA – Hans Zimmer, John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An animated action comedy from DreamWorks that features an astonishing voice cast – Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu – Kung Fu Panda follows the fortunes of Po, a clumsy but well-meaning panda who, despite his enthusiasm, is the worst student at the kung fu academy run by the noble, severe Master Shifu. However, when Tai Lung, an evil snow leopard, escapes from prison and vows revenge on Shifu and his students, Po is unexpectedly revealed to be the one prophesized to stop Tai Lung’s plan and save the academy.
The film, which was enormously popular and successful at the box office, has an original score by Hans Zimmer and John Powell, collaborating on an animated film for the second time, after The Road to El Dorado in 2000. Read more…
MONGOL – Tuomas Kantelinen
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
For a long time now I have been of the opinion that Finnish composer Tuomas Kantelinen is one of film’s music’s greatest undiscovered talents, whose expertise and excellence would enliven a partially stagnant Hollywood film music scene. It’s ironic therefore that his biggest international assignment to date – the epic biographical drama Mongol – features one of his least accessible, but conversely most impressive scores.
Mongol, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2008, and was directed by Sergei Bodrov, recounts the early life of Genghis Khan (Tadanobu Asano), who endured life as a slave on the cold, inhospitable steppes of Central Asia Read more…
HANCOCK – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A super-hero with a self-loathing problem, and a penchant for causing more damage than is necessary when he uses his ‘powers’. A city who doesn’t like the super-hero. A victim who, after being saved, decides to try to overhaul his hero’s image. This is the story of Hancock, one of many super-hero films to hit cinemas in 2008, the latest film from director Peter Berg, which stars Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman and Eddie Marsan.
Along for the ride is the incredibly busy British composer John Powell, for whom Hancock was the fifth score of 2008 (after Jumper, Horton Hears a Who, Stop Loss and Kung-Fu Panda). As befits the character of Hancock, there’s a slight sense of bitterness and despondency in Powell’s music, counterbalancing the super-hero action. Read more…
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