RESERVATION ROAD – Mark Isham
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One thing I’ve never been fond of is Mark Isham’s synth writing. Give him an orchestra, and I’m putty in his hands; let him loose with electronics – like they did on scores like Blade and Timecop and Crash – and I generally loose interest pretty quickly. Such was the case with Reservation Road, the latest film from Irish director Terry George. Based on the book of the same title by John Burnham Schwartz, the film deals with the aftermath of a tragic car accident on the titular highway, in which two fathers – Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo – are forced to deal with the death of a 10-year-old boy. The film also stars Oscar winning actresses Jennifer Connelly and Mira Sorvino. Read more…
THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE – Johan Söderqvist, Gustavo Santaolalla
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s been a popular pastime, of late, amongst film music aficionados, to engage in the new sport of Santaolalla-bashing. Ever since the Argentinean won back-to-back Best Score Oscars, for Brokeback Mountain in 2005 and Babel in 2006, fans of the traditional orchestral score have been up in arms, decrying his popularity and success as both inexplicable and downright appalling. I have to admit, my voice has often joined those criticizing Santaolalla’s scoring techniques. So, let me step back for a moment, and consider things with a more level head. He is an excellent guitarist, of that there is no doubt, bringing a level of delicacy and intimacy to his performances which is quite lovely. He can write a decent enough tune, and he does have enough basic dramatic sense to understand what his films need, and how to provide it. Read more…
ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE – Craig Armstrong, A. R. Rahman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The first Elizabeth movie, released in 1998, was a critical and a commercial success, receiving glowing reviews from the mainstream media, and being honored with Oscar nominations in numerous categories, including one for its composer David Hirschfelder. The first Elizabeth movie told the story of the early years following young Elizabeth’s coronation as the Queen of England, concluding with her betrayal by her lover Robert Dudley and her assumption of the iconic “Virgin Queen” persona. This “sequel” tells the story of what happened during the next years of her reign. Read more…
WE OWN THE NIGHT – Wojciech Kilar
Original Review by Clark Douglas
I want to watch “Mad Dog and Glory” again. Sure, I’ve seen it a couple times before, but it’s worth seeing again. There’s this one moment that I love to pieces. Robert De Niro is a cop, and he’s investigating a crime scene, inspecting a dead body. As he does the inspection, a flurry of whimsy overtakes him, and he lip-synchs to Louis Prima’s classic “I Ain’t Got Nobody”. It doesn’t really fit with the tone of the rest of the film, but it’s such a wonderful moment, I’m quite glad it’s there. But why am I talking about that? It’s because the new soundtrack album for the thriller “We Own the Night” contains that song, and it made me think of that, and I wanted to mention it. Go rent that movie if you haven’t seen it, it’s a little gem. Read more…
SLEUTH – Patrick Doyle
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Kenneth Branagh has always been a director with a lot of theatrical flair, so it sort of seemed to make sense that he would choose to remake “Sleuth”, the wonderful 1972 film starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. The original film is a terrific ride of dialogue and plotting. It makes the absolute most of its contained set (a mansion) by filling it with all kinds of trinkets, gadgets, toys, and games. Call it maximum minimalism, if you like. In a brilliant bit of casting, Branagh placed Michael Caine in the role originally played by Olivier, and Jude Law in the Caine role. Though I haven’t seen Branagh’s film yet, I was surprised to learn from reading early reviews that Branagh has emptied the mansion, cut the running time by 45 minutes, and turned out a generally leaner, meaner product. Read more…
L’ENNEMI INTIME/INTIMATE ENEMIES – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most admirable things about Alexandre Desplat is the fact that, despite his new status as one of Hollywood’s golden composers, he still regularly works on French domestic pictures back home. One of these is L’Ennemi Intime, a bold and controversial political drama/war movie directed by regular Desplat collaborator Florent Emilio Siri. The film, which has been a convention-challenging commercial success in France, stars Benoît Magimel, Albert Dupontel and Aurélien Recoing, and follows the fortunes of a platoon of French soldiers on maneuvers in North Africa during the Algerian war of independence in the late 1950s, and is one of the few French films to examine the war in Algeria with a dispassionate realism and with no ulterior agenda. Read more…
MICHAEL CLAYTON – James Newton Howard
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Of all the genres in which a film composer may find himself employed, the political drama may be the most difficult to make interesting. Whereas in other films you have a great action scene to write for, or a majestic landscape shot to inspire a great theme, or a passionate relationship which requires a lyrical love theme, political dramas tend to comprise of lots of scenes of people doing nothing more exciting than talking to each other. In those circumstances, it’s very difficult to do anything other than simply underpin the dialogue without being unobtrusive – you carefully hint at the underlying drama behind the scene, add a sense of menace or levity as required, but beyond that you stay firmly in the background. Unfortunately, soundtrack CDs of scores like that tend not to be very interesting. Such is the case with Michael Clayton. Read more…
FINISHING THE GAME – Brian Tyler
Original Review by Clark Douglas
As soon as the first cue of “Finishing the Game” takes off with late 70’s funk rhythms, one wonders whether Brian Tyler has decided to open his score album with a cool source cue. Then there’s another one. And another one. And another one. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Brian Tyler… the new David Holmes. Using only equipment available to musicians of the 1970’s, Brian has crafted a small ensemble score (or is he playing everything himself?) that ranks as one of the more entertaining scores of his career (if one of the least substantial). Read more…
THE SEEKER: THE DARK IS RISING – Christophe Beck
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Whenever fantasy films come back in vogue, as they have done off the back of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, there are always some projects which look good on paper but fair miserably when the end result is screened. Such was the case of The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, based on the novel by Susan Cooper and directed by David L. Cunningham. The film tells the story of a young boy named Will Stanton (Alexander Ludwig), whose life is turned upside down when he learns that he is the last of a group of immortal warriors who have dedicated their lives to fighting the forces of the evil – who, in this case, are led by “The Rider” (Christopher Eccleston). Read more…
LUST CAUTION – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There’s been quite a bit of controversy surrounding Lust Caution, the latest film from director Ang Lee. The winner of the prestigious Golden Lion at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival, the film tells the story of the dangerous, passionate relationship between a young woman named Wang Jiazhi (played by Wei Tang), and a shadowy political named Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), who may or may not be involved in espionage for the Chinese government in 1940s Shanghai. The controversy of the film lies not in its politics, but in its raw and realistic depiction of the sexual relationship between Wang and Yee – the MPAA slapped an NC-17 rating on the film following rumors that their lovemaking scenes were NOT simulated. Never afraid to shy away from difficult subject matters – as Brokeback Mountain attested – Ang Lee seems to be molding himself into a modern day version of Nagisa Oshima, whose equally controversial film In the Realm of the Senses polarized cinema-goers in 1976. Read more…
THE KINGDOM – Danny Elfman
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Peter Berg’s “The Kingdom” is a strange animal. It’s not really much of a thriller, or an educational film about another culture, or a slice-of-life movie, or a political sermon… and yet, there’s plenty of action, explosions, foreign locations, and sermonizing. The movie doesn’t quite work on any level, and yet it’s difficult to pinpoint where exactly everything went wrong. The movie fails by not succeeding, rather than by any major slip made along to road.
Danny Elfman’s score is unfortunately as underwhelming as the film itself, and also fails simply by not succeeding. Elfman manages to avoid all the usual clichés of middle-eastern scores… wailing women, duduks, and so on… but the generic thriller music he provides has very little of Elfman’s own voice Read more…
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD – Nick Cave, Warren Ellis
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The notorious American outlaw Jesse James was a living legend by the time he was 30, famous for his exploits as a civil war hero, and later as a train robber and a bank robber. James, while still on the run from the law, was killed by Robert Ford, a member of his own gang, at the age of 34 in 1882, thereby cementing his place in the folk history of the American west. James’s life, and death, is examined in director Andrew Dominik’s dark, contemplative film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which stars Brad Pitt as James, Casey Affleck as Ford, and has a sterling supporting cast comprising the likes of Mary-Louise Parker, Sam Shepard and Zooey Deschanel. Read more…
INTO THE WILD – Michael Brook, Eddie Vedder
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An acclaimed drama directed by Sean Penn, and based on a true story, Into the Wild charts the life of Christopher McCandless, a privileged upper-middle-class American kid from a wealthy family who, despite graduating from University as a top student and a gifted athlete, abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the wilderness – and in the process became the poster child for anti-establishment anti-materialists across the world. Penn’s film stars Emile Hirsch as McCandless, Marcia Gay Harden and William Hurt as his parents, and Jena Malone, Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn and Hal Holbrook in supporting roles. Read more…
THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB – Aaron Zigman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ah, Jane Austen. She of the manners and etiquette, the unrequited love, the stoic heroes, the flighty maidens, the English countryside. Love her or loathe her, the work of popular English novelist has become a part of the modern literary – and cinematic – language through the popularity of titles like Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, and Emma. Robin Swicord’s film The Jane Austen Book Club, based on the novel by Karen Joy Fowler, tells the story of six romantic misfits who come together to read and discuss one Austen novel per month ion the hope that it will bring some sparkle back into their lives, only to find that their relationships – both old and new – begin to resemble 21st century versions of her novels. Read more…
RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION – Charlie Clouser
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
After three movies, the Resident Evil franchise is still – amazingly – still going strong, with Milla Jovovich still kicking mutant ass as freedom fighter Alice, who has made her way to what remains of Las Vegas and trying to stay alive and stay out of the way of the evil creatures that now roam the earth, following the catastrophes of the first two films. Extinction is directed by veteran Russell Mulcahy, and also stars Oded Fehr, Ali Larter and Iain Glen.
After efforts by Marco Beltrami, Marilyn Manson and Jeff Danna, this movie features a score by the inexplicably popular Charlie Clouser, hot of his success on the similarly-grotesque Saw franchise. True to his roots as a former member of the metal rock band Nine Inch Nails, the score is entirely synthesized, performed by Clouser himself and his former band mate, guitarist Danny Lohner Read more…
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