SEPTEMBER DAWN – William Ross
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Based on a true story, the controversial “September Dawn” has raised a fair amount of buzz. It tells the tale of over 100 people who were massacred by a group of Mormons on September 11th (gasp!), 1857. Apparently the film makes attempts to tie major Mormon figures like Brigham Young to the massacre, offering a message that organized religion and Mitt Romney are dangerous. Much of the film is spent with a young couple who are falling in love, and the knowledge that they will be killed must make “September Dawn” a very unhappy viewing experience for many who go see it. Read more…
WAR – Brian Tyler
Original Review by Clark Douglas
I didn’t see the Jason Statham/Jet Li action flick “War”, so I can’t really tell you whether or not it was any good. I saw plenty of trailers for it, and they did their best to make it look as generic and typical as possible. The score by Brian Tyler seems to be attempting to do the exact same thing. It sounds like every other gritty action score you’ve ever heard, and while I’m sure that might delight the crowd of people who fell in love with the ultra-derivative Steve Jablonsky score for “Transformers”, it doesn’t particularly please me.
You see, Tyler is a talented composer who I’ve admired for quite some time. His scores for “Darkness Falls”, “Timeline”, “Partition”, “Children of Dune”, and others are really excellent albums, and Tyler is a stickler for trying to make his music as organic and authentic as possible Read more…
THE INVASION – John Ottman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The umpteenth remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to reach big screens since Don Siegel’s 1956 original, the latest version – The Invasion – was directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (the acclaimed German director of Der Untergang) and stars Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Jeremy Northam, and again tells the tale of an alien organism which comes to earth and begins to systematically overtake humanity by creating emotionless clones of people, which then murder their human counterpart and assume their identity. Read more…
THE LAST LEGION – Patrick Doyle
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A historical action-drama set in the final, crumbling days of the western Roman Empire, The Last Legion stars young Thomas Sangster as 12-year-old Romulus Augustus, whose previously privileged life takes a terrible turn when, on the day he is crowned emperor of Rome, the empire falls into terrible anarchy. Banished to the island of Capri to live for the rest of his life, Romulus learns of the legend of a mystical sword which was once owned by Julius Caesar, and which he believes may help him return to power. With the help of his teacher Ambrosinus (Ben Kingsley) and the last loyal legionnaire Aurelius (Colin Firth), Romulus escapes the island, and goes to the distant province of Britannia, to search for the sword and gather together a legion of soldiers who will fight for the final glory of the Roman Empire. Read more…
SUPERBAD – Lyle Workman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The unexpected comedy success of 2007, Superbad follows the fortunes of Seth and Evan (Jonah Hill and Michael Cera), inseparable best friends who are destined to be parted when they enroll at different colleges. During their last weeks of high school, and realizing that they only have a short time left together, the intrepid duo hatch a plan to finally fulfill their lifelong ambition: losing their virginity. With the help of their nerdy friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), the guys embark on adventure to score enough alcohol to take to a party where they can inebriate the girls of their dreams, Jules and Becca, and engage in full-on regret sex. Hilarity, as they say, ensues. Read more…
AS YOU LIKE IT – Patrick Doyle
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’ve always felt that Kenneth Branagh is the only modern director who ‘gets’ Shakespeare. Whether he’s playing it comparatively straight, as he did with Henry V and Hamlet, or whether he puts a little spin on the proceedings, as he did by turning Love’s Labour’s Lost into a Cole Porter musical, Branagh seems to have a deep love of the Bard’s work, and an uncanny knack of turning his usually somewhat impenetrable language into something clearly understandable, and which conveys common human emotions and timeless themes.
As You Like It, Branagh’s sixth adaptation of a Shakespeare play, is one of the ‘spun’ ones, transplanting it from its original setting in rural France, and re-imagining it in 19th century Japan Read more…
RUSH HOUR 3 – Lalo Schifrin
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Perhaps the least necessary sequel of the summer, “Rush Hour 3” still managed to scrape up a decent amount of money, proving… um… some terribly depressing point, I would imagine. The film stars Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker as a couple of cops who have to find terribly contrived and exotic ways to solve various crimes. The talented supporting cast includes Philip Baker Hall, Max Von Sydow, and Roman Polanski, and not one of them has a single interesting thing to do. It’s a pretty mediocre movie, and as with the previous two “Rush Hour” efforts, the highlights are Jackie Chan’s stunts (much more limited in this installment) and Lalo Schifrin’s score. Read more…
STARDUST – Ilan Eshkeri
Original Review by Clark Douglas
With the enormous success of the “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” films, we have seen endless fantasy productions popping up left and right. In the past few weeks, I’ve seen trailer after trailer for upcoming fantasy films that all look roughly the same. “The Golden Compass”. “The Spiderwick Chronicles”. “The Seeker: The Dark is Rising”. “The Dragon Wars”. “Beowulf”. “The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep”. It goes on and on. Some of these will undoubtedly be better than others, but they all basically look alike, portentous journeys into tired lands of “mystery” and “wonder”. Ho-hum. Read more…
BECOMING JANE – Adrian Johnston
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
With the likes of Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility being such popular works of both the written and visual media, it was only a matter of time before someone made a screen biography of their author, the erstwhile Jane Austen. Julian Jarrold’s film Becoming Jane is just such a film; American star Anne Hathaway adopts an English actress to play the pre-fame author, growing up in 18th century Hampshire, and falling in love with a handsome Irishman named Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy); Jane’s encounters with him, and her dalliances with the societal niceties of the day seek to shape her literary style and her outlook on life. Read more…
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM – John Powell
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Though I’m no fan of “MTV-style” action movies, where things whiz and pop so quickly that everything becomes incomprehensible, Paul Greengrass impressed me a great deal with his fast, jerky, shaky stylings on “The Bourne Ultimatum”. There was a method to the madness, a certain precision and caution taken to insure that the chaos was more than merely chaos. Soundbites and quick images of actors like Matt Damon, Joan Allen, and David Strathairn were edited into what looked like impressive performances, and the story proved to be a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Read more…
HOT ROD – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Rod Kimble (Andy Samberg) wants nothing more than to be a stuntman. He practices very hard, every single day. He has a team of cohorts (Bill Hader, Jorma Taccone, Danny McBride) who help him train. The only problem is, Rod is perhaps the world’s worst stuntman. He is absolutely awful at everything he attempts in the stunt department, and his incompetent friends don’t help any. Still, every time Rod attempts a stunt, he believes quite sincerely that he is going to make it.
Stunts aren’t the only thing Rod has trouble with. He also continually loses fights… yes, physical fights… with his step-father Frank (Ian McShane). He explains to his friend, “Fathers automatically love you Read more…
SKINWALKERS – Andrew Lockington
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Skinwalkers is a Canadian horror-action film about werewolves, directed by James Isaac and starring Jason Behr, Elias Koteas, Rhona Mitra, and Tom Jackson. It follows the fortunes of a young boy named Timothy (Matthew Knight) who, unbeknown to him, is a member of a ‘good’ werewolf family, and who upon his thirteenth birthday will begin to fulfil an ancient prophecy and “cure” his family and other werewolves of their lycanthropy. However, a gang of other werewolves, who have embraced their flesh-eating ways, are searching for the boy, determined to stop the prophecy from coming true. It’s an interesting premise which, unfortunately, lost something in translation between the page and the screen, and generated some surprisingly negative reviews. Read more…
UNDERDOG – Randy Edelman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
All you really need to know about Underdog is that it’s about a canine super-hero voiced by Jason Lee, based on an animated cartoon series which debuted in 1964. That one line plot description gives you ample opportunity to decide what Frederik Du Chau’s film is all about – and whether it’s a worthwhile investment of time to seek it out. Despite a fairly impressive supporting cast that includes Amy Adams, Brad Garrett, James Belushi and Peter Dinklage, the film was a comparative commercial failure; this lack of financial success also ultimately led to the mainstream cancellation of the planned soundtrack CD, which would have featured Randy Edelman’s original score. Read more…
I KNOW WHO KILLED ME – Joel McNeely
Original Review by Clark Douglas
No, I didn’t see “I Know Who Killed Me”. Let’s be honest, you didn’t either. In fact, looking at the box office stats for the R-rated Lindsay Lohan thriller, it seems that hardly anyone did. And why would they? The film’s trailers looked just plain terrible, the critic’s reviews were just plain terrible, and Lohan’s acting is just plain… well, to be fair, mediocre. It looks like the sort of film that was made to flop at the box office… the era of the sleaze thriller is over, kids, “Basic Instinct” was 15 years ago. You’d think they would learn a little quicker.
Speaking of that, I never expected “I Know Who Killed Me” to produce the finest trashy thriller score since Jerry Goldsmith’s effort for “Basic Instinct”. Music is provided by Joel McNeely, who undoubtedly accepted this assignment because he couldn’t get anything better. That’s a real shame, because McNeely is a fabulous composer. Read more…
NO RESERVATIONS – Philip Glass, Conrad Pope
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A gastronomical romantic comedy starring Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhart, No Reservations follows the fortunes of top New York chef Kate (Jones), and the way her life changes when she unexpectedly becomes the guardian of her young niece, Zoe (Abigail Breslin from Little Miss Sunshine). Director Scott Hicks’s cute romance was a comparative box-office success, but had a somewhat checkered musical history.
Originally Philip Glass – yes, Philip Glass! – was hired to write the music for his first Hollywood romantic comedy, and recorded a full score; however, during the film’s post-production the executives at Castle Rock decided that a warmer and more traditional romantic score was required in certain places Read more…
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