DISTURBIA – Geoff Zanelli
Original Review by Clark Douglas
“The Island”. “Mr. Brooks”. “Deja Vu”. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. “When a Stranger Calls”. “Poseidon”. “16 Blocks”. These are just a few of the incredibly limp thriller scores that leapt to mind when I heard that Geoff Zanelli was scoring “Disturbia”. You see, Zanelli is one of a large group of Hollywood composers who learned his craft under Mr. Hans Zimmer and the good folks at Zimmer’s company, Remote Control (formerly known as Media Ventures). Despite Zimmer’s remarkable talents, very few of his protégés have developed unique voices in any way whatsoever, and are often content to provide recycled versions of recycled versions of better film scores. Still, every score deserves to be judged on it’s own merits, and “Disturbia” has a little bit more than some of the aforementioned titles. Read more…
PATHFINFER: LEGEND OF THE GHOST WARRIOR – Jonathan Elias
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In a similar way as David Shire scoring Zodiac earlier in the year, Jonathan Elias’s hiring to score the medieval action adventure Pathfinder: Legend of the Ghost Warrior marks the return of a film music composer to the box office after a gap of almost 15 years. For those who don’t remember, Elias is a classically trained composer and conductor who first broke into the mainstream through the advertising arena. His company, Elias Associates, established itself as one of the pioneers of advertising music by applying film scoring techniques to the industry, and before long Elias had secured lucrative contracts for himself with several global brands. Read more…
PERFECT STRANGER – Antônio Pinto
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There’s a disappointing musical trend developing in the world of the modern Hollywood thriller: nobody’s willing to write memorable music any more. It’s possibly another holdover from television scoring, where music’s sole purpose seems simply to be to fill the dead air time between the dialogue and the songs, but to have this kind of lack of vision or technique bleeding through to film scoring is unsatisfactory indeed. A case in point is Perfect Stranger, written by Brazilian composer Antônio Pinto. Pinto, having already contributed music to Collateral in 2004 and Lord of War in 2005, has shown an irritating lack of innovation in his music, which continues here – it’s a score which, for all intents and purposes, is just “there”, never really adding any extra dimension to the film, never really doing anything musically interesting, and not making for an especially interesting listening experience. Read more…
ZWARTBOEK/BLACK BOOK – Anne Dudley
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Director Paul Verhoeven’s first Dutch-language film since 1983 – and arguably his most critically acclaimed since then too – Black Book, aka Zwartboek, is a World War 2 drama starring Carice Van Houten as Rachel, a Jewish woman in German-occupied Netherlands, who infiltrates the regional SS office on behalf of the Dutch Resistance. Working undercover in the office of the Commandant, Ludwig Muntze (Sebastian Koch), and reporting back to her allies on the activities of the Nazis, Rachel soon finds herself questioning her loyalties when she unexpectedly falls in love with the man on whom she is spying – and who, she knows, is likely to eventually meet his death at the hands of her comrades. Read more…
FIREHOUSE DOG – Jeff Cardoni
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An inoffensive family comedy, Firehouse Dog is about a Hollywood celebrity dog named Rexx – think Rin Tin Tin or Lassie crossed with Paris Hilton (actually, don’t…) who goes missing off the set of his latest film and ends up in a run-down suburban fire station in danger of closure due to the generally lackadaisical nature of the firemen within it. However, the arrival of the new canine in the firehouse has a surprisingly positive effect – Rexx has a surprising talent for locating people trapped in burning buildings, and before long becomes a valued member of the fire crew… until Hollywood comes calling wanting its star back, that is. Read more…
THE REAPING – John Frizzell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Those biblical plagues certainly were a bitch. Boils, locusts, frogs, rivers of blood, death, disease, and pestilence. One thing you can certainly say about Moses and the Old Testament is that they didn’t go for the soft option when dishing out the wrath of God upon their enemies. These biblical plagues feature heavily in the new horror movie The Reaping, starting Hilary Swank and directed by Stephen Hopkins. Swank plays Katherine Winter, a former Christian missionary who specializes in debunking religious phenomena. When her investigations lead her to a small town in Louisiana, she makes a startling discovery: the town seems to be suffering from a new manifestation of the biblical plagues. Worse still is her discovery of the apparent source of the plagues: a ten year old girl named Lauren McConnell (Anna Sophia Robb). The film, which also stars David Morrissey, Stephen Rea and Idris Elba, appropriately opened during the Passover period, but to lukewarm reviews, which derided the film as clichéd and predictable. Read more…
BLADES OF GLORY – Theodore Shapiro
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Sports comedies are nearly as common as sports dramas at the movie theatres, and “Blades of Glory” was a film that did very little to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack. Despite a few entertaining moments, the film feels like one of the more forgettable entries in the career of Will Ferrell… and one of the many recent forgettable entries in the career of Jon Heder (who keeps trying and failing to capitalize on his “Napoleon Dynamite” fame). Anyway, the film centers around a pair of banned male figure skaters who bend the rules by deciding to skate together as a pair. This leads to all sorts of rather dumb gay jokes, and a long, slow progression to the climax of all sports movies, “The Big Game/Event/Championship/Thing”. Read more…
THE LOOKOUT – James Newton Howard
Original Review by Clark Douglas
I’m always pleased when a talented new director hits the Hollywood scene, and I’d like to welcome Scott Frank to the club of “people whose movies I will pay to see even if I don’t have to.” Frank has been writing quality screenplays for years, his credits include “Get Shorty”, “Dead Again”, “Out of Sight”, and “Minority Report”. He has moved into the next phase of his career with “The Lookout”, trying his hand at directing for the first time. He demonstrates considerable skills in this area, creating a very compelling cinematic atmosphere. The film is of the crime genre, something Frank is quite familiar with, and at first it may seems as if we’re about to view a re-hash of a dozen other crime movies, among them such titles as “Out of Sight” and “Memento”. Before long, we realize that we are actually seeing an original creation, not a mere rehash of Frank’s other movies, or anyone else’s for that matter. Read more…
MEET THE ROBINSONS – Danny Elfman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Walt Disney’s 46th feature length animation, and their major animated effort for 2007, Meet the Robinsons surprisingly fell under the radar, and was a comparative box office failure. It tells the story of a young orphan inventor named Lewis, who embarks on a series of extravagant, time-traveling adventures with various members of the futuristic Robinson family as he attempts to find his real family. The film was directed by Steve Anderson and featured the voice talents of the likes of Angela Bassett and Tom Selleck, as well as an original score by Danny Elfman. The film sees Elfman in what one could call “madcap mode”, in much the same way as he was on scores such as Flubber and Mars Attacks. Read more…
SHOOTER – Mark Mancina
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A tense thriller from director Antoine Fuqua, Shooter stars Mark Wahlberg as former Special Ops sniper Bob Swagger, who is called out of his self-imposed retirement by his former boss (Danny Glover), who tells him they have learned of a plot to assassinate the President of the United States. With a mission to track down the suspects before they can carry out their plan, Swagger heads to Washington DC; however, before long, Swagger finds himself wrongfully accused of plotting to kill the President himself. On the run, and unsure of who to trust, Swagger must flush out the real suspects in order to clear his name. By all accounts it’s a return to form for the director of Training Day and Tears of the Sun, following the critical mess of King Arthur, and features a strong lead performance by Wahlberg alongside notable support from the likes of Glover, Elisa Koteas, Michael Pena, Kate Mara, Rade Serbedzija and Ned Beatty. Read more…
TMNT (TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES) – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Clark Douglas
I was rather irritated when I first heard that the title of the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie would be “TMNT”. “Sheesh,” I thought, “haven’t we had enough of finding a shorter way to say everything in America? Why do we have to frickin’ abbreviate everything? Besides, what sounds cooler than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? It’s just fun to say!” However, after seeing the film, it seems the movie has an appropriate title. These turtles are many things, but they most certainly aren’t teenagers. “Tired” would fit the bill a bit more accurately. Read more…
REIGN OVER ME – Rolfe Kent
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The serious side of Adam Sandler gets a rare outing in director Mike Binder’s film Reign Over Me. Sandler plays Charlie Fineman, a dentist whose entire family – wife, kids, dog – was wiped out in the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York. Since then, Charlie has shut himself off completely from the outside world, unable to cope with the trauma of his life; that is, until he meets up with old college roommate and former fellow dentist Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle), who is having personal and professional problems of his own. Recognizing Charlie’s grief, Alan attempts to rekindle their friendship and bring Charlie out of his depression – hoping that, in doing so, it will bring him out of his own. Read more…
PRIDE – Aaron Zigman
Original Review by Clark Douglas
This movie is quite an accomplishment, one that obviously took a lot of time and energy to create. It manages the startling feat of combining numerous related genres and inserting well-worn clichés from every single one of them into a jam-packed viewing experience. Too bad the crew couldn’t have put their efforts toward coming up with something fresh. If you’ve never seen an inspirational film involving teachers, coaches, sports, racism, or teenagers, you will be blown away by “Pride”. If this is not the case, I can’t promise such amazing things.
Genre # 1 – “Overcoming Racial Hurdles”: Our story’s primary character is Jim Ellis (Terence Howard), a real-life figure. Ellis attempts to get a job at a noteworthy Philadelphia high school, and is told by evil racist Tom Arnold that the students there couldn’t possibly learn from “a man of your sort.” Read more…
THE LAST MIMZY – Howard Shore
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Some have said that “The Last Mimzy” is the most hopeful and optimistic movie to come along in some time, and they are quite right. “Optimistic” is an appropriate word, perhaps “deluded” is another. The movie strains so hard to create a world of beautiful fantasy that it very nearly snaps. This bothered me quite a bit, as many portions of “The Last Mimzy” feel like a deceptive set-up to a freaky horror movie, but no, everything goes smashingly from start to finish. Then again, the movie wasn’t made for me, and it’s a bit difficult to gauge how children will respond to it. I suspect a lot of them will like it well enough, probably because it doesn’t treat them like mentally challenged schizophrenics. Read more…
VƯỢT SÓNG/JOURNEY FROM THE FALL – Christopher Wong
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Mikael Carlsson’s groundbreaking record label Movie Score Media has been responsible for releasing some hidden musical gems over the last couple of years, but Christopher Wong’s score for the Oriental drama Journey From the Fall is one of the best. The film, which was directed by Ham Tran, tells the story of a Vietnamese family who, thirteen years after the end of the American involvement in the conflict there, still cope with the repercussions of the war on their every day lives. Eventually the family uproots from their spiritual home and moves to America, only to find that life in the new world is no less difficult. Read more…
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