THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY – George Fenton
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The winner of the Palme D’Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, The Wind that Shakes the Barley is a film from left-wing director Ken Loach, about the Republican movement in early 20th century Ireland, prior to the separation of the country under British and Irish rule, which eventually led to the long-lasting bloody conflict known as ‘The Troubles’ between Catholics and Protestants. Cillian Murphy and Padraic Delaney star as brothers Damien and Teddy, whose lives are torn apart by the increasing sectarian violence, and the political struggles which taint their formerly peaceful lives. Read more…
PREMONITION – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Let’s just be upfront about things. “Premonition”, the latest Sandra Bullock vehicle, is a pretty ridiculous time-bending film, as almost every time-bending film is. Let’s face it, very few movies have been able to pull off a “time warp” theory convincingly… but some of them work in spite of it. I have been unusually kind to these movies in recent days. I gave Bullock’s previous time-bending romance “The Lake House” a kind review, and also tossed some generous comments in the direction of Tony Scott’s “Déjà Vu”. However, I will not show such mercy to “Premonition”, and as with all of those other films, my opinion has very little to do with the time warp element. Read more…
NOMAD – Carlo Siliotto
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When Italian composer Carlo Siliotto was nominated for a Golden Globe for his score for Nomad, the film music world let out a collective “huh?” The film had not yet played in cinemas in the United States; a large majority had not even HEARD of the film, let alone seen it or heard its score; and Carlo Siliotto is not a composer many people would list as being a regular awards contender. The utterly amazing thing, though, is that the Hollywood Foreign Press got it absolutely right. Nomad is stunningly good score, full of rich themes and ethnic mystery, which undoubtedly would have gone on to greater acclaim had its accompanying movie not been so comparatively obscure. Read more…
LA MÔME/LA VIE EN ROSE – Christopher Gunning
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The legendary singer Edith Piaf, who died in 1963, remains a national icon of French musical culture to this day, whose razor-blade voice was unmistakable, and whose massive stage presence belied her diminutive stature. Director Olivier Dahan’s biography of Piaf, La Môme (released internationally as “La Vie en Rose”, after one of her most famous songs), stars Marion Cotillard in an extraordinary performance as the Little Sparrow, and features supporting turns from such respected Gallic actors as Sylvie Testud, Pascal Greggory, Emmanuelle Seigner and Gérard Depardieu. Read more…
DEAD SILENCE – Charlie Clouser
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The popularity of the Saw and Hostel franchises, and the subsequent arrival of the so-called ‘torture porn’ sub-genre, has spawned a number of imitations, one of which is this film: Dead Silence. Directed by James Wan and starring Ryan Kwanten, Amber Valletta, Donnie Wahlberg and Bob Gunton, the film is a mean-spirited horror flick about a man who, having endured his wife’s ghastly and unexplained death, returns to his home town, to try to find the connection between a series of grisly murders and the old ghost tale of Mary Shaw and her vengeful ventriloquists dummies. Read more…
THE ULTIMATE GIFT – Mark McKenzie
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Based on the best-selling book by Jim Stovall, The Ultimate Gift is the story of man being forced to find out what life if all about. When his impossibly rich grandfather Red Stevens (James Garner) dies, selfish layabout Jason Stevens (Drew Fuller) thinks he’s in for the financial windfall of his life; however, Red ha other ideas. Before he can receive his inheritance, Jason must successfully complete twelve tasks – “gifts” – which Red devised in order for his ungrateful, distant grandson to experience the reality of life, each challenging Jason in an improbable way. Read more…
300 – Tyler Bates
Original Review by Clark Douglas
You know, I’ve been rather critical lately of the way movies are advertised. “Bridge to Terabithia” and “Stranger than Fiction” are pretty notable examples. The first was billed as a “Narnia”-like fantasy, the second as a goofy concept comedy. If you’ve seen either of those films, you know just how ridiculous that is. But I must give credit to “300” for delivering pretty much exactly what it advertises: Half-naked men in boots and red capes shouting a lot and killing each other on various copper-toned computer-generated sets.
The film is based quite faithfully on the graphic novel by Frank Miller (“Sin City”), who based his story quite loosely on the famous historical tale of the 300 Spartans (I’m too lazy to re-tell it here, but it’s a lot like “The Alamo”). This story was originally put to film in the 1960’s under the title of “The 300 Spartans”, and indeed, it was Miller’s love for that film that inspired him to create this interpretation of the story. Read more…
ZODIAC – David Shire
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The last time David Shire had a film in the top ten at the American Box Office was in July 1988, when director George Romero’s horror-thriller Monkey Shines became a moderate success. It’s been a long road back to the top for the composer of Saturday Night Fever, All the President’s Men, The Hindenburg, 2010 and Short Circuit, but here he is, nineteen years later, writing the score for David Fincher’s dark thriller, Zodiac.
San Francisco in the late 1960s was a scary place. A serial killer, known by members of the press as the Zodiac Killer, murdered five people between December 1968 and October 1969 in the most brutal of circumstances, but gained a great deal of wider notoriety after he sent a series letters and bizarre cryptograms to the offices of the San Francisco Examiner newspaper, taunting those who sought to stop his killing spree. Read more…
WILD HOGS – Teddy Castellucci
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A silly, but warm-hearted and enjoyable comedy road movie starring Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy, Wild Hogs follows the fortunes of four suburban husbands – each obsessed with motorbikes – who find themselves having a mid-life crisis. Eager to capture their youth, and yearning for life on the open road, the hapless quartet set out on a road trip from the Midwest to California – but get more than they bargained for when they fall afoul of the ruthless New Mexican biker gang the Del Fuegos, and their psychotic leader, Jack (Ray Liotta).
Teddy Castellucci, finally beginning to shake of the shackles of being Adam Sandler’s in-house composer, provides the film with an inoffensive country-themed score Read more…
BLACK SNAKE MOAN – Scott Bomar
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An extremely peculiar film from Craig Brewer, the director of Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan is a deep-South drama covering topics as diverse as promiscuity, religion, redemption, love, and Blues music. Samuel L. Jackson plays farmer and part-time blues musician Lazarus, who wakes up one morning to find a young woman named Rae (Christina Ricci), badly beaten and unconscious, lying half-naked in his yard. A childhood victim of sexual abuse, Rae had developed into the town tramp, using her sex addiction as a replacement for the love she has never felt in her life. Lazarus, however, seeing a chance to redeem both himself and Rae, takes it upon himself to ‘cure’ Rae of her illness – and proceeds to chain her to the radiator of his remote farmhouse, forcing her to endure sexual cold turkey. And so begins a truly unusual friendship between the pair – and, as always happens in these things, they learn more about life from each other than they ever expected. Read more…
THE NUMBER 23 – Harry Gregson-Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’m always excited when Jim Carrey plays is straight, having witnessed his superb performances in films like The Truman Show, Man on the Moon, and The Majestic; however, his run of dramatic successes had to end eventually – and end it did, with director Joel Schumacher’s paranoiac thriller The Number 23. Carrey plays oridinary family man Walter Sparrow, a dog catcher for the Department of Animal Control, with a loving wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen), and a teenage. However, after Agatha buys an odd novel with the central premise concerning the number 23 as a birthday gift for Walter, his life quickly unravels: he becomes obsessed with the story, believing the mystery about the number 23 to be true, and finding many coincidences and parallels between the book and his own life. Read more…
THE ASTRONAUT FARMER – Stuart Matthewman
Original Review by Clark Douglas
The opening image of “The Astronaut Farmer” presents a challenge to the audience… almost a dare. It’s an image of a man in a spacesuit riding a horse across the plains, a bizarre thing that will either inspire curiosity, derision, or laughter from an audience. It’s the film’s way of saying, “get on or get off right now, because you’re in for something pretty unbelievable.” Some will (and have) labeled the film as a ridiculous piece of nonsense, which is understandable. It’s one of those stories that can “only happen in the movies”. Twenty years ago, that might have been a complaint on my end, but these days… I don’t think that’s so bad. Read more…
AMAZING GRACE – David Arnold
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the least worthy aspects of the British Empire was their involvement in and implicit support of the international slave trade in the 1700s. For over one hundred years, thousands upon thousands of west African tribesmen were forcibly removed from their homes and shipped overseas to work as slaves, on sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and in the cotton fields of what would eventually become the United States. This heinous activity, in Britain at least, was eventually abolished due to the tireless activity of one man: William Wilberforce. Amazing Grace, directed by Michael Apted and starring Ioan Gruffudd, tells the life story of Wilberforce: his first hesitant steps into British government as the young member of Parliament from Yorkshire in 1780, his friendship with future Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (Benedict Cumberbatch), his conversion to evangelical Christianity in 1785, his subsequent encounters with Anglican clergyman John Newton (Albert Finney) – the writer of the eponymous hymn Amazing Grace – and his eventual immersion into and leadership of the abolition movement which eventually led to the slave trade being successfully abolished in 1807. In addition to the lead actors, the film boasts a starry supporting cast including Romola Garai, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon, Ciaran Hinds, and Senegalese singer/songwriter Youssou N’Dour as Oloudaqh Equiano, the slave who first inspired Wilberforce to act. Read more…
ANGEL – Philippe Rombi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Angel, also known as The Real Life of Angel Deverell, is a French-English romantic comedy-drama based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor (the writer, not the actress), and is the second English-language feature from the acclaimed French filmmaker François Ozon. Romola Garai stars as the eponymous Angel, a fiery and passionate aspiring writer in late-Victorian England, whose determination, intelligence, and sense of imagination and magic allows her to escape from the dreary tenement where she lived, and fulfill her literary dreams. The film charts Angel’s life, from birth to death, with a sense of satire and a biting wit, and features an outstanding supporting cast, including Sam Neill, Charlotte Rampling, Lucy Russell and Simon Woods. They are accompanied by a truly marvelous score by Ozon’s regular musical collaborator, Philippe Rombi. Read more…
MUSIC AND LYRICS – Adam Schlesinger
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Another Valentine’s Day, another romantic comedy at the movie theatre. Wonders never cease to exist. I’ve lamented the current languishing state of romantic comedies in general, screenwriters have gotten lazier and lazier with the genre, pushing out inane drivel with no romance, no humor, and no feeling. It takes a movie like “Music and Lyrics” to remind us of why the genre can be such fun.
At the center of attention in “Music and Lyrics” is the finest romantic comedy star in movies today, Hugh Grant, who has single-handedly resuscitated countless formulaic films. Here, he plays a washed-up pop singer named Alex Fletcher, one of the two key members in the cheesy 80’s band PoP (we see a hilarious music video of one of the band’s hits over the opening credits). Read more…
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