RED PLANET – Graeme Revell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Of late, there seems to be an increasing amount of pressure on film music composers to score science fiction films in daring new ways. While this kind of innovation in film music is, and always should be, welcomed, it has to be said that these experiments are not always entirely successful. The critical backlash against Ennio Morricone’s Mission to Mars was palpable; similarly, Graeme Revell’s techno score for the animated summer movie Titan A.E. did little to stir the minds and hearts of soundtrack fans. Revell continues to break down barriers with his score for Red Planet, the latest in a line of Martian movies to hit screens in the wake of NASA’s Pathfinder exploration of our closest celestial neighbor. Unfortunately, and while credit is certainly due to the New Zealander for his efforts, the score for Red Planet is likely to be as equally derided as its predecessors. Read more…
THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE – Rachel Portman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
With increasing frequency, British composer Rachel Portman is finding herself being asked to score films with “Academy potential”. After her award-winning turn on Emma in 1995, which secured her status in history as the first woman to win a composing Oscar, the undisputed queen of film music has scored such acclaimed movies as Marvin’s Room, Beloved, and last year’s successful drama The Cider House Rules, cementing her status as a member of Hollywood’s A-list. Her latest assignment is The Legend of Bagger Vance, a tale of life, love, and the open fairway which seeks to do for golf what Field of Dreams did for baseball, directed by Robert Redford from the novel by Steven Pressfield. It stars Matt Damon, Will Smith and Charlize Theron, and tells the story of Adele Invergordon (Theron), who inherits her late father’s golf resort in late 1920s Savannah, Georgia. In order to get rid of some of the debts, she decides stages a celebrity golf tournament at the course, and invites three of the state’s top players, one of whom is Rannulph Junuh (Damon), her one-time beau and a former top pro who retuned from the war a drunken, shell-shocked, broken man. Initially reluctant to start swinging the clubs again, Junuh unexpectedly finds himself receiving encouragement from the mysterious Bagger Vance (Smith), who offers to be his caddy in exchange for a mere $5, and begins to impart to Junuh all the wisdom he possesses about life, love and golf. Read more…
PAY IT FORWARD – Thomas Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There’s a worrying trend developing in the career of Thomas Newman – peculiarity. Now, I’m all for innovation in film scoring. When a composer does something unexpected to enhance the mood or feel of a film, it is a refreshing and invigorating experience. When Thomas Newman did it on American Beauty, I was pleased. Newman has always been one of Hollywood’s most unconventional mainstream composers, equally at ease with lush symphonic writing (a la The Shawshank Redemption or Meet Joe Black) and experimental sound design (as in Flesh & Blood or Red Corner). Of late, though, Newman seems to have been stuck in this percussive rut, with seemingly no way out. In effect, he has written the same score for his last three movies: American Beauty, Erin Brockovich, and now Pay It Forward. Read more…
THE CONTENDER – Larry Groupé
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Established orchestrators often find it difficult to disassociate themselves and carve out a solo composing career for themselves, out of the shadow of the (usually) more famous composer they have assisted for many years. Over the years, Jerry Goldsmith, Alexander Courage and the late Arthur Morton have been perfect examples. In recent years, artists such as Nicholas Dodd, Tim Simonec, Thomas Pasatieri and Ken Kugler have remained firmly behind their employers, while others such as Mark McKenzie, Hummie Mann and most noticeably Don Davis have emerged as composing talents in their own right. Larry Groupé looks likely to join this latter group very shortly; finally appearing from out of composer/director John Ottman’s backroom and taking center stage on a project worthy of his talents. Read more…
TOM’S MIDNIGHT GARDEN – Debbie Wiseman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I first heard Debbie Wiseman’s score to Tom’s Midnight Garden way back in the fall of 1998, at a special concert she gave at London’s Royal Festival Hall. It has taken well over two years for the film to be released, and for her lavish, sumptuous music to finally become available for all to enjoy. Scores of the quality of Tom’s Midnight Garden are rare indeed, and are worth waiting for. The film is based on the classic children’s novel by Philippa Pearce, and stars Anthony Way (the child star of the popular series The Choir) as Tom, one of many young boys who were sent away into the English countryside to escape the horrors of war raining down on the cities where they lived. Tom is sent to stay with his prissy Aunt and Uncle (Greta Scacchi and James Wilby) in a rambling old house away from London, and at first Tom is unhappy at being separated from his parents and his friends. But soon Tom discovers that unusual things happen in the old house: when the antique grandfather clock in the hall strikes thirteen instead of twelve, a magical gateway appears in the house’s walled garden, which takes him back in time – and into the company of a beautiful young girl named Hatty. Read more…
MEET THE PARENTS – Randy Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Daft comedies have never been my favorite genre, but I have to admit Meet the Parents made me laugh – a lot. It is surely one of the most nerve-wracking days of any young man’s life when he goes home to meet his fiancé’s folks. First impressions count for a lot, and if the woman you are with is the one you intend to marry, having a healthy relationship with her family is of paramount importance. All these things are weighing heavily on nurse Greg Focker (Ben Stiller)’s mind when he accompanies his girlfriend Pam (Teri Polo) home to meet her retired mother Dina and father Jack (Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner). Unfortunately, Greg’s weekend plans for presenting himself as the “model son” go seriously awry in the face of her father’s overbearing presence. You see, Jack is not a florist, as Greg first believed: he is, in fact, a former CIA agent – who takes his daughter’s marital welfare very seriously! Read more…
NURSE BETTY – Rolfe Kent
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s been said a hundred times before, but sometimes the most unlikely movies get great scores. Neil La Bute, having contributed two of the nastiest relationship movies in recent memory with In The Company of Men (1998) and Your Friends and Neighbors (1999), both of which told twisted little stories of manipulation, verbal assault and a total lack of moral fiber, is the last man you would expect to helm a sweet-natured road movie. Therefore it comes as something of a surprise to discover that his third feature, Nurse Betty, is a generally wholesome romantic fable – with just a hint of subversion to keep it interesting. Renee Zellweger stars as Betty Sizemore, a put-upon waitress obsessed with the daytime soap opera A Reason to Love, and its star Dr David Ravel (Greg Kinnear). Betty’s life is drastically altered when she witnesses her lowlife husband Del (Aaron Eckhart) being murdered by two bickering hitmen (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock) over a drug deal gone wrong. Shocked into a “fugue state” by the trauma, Betty goes AWOL and heads off across America to LA, convinced that she is in fact a nurse at the fictional hospital from A Reason to Love, and that Dr Ravel is her real-life former fiancé. Unaware that the two killers are hot on her trail – and that a cache of cocaine is stowed in her trunk – Betty’s odyssey picks up pace as she traverses the country, imparting her tale to a variety of bemused on-lookers, and becoming increasingly determined to rekindle her imaginary relationship. Read more…
THE WATCHER – Marco Beltrami
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’m starting to get worried by the way Marco Beltrami’s career is progressing – or isn’t progressing, as the case may be. When Beltrami first burst onto the scene five years ago with the arrival of Scream, it seemed as though a great new talent in the soundtrack world had arrived. A composer with talent, a gift for melody, and who knew how to write for a big orchestra. A dozen or so movies later, and Beltrami is still scoring more horror movies than anything else, and herein lies the problem. With just a couple of exceptions – like the disco drama 54 and the Emmy Award winning Tuesdays With Morrie – the vast majority of the Italian-American’s work has been in the horror and thriller genres, and if he’s not careful he’s going to end up in the same situation Chris Young was in ten years ago: a great composer stuck in a pigeonhole from which he can’t escape. Read more…
HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME – Stephen Graziano, Nick Glennie-Smith
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Back in 1986, when the original Highlander series began, Queen’s classic soundtrack song “It’s a Kind of Magic” proudly proclaimed that there can be only one. Fourteen years, three sequels and two TV series later, I still think they were right. Christopher Lambert has never bettered his original performance as the immortal clansman Connor MacLeod, both The Quickening and The Sorcerer were woefully poor movies compared to the hugely entertaining original, and Adrian Paul’s turn in the first of the two spin-offs contained more wood than your local branch of B&Q. Highlander Endgame, the fourth big-screen outing for the franchise, sees Connor MacLeod (Lambert – the cinematic hero) teaming up with Duncan MacLeod (Paul – the small screen hero) for the first time, to take on a new all-powerful and extremely evil immortal named Kell (Bruce Payne). Although the producers wax lyrical about the two actors being the “yin and yang, a symbol of wholeness”, it personally strikes me as being nothing more than a piece of opportunistic film-making by Miramax, eager to cash in on the popularity of the TV series and to give Adrian Paul a movie vehicle. And I thought they’d gotten rid of the last evil immortal when Mario van Peebles got chopped in half at the end of Highlander III… oh, well. There’s love interest in the form of actress Lisa Barbuscia, plenty of sword-wielding action, and the whole thing is directed by Douglas Aarniokoski. Read more…
Jack Nitzsche, 1937-2000
Composer Jack Nitzsche died on August 25, 2000, in hospital on Los Angeles, of cardiac arrest brought on by a recurring bronchial infection. He was 63.
Bernard Alfred Nitzsche was born in Chicago, Illinois, in April 1937, the son of German immigrants, and raised on farm in Michigan. He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1950s with aspirations of becoming a jazz saxophonist, but soon found his calling in arranging and studio work. He initially worked for Sonny Bono, but later found his niche working as an arranger for producer Phil Spector. He played a pivotal role in shaping Spector’s the “Wall of Sound,” and was an important contributor to legendary recordings by pop and rock artists including The Ronettes, The Righteous Brothers, Jackie De Shannon (‘Needles and Pins’), and Ike and Tina Turner (‘River Deep Mountain High’).
Later, in the 1960s and ’70s, he collaborated with a wide array of artists, including The Rolling Stones – contributing keyboards and orchestration on several albums, especially songs such as ‘Paint It, Black’ and ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ – and Neil Young, with whom he had a long and occasionally volatile creative partnership.
Nitzsche’s film work was equally distinguished. His first important score was for the 1970 thriller Performance starring Mick Jagger, and he provided ‘uncredited contributions’ to the soundtrack for The Exorcist in 1973. He received his first Oscar nomination for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975, and he won an Oscar for the song “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman in 1982, which he co-wrote with Buffy Sainte-Marie and Will Jennings.
His other important scores include Cruising (1980), Starman (1984), The Razor’s Edge (1984), The Jewel of the Nile (1985), 9½ Weeks (1986), Stand By Me (1986), Revenge (1990), Mermaids (1990), and Blue Sky (1994). His last major score was the for the Sean Penn-director drama The Crossing Guard in 1995; he suffered a stroke in 1998 which ended his scoring career. Read more…
THE CELL – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Writing a review of a film score like The Cell is a very difficult thing to do. The music is so challenging and abstract it almost defies conventional description, and unless you have seen the film it is difficult to appreciate Howard Shore’s scoring techniques which, away from the screen, seem to be made up of mere random noise and ear-shattering dissonance. It’s also a very difficult score to “enjoy” on any kind of emotional, or thematic level, simply because the music is so consistently harsh. Instead, where The Cell’s brilliance lies is in its complexity and structure, and for the thought processes that went into its creation. Read more…
BLESS THE CHILD – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Having passed the turn of the millennium without so much as a hint of Armageddon, it may seem a little odd for a film dealing with the end of the world on 31 December 1999 to make an appearance now – but Bless the Child has suffered such a turbulent post-production, with re-shoots, re-editing and re-writing galore, that this troubled supernatural thriller is only just now beginning to visit cinema screens across the world. Directed by Chuck (“The Mask”) Russell and starring Kim Basinger, Jimmy Smits, Rufus Sewell, Ian Holm and Christina Ricci, Bless the Child tells the story of Maggie O’Connor (Basinger), a comparatively normal working woman whose world is turned upside down when her six year old niece Cody is kidnapped. As Maggie frantically searches for Cody, she slowly learns that the young girl is not all she seemed: apparently, Cody has special psychic powers which, when applied in a certain manner, can open a gateway between Earth and the Netherworld, where legions of evil demons are waiting to invade. Turning to a paranormal investigator (Smits) as a last, vain hope, Maggie tracks Cody down to the lair of a group of devil worshippers (led by Sewell) and engages in a battle for the soul of the child. Read more…
HOLLOW MAN – Jerry Goldsmith
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Throughout cinema history, the story of the invisible man has been invented and re-invented by each subsequent generation. From James Whale’s 1933 classic with Claude Rains in the title role, to the popular 1970s TV series starring David McCallum, man’s fascination with making himself diaphanous has made for compelling viewing. In Hollow Man, director Paul Verhoeven has taken this principle one step further, by making his invisible man not just invisible, but also psychotic and murderous: driven insane by the scientific methods that gave him his power. Gory, and more than a little gratuitous (inspect the rear of the insert card for proof!), Hollow Man stars Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Caine, a brilliant but slightly deranged scientist who has perfected a serum that will render whoever uses it invisible. Despite the protestations of his loyal assistant Karen (Elisabeth Shue), and the remainder of his staff, Sebastian tests the drug on himself, with horrific results. Read more…
WONDERLAND – Michael Nyman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In my opinion, Michael Nyman has never been particularly good at “warm” music. Throughout his career, Nyman has always shown an aptitude for using interesting orchestrations and for creating a number of moods – from forlorn longing in The Piano, to coldness and sterility in Gattaca, to horror in Ravenous, to the peculiarity that characterizes his work for Peter Greenaway – but never has he written something that one can immerse oneself in the way that you can with, say, a romantic Williams theme or a soaring Marc Shaiman melody. Therefore, it comes a something of a surprise to realize Wonderland is a bit of a departure for him, in that the music has a kind of welcoming, inviting feeling. It’s music that genuinely wants to be listened to, to be experienced, and to be liked. Read more…
THOMAS AND THE MAGIC RAILROAD – Hummie Mann
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When the Reverend W. Awdry first created the characters that feature in his children’s tales of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, I bet he never imagined that one day they would be made into a feature film starring Hollywood heavyweights Alec Baldwin and Peter Fonda – but that is exactly what has happened here with this children’s movie, the first from writer/producer/director Britt Allcroft. In what can only be described as a psychedelic twist, the film concerns Mr. Conductor (the aforementioned Baldwin who, thanks to political correctness, is no longer fat or a controller), who has lost his magic dust and soon will no longer be able travel backwards and forwards from the island of Sodor, which is populated by talking trains, and Shining Time, a village in the “real world”. Meanwhile, a young girl named Lily (Mara Wilson from Matilda) is visiting her grumpy grandpa (Fonda), and discovers a magic railroad which links Sodor and Shining Time that looks like it will allow Mr. Conductor to continue his mystical travels. However, an evil train named Diesel has other ideas, and it falls to the ubiquitous Thomas to save the day. Read more…
Shop at the Movie Music UK Store
Member of the
MOVIE MUSIC UK 