BROKEDOWN PALACE – David Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Over the years, the “innocent person in a brutal foreign prison” subject has resulted in some excellent movies, including the Oscar-winning Midnight Express, the Australian TV series Bangkok Hilton and last year’s Return to Paradise. Following purposely in their footsteps is Brokedown Palace, directed by Jonathan Kaplan and starring Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale as two friends travelling in Thailand who, after meeting a charismatic young Australian (Daniel Lapaine) and agreeing to accompany him to Hong Kong, find themselves in the unwitting possession of a substantial amount of heroin. Arrested by the Thai authorities and abandoned by their new friend, the women are sentenced to spend 33 years in a brutal prison chillingly nicknamed “The Brokedown Palace”, where they eventually realize that their only hope of freedom is through an expatriate American lawyer played by Bill Pullman. Read more…
BOWFINGER – David Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy have spent much of the last five years or so attempting to recapture their respective glory days, when smash movies such as 48HRS, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, All of Me and Roxanne were the norm. Their first on-screen collaboration, the hit comedy Bowfinger, has helped kick-start both their careers and set them both back on the road to the top of the Hollywood tree. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that their film should be about the people on the flipside of tinsel town, trying to make a buck and get a break in the cutthroat and unforgiving movie business. Read more…
DICK – John Debney
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
John Debney’s Dick. If I wasn’t such a fine, upstanding member of the on-line film music community, I could quite easily turn this review into a rejected script from a Carry On film. But, contrary to popular belief, I have far more taste and decorum than that, so I will remain completely straight-faced for the remainder of this review. Honest. Read more…
THE IRON GIANT – Michael Kamen
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The thing which distinguishes The Iron Giant from the vast majority of other film scores is that, by and large, there are no recurring themes anywhere. Written in the short gap between finishing his historic “S&M” collaboration with Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and re-commencing work on his millennium symphony, “The New Moon in the Old Moon’s Arms”, composer Michael Kamen tackled The Iron Giant like a mini-symphony of its own, with each individual cue a standalone piece intended to depict a certain feeling or moment in childhood. Read more…
THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR – Bill Conti
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When you look at Bill Conti’s list of credits over the past five years or so – memorable titles such as Rookie of the Year, Bushwhacked, Spy Hard and Wrongfully Accused leap out – it is all the more surprising and gratifying to see him attached to such a high profile and comparatively serious movie as The Thomas Crown Affair. He has repaid the trust invested in him by director John McTiernan with an unusual, challenging, peculiarly percussive score that has generated heated debate amongst score fans, with equal amounts of admirers and detractors. Personally, I fall into the former category. While I can appreciate that Conti’s efforts were not entirely successful, and although one key musical sequence was utterly destroyed through careless digital editing, I find it refreshing that a composer such as Conti would be willing to try something so new and original at a time when most film scores are rejected if they don’t adhere to tried and tested formulas. Read more…
THE SIXTH SENSE – James Newton Howard
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Every year has its “twist” movie – from The Usual Suspects in 1994 and Primal Fear in 1995 to Fallen and Wild Things last year. 1999’s sting in the tale comes from The Sixth Sense, a superior thriller starring Bruce Willis as troubled child psychologist Malcolm Crowe who, after a failed consultation drives a former patient over the brink, sees a chance of personal and professional redemption in the case of 10-year old Cole Sear. You see, Cole has a dark and terrible secret which even his mother (Toni Collette) doesn’t know about. In his own words, he “sees dead people, walking around like regular people”, and Malcolm believes that if he can help this terribly frightened young child, it will also rescue his waning relationship with his estranged wife Anna (Olivia Williams). Read more…
DEEP BLUE SEA – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ever since Jaws, the concept of the “killer shark” has been the staple of many thrillers, from the original’s three sequels to watery mimics such as Leviathan, Deep Star 6, Deep Rising and other films beginning with the word deep. Unlike its predecessors, Renny Harlin’s Deep Blue Sea returns to more familiar, more terrifying territory by making the villains of the piece a couple of Mako sharks instead of nasty alien crustaceans, and is a better and more believable film because of it. Starring Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane and Samuel L. Jackson, the film is a generally straightforward action thriller set on a Pacific Ocean research installation, where a team of scientists are conducting experiments on the aforementioned sharks in an attempt to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. When a storm hits the station and all power is lost, the sharks – which have become more intelligent as a result of the experiments – escape from their pens. All hell, as they say, breaks loose. Read more…
THE HAUNTING – Jerry Goldsmith
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Although I personally enjoyed it immensely, Jan De Bont’s modern reworking of Robert Wise’s 1963 classic The Haunting was one of the more high-profile casualties in the summer of 1999’s blockbuster stakes. Despite a headline cast including Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and boasting some truly marvelous special effects, audiences complained that the film concentrated far too much on the visual side of the film and less on actually scaring the audience. To be fair, both visually and aurally, the film was absolutely magnificent, with Eugenio Zanetti’s Gaudi-inspired architecture teeming with cherubic faces and Gothic opulence, and Gary Rydstrom’s resonant sound design echoing majestically through the cinema’s surround sound stereo system. In terms of plot and acting, however, the film performed pretty badly, with several unrealistic contrivances and unconvincing performances from all the leads sealing its critical fate. Read more…
MUPPETS FROM SPACE – Jamshied Sharifi, Rupert Gregson-Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Perhaps it has something to do with my own preconceptions about films starring fuzzy puppets, but I never expect Muppet movies to have any good music in them. Of course, in the past, composers as eminent as Hans Zimmer and the late Miles Goodman have lent their talents to the adventures of Henson’s creations, but come on! How can a film in which the majority of the main characters are sculpted bits of material with a guy’s hand jammed up their asses produce anything worthwhile? Well, it can, and this time I have been proved wrong by the combined talents of Jamshied Sharifi and Rupert Gregson-Williams, whose music turns out to be surprisingly enjoyable, if a little lightweight and more than a little derivative. Read more…
LAKE PLACID – John Ottman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In recent years, Hollywood has regurgitated the “mutant killer something-or-other” storyline for an alarmingly large number of films: cockroaches in Mimic, lizards in Godzilla, crustaceans in Deep Rising, sharks in Deep Blue Sea, the list goes on. Crocodiles are the newest addition, with the arrival of Steve Miner’s Lake Placid, a new horror thriller set in the very same mountain town that staged the Winter Olympics back in 1980. Read more…
ARLINGTON ROAD – Angelo Badalamenti
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Arlington Road, directed by hot young independent filmmaker Mark Pellington, is a disturbingly convincing suburban fairy tale starring Jeff Bridges as a widowed college professor who slowly begins to suspect that his seemingly innocuous next door neighbors, Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack, may actually be terrorists involved in a bombing campaign across the United States. Composer Angelo Badalamenti, best known for his work with cult director David Lynch on films such as Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart and the Twin Peaks TV series, has collaborated with computer technology composers Tomandandy for the score which, while you’re hearing it in the cinema, sounds absolutely astounding. Alternatively, a friend describes the CD as “appropriately atmospheric” – his own expression which can be translated as meaning “a load of rubbish”. Personally, I quite enjoy it. Read more…
SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER & UNCUT – Marc Shaiman, Trey Parker, Matt Stone
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
For anyone who has been living in a cocoon for the last few years, South Park is an animated TV series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, set an the isolated Colorado town, and is all about four eight-year-old friends (Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovsky, Eric Cartman and the immortal Kenny McCormick) who, quite simply, wreak havoc in every episode, aided and abetted by recurring characters such as the sex machine school Chef (voiced by Isaac Hayes), Stan’s girlfriend Wendy Testaburger (who gets puked upon whenever Stan talks to her because he’s so nervous), and kooky schoolteachers Mr. Mackey and Mr. Garrison, who wears a puppet on his left hand called “Mr. Hat”. The thing about South Park is the style – the animation is extremely crude and simplistic, but the scripts are ironic, satirical, and surprisingly intelligent, with messages and morals easily identifiable in amongst each episode’s gross-out gags. Read more…
WILD WILD WEST – Elmer Bernstein
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When Elmer Bernstein scores a western, you know exactly what you’re going to get. With a track record that includes scores like The Magnificent Seven, The Commancheros, True Grit and The Shootist (his last “true” western back in 1976), it is obvious that Bernstein is a master of the musical depiction of the vast open prairie, of six-shooters and ten-gallon hats, and Wild Wild West is a welcome return to the genre which made him world famous. Read more…
STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE – John Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
At long, long last, the waiting is over. I don’t think I can ever remember a soundtrack being as highly anticipated as The Phantom Menace was – not even Titanic. Ever since George Lucas announced his intentions to make a second Star Wars trilogy, score fans the world over literally started drooling as they pondered the possibilities. Of course, John Williams would write the music, but what would he do? Would any of the familiar themes make an appearance? Would the full score be released? Would it be a 2-CD release? What would be the cue titles? Such has been the speculation and avid discussion, especially on the Internet, that with only a few weeks to go until its premiere, it has almost become a frenzy. As such, reviewing a score like this impartially and without bias is now virtually impossible – even I have been caught up in Phantom Menace fever, especially with the tantalizing glimpses of the trailer in my local multiplex. Read more…
L’ASSEDIO/BESIEGED – Alessio Vlad
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The curse of Bernardo Bertolucci strikes again. Bernardo – or, as one British film critic recently called him Bore-nardo Bertolucci – has never recreated the masterful triumphs of Last Tango in Paris or The Last Emperor, despite having an excellent eye for detail and a sumptuous cinematic style. Besieged (also known as L’Assedio), his latest offering, is the story of a love triangle between an English composer and pianist (David Thewlis), his black African housekeeper (Thandie Newton), and her unseen political prisoner husband. The crux of the film is to do with love, and how it is expressed in different ways by different people. It’s all very stately and very “arthouse”, and has been dismissed by many as being nothing more than a dry and dusty character study. Read more…
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