THE NORTH STAR – Aaron Copland
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1942 President Roosevelt created the Office of War Information (OWI) to serve as America’s official propaganda agency. The OWI pressured Hollywood studios to make war films that favorably represented the Soviet Union to generate public support given that they and America were now allies fighting Nazi Germany. Following a personal request by President Roosevelt, MGM executive Samuel Goldwyn decided to contribute with the film The North Star. Goldwyn, assisted by William Cameron Menzies, took charge of production with a $3 million budget. Lillian Hellman was hired to write the story and screenplay, and Lewis Milestone was tasked with directing. An exceptional cast was assembled, including Ann Baxter as Marina Pavlova, Dana Andrews as Kolya Simonov, Walter Huston as Dr. Pavel Grigorich Kurin, Walter Brennan as Karp, Ann Harding as Sophia Pavlova, Jane Withers as Clavdia Kurina, Farley Granger as Damian Simonov and Erich von Stroheim as Dr. von Harden. Read more…
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCK FINN – Bill Conti
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Adventures of Huck Finn is a period adventure film directed by Stephen Sommers, based on the classic novel by Mark Twain. It’s one of dozens of adaptations of Twain’s timeless story, which combines elements of carefree adventure with more serious explorations of themes relating to friendship, morality, and the injustices of slavery, which were still fresh in the minds of Americans in 1885, when the book came out, considering that Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation freeing the slaves had been issued in 1862, just 23 years previously. The film follows the adventures of a young boy named Huck Finn (Elijah Wood), who runs away from his abusive father and teams up with an escaped slave named Jim (Courtney B. Vance) as they journey down the Mississippi River on a raft; as they travel down the river, Huck and Jim encounter a variety of colorful characters, including two con men (Robbie Coltrane and Jason Robards) who pretend to be the long-lost brothers of a wealthy man, and a group of feuding families who threaten to tear each other apart. Read more…
THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE – Brian Tyler
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In 1981 video gaming was changed forever following the launch of Nintendo’s Donkey Kong arcade game. The game introduced two iconic characters into public consciousness: the titular antagonist, a 300-pound gorilla with a penchant for throwing barrels at people, and the hero, an Italian plumber named Mario. Since then, Mario has appeared in over 200 video games – including some of the most successful and popular titles of all time – and has become the recognizable mascot face of Nintendo as a whole. Understandably, Nintendo have been very protective of their man, and have been reluctant to allow movie adaptations featuring him (or, for that matter, many of their other characters); this reluctance was compounded following the 1993 release of the Super Mario Bros. film starring Bob Hoskins, which was a critical and commercial disaster. Now, almost 45 years after his initial appearance, Nintendo finally have a bonafide hit on their hands with this new Super Mario Bros. Movie, an animated action adventure featuring all the classic characters – Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Princess Peach, Donkey Kong, and more – and the voice talents of Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, and Fred Armisen, among many others. Read more…
THE PRISONER OF ZENDA – Alfred Newman and Conrad Salinger
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
With the onset of a new decade, MGM studio executives embarked on an ambitious plan to remake several popular black and white films in color. To that end, in 1951 they announced that they had purchased the film rights of “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1937) from David O. Selznick for $225,000. A creative decision was to use many of the same production elements as the 1937 film, including; the identical script, camera angles, setting and musical score. Pandro S. Berman was assigned production and provided a $1.708 million budget. Richard Thorpe was tasked with directing, and a stellar cast was assembled, which included; Stewart Granger as Rudolph Rassendyll, Deborah Kerr as Princess Flavia, James Mason as Rupert of Hentzau, Louis Calhern as Colonel Zapt, Robert Douglas as Michael, Duke of Strelsau, Jane Greer as Antionette de Mauban and Robert Coote as Fritz von Tarlenheim. Read more…
POINT OF NO RETURN – Hans Zimmer
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Point of No Return, also known as The Assassin, is an action thriller film directed by John Badham, and is a remake of the 1990 French film La Femme Nikita directed by Luc Besson. The story follows Maggie Hayward (Bridget Fonda), a drug-addicted criminal who is sentenced to death for her involvement in a robbery that resulted in a police officer being killed. However, instead of being executed, she is given the opportunity to become a government assassin under the guidance of her handler, Bob (Gabriel Byrne). Maggie undergoes intensive training and transformation to become a skilled and professional killer; she is given a new identity as Claudia and is sent on missions to eliminate high-level targets. Along the way, she becomes involved in a romantic relationship with J. P. (Dermot Mulroney), a man who works as a computer expert for Bob. However, things take a dark turn when Maggie’s loyalty is questioned, and she must decide whether to continue her life as a killer or to risk everything to escape and start anew. The film co-starred Anne Bancroft and Harvey Keitel in major supporting roles, and was popular box office success, which cemented the-then 28-year old Bridget Fonda’s status as a viable leading lady. Read more…
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOUR AMONG THIEVES – Lorne Balfe
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s been surprisingly difficult to make a good adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons. In the years since the classic table-top roleplaying game was released in 1974 there have been several attempts; the 1983 animated TV series was fun, but barely resembled the game itself, while the 2000 live action version starring Justin Whalin was critically reviled and commercially disastrous, although it did spawn a series of straight-to-DVD sequels. This new film, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, is an attempt to finally – finally – convey the fun, excitement, and imagination of the game for movie audiences; it stars Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, and Hugh Grant, and was written and directed by self-proclaimed D&D nerds Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley; it’s a classic fantasy story set in a medieval world full of knights, wizards, rogues and thieves, and features a quest for treasure, numerous battles, and wonderous creatures a-plenty. Read more…
THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA – Max Steiner
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1936 Warner Brothers Studio executives Hal B. Wallis and Henry Blanke received a proposal from Heinz Herald, a literary agent, that they consider a making a biopic film of Émile Zola and the infamous Dreyfus Affair. Wallis and Blanke were favorably disposed to the idea and hired Harold and Geza Herczeg to write the script. Their 200-page script was accepted, but underwent editing by Herczeg, Wallis, director William Dieterle and actor Paul Muni. The final script was approved in early 1937, and Blanke was assigned production with a budget of $699,000. William Dieterle was tasked with directing, and a fine staff was assembled, including Paul Muni as Émile Zola, Gloria Holden as Alexandrine Zola, Gale Sondergaard as Lucie Dreyfus, and Joseph Schildkraut as Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Read more…
Ryuichi Sakamoto, 1952-2023
Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto died on March 28, 2023, in hospital in Tokyo, after a long battle with cancer. He was 71.
Sakamoto was born in Tokyo, Japan, in January 1952. He studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, earning a B.A. in music composition and an M.A. with special emphasis on both electronic and ethnic music. He studied ethnomusicology there with the intention of becoming a researcher in the field, due to his interest in various world music traditions, particularly the Japanese (especially Okinawan), Indian and African musical traditions.
Sakamoto began his musical career while at university as a session musician, producer, and arranger. His first major success came in 1978 as co-founder of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), and with bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto influenced and pioneered a number of electronic music genres. He concurrently pursued a solo career, releasing the experimental electronic fusion album Thousand Knives in 1978, and then the influential B-2 Unit in 1980.
Sakamoto began working in films, as a composer and actor, in Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence in 1983. Sakamoto won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music for his score – which was hugely popular in the UK. Then in 1987 Sakamoto wrote the score for Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor with fellow composers David Byrne and Cong Su, and won the Academy Award, the Golden Globe, and a Grammy. Read more…
A FAR OFF PLACE – James Horner
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A Far Off Place is a children’s adventure movie directed by Mikael Salomon about a group of teenagers who must survive in the African desert after their families are killed by poachers. It stars a then 17-year-old Reese Witherspoon as Nonnie Parker, a young girl who lives on a game reserve with her father; after the poachers attack and her father is killed, she is forced to flee into the Kalahari with a young African boy named Xhabbo (Sarel Bok), and along the way they are joined by an American teenager named Harry Winslow (Ethan Randall), who is also trying to escape from the poachers and their leader, corrupt ivory smuggler John Ricketts (Jack Thompson). The group faces many dangers in the harsh desert environment, including dehydration, starvation, encounters with dangerous wildlife, and further attacks from Ricketts, but eventually they discover evidence of the poachers’ illegal activities and decide that they must try to put an end to their operation. The film was received as a slightly updated version of the 1971 Australian film Walkabout, and was praised at the time for its beautiful desert cinematography, but it has become somewhat forgotten in the intervening years. Read more…
ETHAN FROME – Rachel Portman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ethan Frome is a romantic drama directed by John Madden, based on the tragic novel by Edith Wharton. The film is set in snowy Vermont in 1911 and stars Liam Neeson as the titular character, who has been trapped by circumstance and duty his entire life. He is married to a sickly and demanding woman, Zeena (Joan Allen), who has come to live with him and his mother after the death of her own family. The couple is struggling financially, and Ethan is unable to leave the farm to pursue his dream of becoming an engineer. One winter day, a young and vivacious cousin of Zeena’s, Mattie Silver (Patricia Arquette), comes to stay with the Fromes to help care for Zeena. Ethan is immediately drawn to Mattie’s youthful energy and zest for life, and they begin to fall in love, but despite their growing feelings for each other, they are unable to act on them; Zeena is suspicious of their relationship and threatens to send Mattie away. Ethan is torn between his love for Mattie and his duty to Zeena, and in a desperate attempt to escape his unhappy life, considers running away with Mattie. However, their plan is foiled and their decision, and its aftermath, have significant consequences for all. It’s a classic, if somewhat bleak, tale of star crossed lovers, but the film was not a success with either critics or audiences; Roger Ebert famously described it as “the kind of movie they used to show us in high school English class, where it gave literature a bad name.” Read more…
SUPERCELL – Corey Wallace
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Every once in a while I find myself scrolling through my TV’s list of movies-on-demand, agog at the number of films on there that I’ve literally never heard of. Half of them are low-budget action and sci-fi movies, made by former stars who have dropped off the 1980s and 90s A-List and are now hovering somewhere between the C-List and the D-List. A bunch of them star Bruce Willis. A bunch of others all seem to feature Frank Grillo. It’s very easy to just scroll past them mindlessly, until eventually they get lost in the endless streaming void. At first glance, Supercell is one of those movies; it’s an action movie about tornadoes, with a director I’ve never heard of (Herbert James Winterstern) and a pair of leads (Daniel Diemer, Jordan Kristine Seamón) who are similarly unknown to me. Those with a more ghoulish sensibility may stop for a second look because of two of it’s supporting actors: it’s the last film Anne Heche made prior to her grisly death in a car accident in August 2022, and it’s also one of the last films Alec Baldwin completed prior to him starting work filming Rust, the now-notorious project where he shot and killed his cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, in an on-set accident. Beyond that, however, this film would usually never give me pause – except that, in this instance, one thing IS worth stopping and considering: the score. Read more…
SCARAMOUCHE – Victor Young
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
One of Hollywood’s most beloved authors was Rafael Sabatini, whose swashbuckling novels were highly prized and often brought to the big screen, including; Scaramouche (1923), Bardelys The Magnificent (1926), Captain Blood (1935), The Sea Hawk (1940), and The Black Swan (1942). In 1938 MGM decided to remake its 1923 silent version of Scaramouche. It would however take thirteen years for the project to finally go to production under Carey Wilson. Ronald Millar and George Froeschel were hired to adapt the novel for a fresh iteration, and a $3.0 million budget was provided. George Sidney was tasked with directing, and a stellar cast was hired, including; Stewart Granger as Andre Moreau, Eleanor Parker as Lenore, Janet Leigh as Aline de Gavrillac de Bourbon, Mel Ferrer as Noel, Marquis de Maynes, and Nina Foch as Marie Antionette. Read more…
Christopher Gunning, 1944-2023
Composer Christopher Gunning died on March 25, 2023, at his home in Hertfordshire, England, after a short illness. He was 78.
Christopher Gunning was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, in August 1944, and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where his tutors included Edmund Rubbra and Richard Rodney Bennett.
Gunning beganm writing for film in the early 1970s, and his important early works included Goodbye Gemini (1970), the Hammer horror film Hands of the Ripper (1971), the film version of the smash hit sitcom Man About the House (1974), and Porterhouse Blue (1987), which which he received his first BAFTA Television Award.
Gunning’s most enduring contribution to film music came in 1989, when he composed the iconic theme tune for the TV series Poirot, starring David Suchet, for which he received his second BAFTA Television Award. Gunning would go on to score nearly all of the subsequent 70 Poirot TV films between 1989 and 2013. Read more…
SHAZAM: FURY OF THE GODS – Christophe Beck
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The 2019 superhero film Shazam remains, for me, the best entry into the DC Extended Universe to date. At the time, I wrote that “its playful tone is a far cry from the grim seriousness of the previous Ben Affleck Batman and Henry Cavill Superman movies, it’s much more intelligent and nuanced than Aquaman, and the less said about Suicide Squad the better. What I love about it the most is how it captures the excitement and eagerness of how an actual kid would behave when given super powers, and much of that is down to Zachary Levi’s central performance, which appears to me to be a combination of Christopher Reeve and Tom Hanks from Big.” Unfortunately the response to this sequel, Shazam: Fury of the Gods, has been less effusive, with some critics calling it “more unfocused and less satisfying than its predecessor,” despite it still retaining much of the source material’s “silly charm”. The film again stars Levi as 17-year old Billy Batson, who transforms into a super hero when he utters the titular magic word; this time, Billy/Shazam finds himself in conflict with the three daughters of the Titan Atlas, played by Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, and Rachel Zegler, who want to re-claim the staff that gives Shazam his power, saying it was stolen from them eons ago. Read more…
THE MAGNIFICENT YANKEE – David Raksin
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1949 MGM studio executives were seeking a biopic of a famous American for their next film. They decided that the 1946 play The Magnificent Yankee by Emmet Lavery, which had a Broadway theatrical run of 159 performances would be their choice. Armand Deutsch was placed in charge of production with a $1.03 million budget, Emmet Lavery was hired to adapt his play for the film, and John Sturges was tasked with directing. Veteran stage and screen actor Louis Calhern was cast as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Joining him would be Ann Harding as Fanny Bowditch Holmes, Eduard Franz as Justice Louis Brandeis, and Philip Ober as Owen Wister. Read more…
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