SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
With Avengers Endgame having smashed almost every box office record in existence, it was always going to be difficult for Marvel to build on that movie’s enormous success. The two-part Avengers finale was one of those rare things that is both a commercial and cultural touchstone; it also marked the end of the ‘Third Phase’ of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in which the existential threat of Thanos was finally eliminated, and the circle of movies that began with Iron Man in 2008 ended with Iron Man’s death. Spider-Man: Far From Home, despite being officially the last part of Phase III and the 23rd Marvel film overall, is actually something of a coda, acting both as a rumination on the events of Endgame and as a bridge to the Phase IV series which is scheduled to begin in 2020; it also seems to have successfully maintained the interest that peaked with Avengers, enjoying huge box office takings and good critical reviews. The film is set 8 months after Endgame and again stars Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spider-Man; he is still coming to terms with Tony Stark’s death and longs just to be a normal teenager again. As such, he agrees to go on a trip to Europe with his high school classmates, including his potential girlfriend MJ (Zendaya); unfortunately, Peter can’t escape from his responsibilities even there, and is called upon by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to assist a multi-dimensional warrior named Quentin Beck/Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) in saving the world from creatures that wreak havoc by controlling the power of the four elements. The film is directed by Jon Watts and has an original score by Michael Giacchino. Read more…
GOOD OMENS – David Arnold
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I have been a fan of the late great British author Sir Terry Pratchett ever since I was a kid. Titles like The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Mort, and Pyramids were among my most treasured literary discoveries in the 1980s and 90s; the combination of fantasy, science-fiction, and historical adventure with a distinctly Pythonesque brand of English humor and wit appealed to my sensibility greatly. Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, very few of his works have been translated into film or television projects, and even fewer of them have been seen outside of the UK, which means that while he remains massively popular at home, he is something of an unknown quantity to the rest of the world. This is why I’m so pleased that Good Omens has been so well received; it’s a 6-part TV adaptation of the novel Pratchett wrote with sci-fi author Neil Gaiman in 1990, and is a comedy about the end of the world. Michael Sheen and David Tennant star as Aziraphale, an angel, and Crowley, a demon, who have been living on Earth since the beginning of time as the official representatives of God and Satan. When they learn that the son of Satan has been born – an event which will in time trigger the apocalypse – Aziraphale and Crowley team up to stop it happening. It turns out that, over the millennia, the pair have become unlikely friends, and are not willing to give up their pleasant and comfortable lives in England – even if Armageddon is part of God’s ineffable plan. Read more…
HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS – James Horner
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most popular and successful children’s adventure films of 1989, Honey I Shrunk the Kids starred Rick Moranis as Wayne Szalinsky, a scientist and inventor who makes a machine capable of shrinking objects down to miniscule size. One day, Wayne accidentally shrinks his son Nick, his daughter Amy, and the two brothers who live next door, and throws them out in the trash. Stranded at the bottom of their back yard – which, due to their size, is now the equivalent of several miles away from their house and looks like the Amazon rain forest– the children must fight their way through this jungle of plants and enormous insects in order to return home; meanwhile, Wayne has realized what he has done, and desperately begins searching for his kids so he can restore them to their regular size. The film co-starred Thomas Brown, Amy O’Neill, Robert Oliveri, and Jared Rushton as the kids, and marked the directorial debut of Joe Johnston, a special effects genius who had previously worked on several Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. Read more…
INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE – John Williams
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The third movie in director Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones series was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and whereas 1984’s Temple of Doom was a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, Last Crusade was a direct sequel, set just two years later in 1938. Harrison Ford returns as the titular archaeologist-adventurer, who is sent off on a globe-trotting escapade when he receives news from American billionaire Walter Donovan (Julian Glover) that his long-estranged father Henry Jones (Sean Connery) has gone missing while searching for the holy grail. Jones teams up with his old friends and colleagues Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) and Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) on the quest to find his father, and quickly becomes embroiled in a vast labyrinthine plot involving ancient myths and legends, a brotherhood of religious warriors, way too many Nazis, and a beautiful Austrian art professor named Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody) to whom there is more than meets the eye. The whole thing is a delight from start to finish, with several wonderfully exciting action set pieces, and beautiful location settings, but the cornerstone of the film is the father-and-son chemistry between Ford and Connery, whose outward gruffness and constant bickering masks a deep love and affection. Whereas Ford is an all-action matinee idol hero, Connery is a slightly bumbling academic, more at home with books and libraries than punching Nazis in the face, but who is still able to make his son feel like a 12-year old when he calls him ‘junior’. Read more…
CHERNOBYL – Hildur Guðnadóttir
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, close to the Ukraine-Belarus border in what was then the Soviet Union, suffered a catastrophic accident in which one of the plant’s four nuclear reactor cores exploded. The explosion started a fire and released massive amounts of nuclear radiation into the atmosphere and across most of Eastern Europe; it entirely irradiated the nearby city of Pripyat and, although official totals are much lower, may have directly and indirectly lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. The new mini-series Chernobyl, produced jointly by HBO in the United States and Sky in the UK, is a detailed look at what happened: the events leading up to the disaster, the work of the emergency services in the immediate aftermath, the work of the scientists tasked with finding out what happened, and the fates of those directly affected. Many people have taken Chernobyl to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of nuclear power, but director Johan Renck and screenwriter Craig Mazin say that is not what the show is about at all. Instead, it’s supposed to be a damning indictment of government corruption, lies, and abuse of power, with parallels echoing the current situation involving global warming and climate change. Read more…
DEAD POETS SOCIETY – Maurice Jarre
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There have been a lot of great movies about inspirational teachers over the years, from Goodbye Mr. Chips in 1939 (and its musical remake in 1969), to Dangerous Minds and Mr. Holland’s Opus in the 1990s, but for my money the best of them all is Dead Poets Society. Directed by Peter Weir and written by Tom Schulman, the film is set at an elite all-male New England prep school in 1959, a stuffy establishment whose school motto – tradition, honor, discipline, excellence – tells you everything you need to know about the faculty. Everything changes when a new English teacher, John Keating, joins the school, bringing with him a brash and innovative philosophy that teaches students to think for themselves. Keating has a particular influence on a group of seven young men who, having been inspired by Keating’s love of classic poetry, form the eponymous society and begin to embrace their lives, loves, and ambitions more than they had ever done before. The film is anchored by an utterly astonishing lead performance by Robin Williams as Keating, who brings depth and emotion and sincerity and manic energy to what is, to my mind, the greatest role of his entire career. The young men of the society are also superb, notably Robert Sean Leonard as a boy whose passion for acting is constantly crushed by his overbearing father, and Ethan Hawke, who overcomes his crippling shyness as a result of Keating’s encouragement. Read more…
GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS – Bear McCreary
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ever since he first appeared on film in 1954 in director Ishiro Honda’s classic film Gojira, the gigantic amphibious reptile known in the West as Godzilla has become something of an icon, an instantly recognizable element of Japanese pop culture. Godzilla has appeared in an astonishing 32 films in Japan, plus a number of associated video games, novels, comic books, and television shows, but did not make his American debut until the 1998 film directed by Roland Emmerich. When that film was a comparative financial flop, audiences would have to wait a further 16 years for director Gareth Edwards’s 2014 film of the same name. The success of that film solidified Warner Brother’s plans for a future franchise, and now we have the first sequel – Godzilla: King of the Monsters – directed by Michael Dougherty from a screenplay by Dougherty, Max Borenstein, and Zach Shields. Read more…
WINGS – J. S. Zamecnik
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
John Monk Saunders served in the US Air Corp during WWI as a flight instructor in Florida. He had lifelong regrets that he was never able to serve his country in combat, and so conceived a story, which would allow him to realize that ambition in film. He pitched his idea to producer Jessie Lasky who was unreceptive due to the logistics required to film aerial combat. Yet Saunders would not be denied and secured support from the War Department, which included 220 planes, and airmen, artillery, tanks, trucks and troops. Lasky was impressed and decided to proceed with his Famous Players-Lasky company financing the project and Paramount Studio securing distribution rights. A massive budget of $2 million was budgeted and Louis Lighton and Hope Loring were hired to write the screenplay. Lasky and four others would produce the film, and William Wellman was tasked with directing as he was the only director in Hollywood who had actual combat pilot experience. Securing a cast was an adventure however when Paramount’s greatest star Clara Bow, demanded a rewrite stating “Wings is a man’s picture and I am just the whipped cream on top of the pie”. Her demands were met and the story evolved into a war time romance. She would star as Mary Preston, with Charles “Buddy” Rogers as Jack Powell, Richard Arlen as David Armstrong, Gary Cooper as Cadet White, and Jobyna Ralston as Sylvia Lewis. Read more…
LONESOME DOVE – Basil Poledouris
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Lonesome Dove, an epic western mini-series based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Larry McMurtry, was one of the television successes of the year after it premiered on CBS in the spring of 1989. Directed by Simon Wincer and starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, and set in the closing years of the Old West, the story focused on the relationship between Gus (Duvall) and Call (Jones), two retired Texas Rangers who decide to leave their quiet town on the Mexican border and drive a herd of cattle north to Montana. McMurtry’s original novel – which explores themes of old age, death, unrequited love, and friendship – was based on a screenplay that he had co-written with Peter Bogdanovich for a movie that was intended to star John Wayne, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda, but the project collapsed when John Ford advised Wayne to reject the script. Prior to its airing, the ‘classic western’ was considered to be a virtually dead genre, but Lonesome Dove almost singlehandedly re-vitalized it. The series drew staggering viewership numbers of more than 20 million homes, went on to win 7 Emmys from 18 nominations (including Best Director and a slew of technical awards), and paved the way for the cinematic resurrection of the genre with Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves in 1990 and Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven in 1992. Read more…
RIM OF THE WORLD – Bear McCreary
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Rim of the World is a sci-fi action adventure film for children, written by Zack Stentz and directed by ‘McG’. It tells the story of four misfit friends attending a summer camp in the mountains above Los Angeles – when all of a sudden the Earth is invaded by aliens. Somehow, these four intrepid teenage adventurers find themselves in possession of a key which holds vital information about how to stop the invasion, and must trek across through the wilderness, down the mountain, and deliver the key to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, before the aliens find them first. The whole thing is a fun, kid-friendly adventure that has proved to be a popular success since its premiere on Netflix in the summer of 2019. Read more…
PET SEMATARY – Elliot Goldenthal
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Pet Sematary was an adaptation of a popular novel by horror author Stephen King. Directed by Mary Lambert from a screenplay by King himself, the film starred Dale Midkiff as Louis Creed, a doctor who moves with his family – wife Rachel (Denise Crosby), children Gage and Ellie (Miko Hughes and Blaze Berdahl) – from Chicago to rural Maine. Louis befriends his elderly neighbor Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne), who alerts him to the existence of a pet cemetery in the woods on his new property. One day, months later, the family cat is run over and killed on the highway outside their home; wanting to save little Ellie from the pain of losing her beloved pet, Jud reveals to Louis that things that are buried in the cemetery often return from the dead, and sure enough the cat comes back, albeit with a much different, more aggressive personality. Months later still, little Gage is hit by a truck and killed on the same highway – and despite dire warnings from Jud, Louis buries his young son in the cemetery too. Sure enough, the next day, little Gage returns… but, as the film’s famous tagline suggests, sometimes dead is better. Pet Sematary was a popular success at the box office in 1989, despite many critics feeling that the sense of dread that was prominent in the book, as well as its more thoughtful ruminations on grief and death, were missing from the finished film. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2019, Part I
As I have done for the past several years, I am pleased to present the first installment in my ongoing series of articles looking at the best “under the radar” scores from around the world. Rather than grouping the scores on a geographical basis, this year I decided to again simply present the scores in a random order, and so this first batch includes reviews of five disparate scores from the first four months of the year – including a French literary period drama, a French children’s animated film about insects, a Japanese murder-mystery thriller, a Swedish romantic drama, and a historical biopic from Switzerland! Read more…
RED JOAN – George Fenton
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Imagine the situation. You’re at home, visiting with your elderly grandmother, when there’s a knock at the door. In come a bunch of policemen, accompanied by members of the secret service, who then arrest the kindly old lady and take her away. It turns out that, in her youth, your sweet nana was actually an undercover agent for the Soviet Union, and over the course of several decades she sold nuclear secrets to the communists, all the while maintaining her cover as a sweet, innocent secretary for a metalworking research company. It sounds far-fetched, but this new film Red Joan is based on the actual life of Melita Norwood, who was a KGB spy in the UK for more than 30 years, prior to her eventual arrest in 1999, when she was 87 years old. The film is directed by the multi-award winning Broadway and West End theater director Trevor Nunn, and stars Judi Dench and Sophie Cookson as the present-day Joan and Joan in flashback. Read more…
METROPOLIS – Gottfried Huppertz
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Director Fritz Lang had early access to his wife Thea von Harbou’s 1925 novel Metropolis, and was inspired to bring its bold futuristic social commentary to the big screen. The couple worked together to fashion the screenplay and secured financing from the German production company WFA and the German distribution company Parufamet, which was created by investment from Paramount and MGM studios. He pitched his screenplay to Erich Pommer, the most powerful film producer in Germany of the time, and secured his backing to produce the film. A fine cast was assembled which included Alfred Abel as the Master of Metropolis Joh Fredersen, Gustav Fröhlich as Joh Fredersen’s son, Rudolph Klein-Rogge as Rotwang the inventor, and Brigitte Helm as the unforgettable Maria. The film’s narrative offers a potent social commentary, which is set in the far future in the great city of Metropolis. The society is dystopian with an elite ruling class of capitalist industrial oligarchs who live above ground in luxurious skyscrapers and hold power over a lower working class who live impoverished underground, toiling endlessly to operate and maintain the great machines that power the city. They share not in the profits, nor any of the benefits, which go solely to the ruling elite. Freder, who is the son of the Master of Metropolis, bears witness to the misery of the working class and resolves to advocate for them. Freder meets a worker prophetess named Maria who foresees the arrival of a Mediator who will unify the workers and ruling elite of Metropolis in a new Utopia. He falls in love with Maria and aspires to assume the role of Mediator. Against this backdrop the evil inventor Rotwang creates a robot bearing Maria’s likeness to foment dissent and revolution, which will bring him to power. In the end, after much intrigue and fighting, Freder kills Rotwang and fulfills his role as Mediator. Read more…
THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN – Bear McCreary
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
On the surface, a film about the man who wrote the first Oxford English Dictionary might not seem like an especially compelling narrative, but somehow director Farhad Safinia’s film The Professor and the Madman appears to have done just that. It is adapted from Simon Winchester’s acclaimed book The Surgeon of Crowthorne, and stars Mel Gibson as Professor James Murray, the Scottish linguist tasked with the creation of the tome. More specifically, it examines the friendship that developed between Murray and Dr William Chester Minor, an American amateur lexicographer who contributed tens of thousands of quotations to the book – despite the fact that he was an inmate at Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane, where he had been sent after he had murdered a complete stranger in a fit of paranoia. The film has a superb supporting cast of great British character actors and Game of Thrones alumni – Natalie Dormer, Eddie Marsan, Jennifer Ehle, Ioan Gruffudd, Stephen Dillane, Steve Coogan, Anthony Andrews – and has an absolutely ravishing original score by Bear McCreary. Read more…
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