Archive
PLAY DIRTY – Alan Silvestri
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A fun action-thriller crime caper from writer-director Shane Black, Play Dirty is the seventh film based on the ‘Parker’ series of novels by author Donald E. Westlake, writing under the pseudonym Richard Stark. In this film Mark Wahlberg steps into the cinematic shoes previously occupied by notables such as Lee Marvin (Point Blank, 1967), Robert Duvall (The Outfit, 1973), and Mel Gibson (Payback, 1999) as the titular hard-boiled professional thief. In this story Parker gets a shot at a major heist, but to pull it off he and his team must outsmart a South American dictator, the New York mob, and the world’s richest man. The film co-stars LaKeith Stanfield, Rosa Salazar, Keegan-Michael Key, Gretchen Mol, Thomas Jane, and Tony Shalhoub, and premiered on Amazon Prime Video in October 2025, to mostly positive reviews. Read more…
JUDGE DREDD – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The character Judge Dredd was well-known to British comic book fans for almost 20 years prior to him debuting on film. Created by writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra, he first appeared in the second issue of the British science fiction comic magazine 2000 AD in 1977, and quickly became the most iconic character of the anthology, known for his authoritarian demeanor, brutal sense of justice, and unwavering loyalty to the law. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, the Dredd stories have strong satirical and political overtones, exploring themes ranging from fascism to state surveillance, corporate corruption, and dystopia. Dredd himself is not the protagonist in a traditional sense – instead, he is a symbol of rigid, authoritarian justice, who has no personal ambition, rarely shows emotion, and sees mercy as weakness. Attempts to adapt Judge Dredd for the big screen began in the 1980s but the screenplay was stuck in development hell for years; the film eventually moved forward in 1994 with director Danny Cannon, a self-proclaimed fan of the comic, who was given the green light by the studio on the strength of his directorial debut The Young Americans in 1993. Unfortunately, subsequent interference and script re-writes heavily altered his intended vision, resulting in a film which disappointed long-time fans of the series. Read more…
THE ELECTRIC STATE – Alan Silvestri
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There are a lot of similarities between The Electric State and Ready Player One. Both are based on highly respected and popular written source material – The Electric State is adapted from a graphic novel by Simon Stålenhag, Ready Player One was adapted from a novel by Ernest Cline. Both stories feature a great deal of period pop culture nostalgia seen from a point in a dystopian future. Both movies are directed by filmmakers with tremendously successful records at the box office: Ready Player One by the legendary Steven Spielberg, The Electric State by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, whose films include MCU blockbusters Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. And both films have received scathing reviews, from critics and audiences alike; one recent review in The AV Club eviscerated The Electric State, saying that the Russos had “crafted a crass commercialist product that both misunderstands and betrays its source material.” Read more…
THE QUICK AND THE DEAD – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Quick and the Dead is a Western action film written by Simon Moore, directed by Sam Raimi, and starring Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, and Leonardo DiCaprio. The story follows Ellen (Stone), also known as The Lady, a mysterious gunslinger who arrives in the frontier town of Redemption circa 1881. The town is controlled by the ruthless John Herod (Hackman), a powerful outlaw who has installed himself as the town mayor and who now hosts an annual quick-draw tournament where gunfighters compete to the death. Ellen enters the tournament with a secret motive – she seeks revenge on Herod for the death of her father, a marshal whom Herod had killed when she was a child. As the competition unfolds, Ellen encounters various colorful participants, including The Kid (DiCaprio), a cocky young gunslinger claiming to be Herod’s son, and Cort (Crowe), a former outlaw turned preacher who refuses to kill. Read more…
HERE – Alan Silvestri
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Here is a cinematic experiment film directed by Robert Zemeckis, adapted from a graphic novel by Richard McGuire, which uses the ‘static camera’ conceit to tell the story of a specific place throughout time – from the era of the dinosaurs through the ice age, to the dawn of humanity, pre-Columbian native Americans, and then after a house is built on that spot, the different families who live there, from the Colonial era to the present day. The main story follows the Young family – WWII veteran Al and his wife Rose, who buy the house and raise their children there, one of whom, Richard, marries his childhood sweetheart Margaret, and lives there too. It’s an intimate, sensitive portrayal, a snapshot of vignettes that chart the passage of time in non-linear fashion, and which touches on all that comes with it – birth, death, and all the ups and downs of life in between. Some critics have decried at as being overly-sentimental and mawkish, and while I admit that it does go for the emotional jugular with unashamed regularity, I nevertheless thought it was lovely, a welcome escape from depressing reality. I also thought the main technical idea, where the camera never moves but the world moves around it, worked really well; the way Zemeckis uses overlapping boxes to delineate the shifts in time were especially effective. Read more…
FORREST GUMP – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.
It’s not a cool thing to admit any more, but at this point in my life I’ve stopped caring what people think about my taste, and I simply accept it for what it is. So here’s my statement: Forrest Gump is one of my favorite films of all time. I first saw it in the fall of 1994, when it came out in cinemas in England, and it affected me deeply right from that first viewing. Not only did I love the film for what it was, but the part of the story involving the relationship between Forrest and his Mama somehow became inextricably linked to the real life relationship I have with my own mother Christine, so it means a great deal to me on an intensely personal level. It’s one of the films I have seen the most in my lifetime; I know the screenplay beat-for-beat, and I never get tired of quoting many of its iconic lines. I still laugh in all the right places, and the ending always moves me to tears. Read more…
THE BODYGUARD – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
If you listened to popular music on the radio, or watched TV, at any point in 1992, then you will have found it impossible to escape the pervasive reach of “I Will Always Love You,” singer Whitney Houston’s cover of the classic 1973 Dolly Parton song. “I Will Always Love You” was being used in the soundtrack of Houston’s debut film as a leading actress, The Bodyguard, and it was everywhere that summer. It went on to break numerous chart records for sales and staying power – it won the Grammy for Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance (Female) – while the Bodyguard soundtrack album itself went on to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, ultimately becoming the best-selling soundtrack album of all-time, the best-selling album by a woman in music history, and the best-selling album of the entire 1990s decade. Overlooked in all of this hoopla and success is the film’s score, which was written by Alan Silvestri – something which I intend to correct here. Read more…
PINOCCHIO – Alan Silvestri
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Continuing on with their never-ending quest to make live action versions of every film in their back catalogue, Walt Disney’s latest such movie is Pinocchio, the classic tale of a little wooden puppet who wants to grow up to be a real boy. It feels like there is a new version of Pinocchio every couple of years: Roberto Benigni has made at least two, and a different animated one directed by Guillermo Del Toro is due out later in the year, although that one is a significant departure from the original Carlo Collodi story. This one, though, is essentially a fleshed-out version of the well-loved 1940 animated classic; it’s directed by Robert Zemeckis and stars young Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Pinocchio, alongside Tom Hanks as the wood-carver Geppetto, Cynthia Erivo as the magical Blue Fairy, Luke Evans as the evil Coachman, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the voice of Pinocchio’s conscience Jiminy Cricket. Read more…
DEATH BECOMES HER – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Although it may not seem like it today, Death Becomes Her was once considered one of the most groundbreaking visual effects films in the history of cinema. Directed by Robert Zemeckis from a screenplay by David Koepp and Martin Donovan, it’s ostensibly a satire of Hollywood’s obsession with youth and glamour. Meryl Streep stars as Madeline Ashton, a narcissistic actress, who conspires to seduce and marry wealthy plastic surgeon Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis), the fiancé of her rival Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn). Years later, and with her career, her marriage, and her looks in ruins, Madeline is shocked to discover that Helen has retained her youthful appearance, and jealously resolves to discover her secret. Eventually, Madeline encounters Countess Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini), a mysterious and wealthy socialite who specializes in rejuvenation; Lisle gives Madeline a magic potion that promises eternal youth – but before long the more negative side effects of immortality begin to emerge. Read more…
FATHER OF THE BRIDE – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Father of the Bride is charming remake of the classic 1950 Spencer Tracy-Elizabeth Taylor comedy, written by Nancy Meyers and directed by Charles Shyer. Steve Martin takes over the Tracy role as George Banks, a middle-aged father who finds himself suffering both a midlife crisis and a nervous breakdown when his only daughter Anne (Kimberly Williams) announces she is getting married. What follows is a comedy of errors as George – who is reluctant to see his daughter as a grown-up woman – suffers all manner of mishaps, mixed messages, and physical pratfalls as he supervises the organization of the wedding he does not want to happen. The film co-stars Diane Keaton and George Newbern, and features a hilarious cameo from Martin Short as Franck the wedding planner, and is one of those feelgood movies that is funny and heartwarming all at the same time. Read more…
SHATTERED – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Shattered is a twisty-turny psychological thriller written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, based on the popular novel ‘The Plastic Nightmare’ by Richard Neely. The film stars Tom Berenger as Dan Merrick, a successful architect who is involved in a major car accident with his wife Judith (Greta Scacchi). Judith survives relatively unharmed, but Dan suffers major injuries and brain trauma, including amnesia, and needs plastic surgery. As he recuperates at home afterwards, with the help of his friend Jeb (Corbin Bernsen) and Jeb’s wife Jenny (Joanne Whalley), Dan slowly starts to feel that things are not quite what they appear to be, and begins to make some inquiries into his own past. These inquiries eventually lead Dan to private detective Gus Klein (Bob Hoskins), whose explosive revelations change Dan’s life forever. Read more…
RICOCHET – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ricochet is an action-thriller directed by Russell Mulcahy, starring Denzel Washington, John Lithgow, Ice-T, Kevin Pollak, and Lindsay Wagner. Washington plays Nick Styles, an LAPD cop, who becomes a hero when he subdues and arrests a violent hitman named Earl Blake Talbot (Lithgow) during a hostage standoff. Years later, Styles is now a successful Los Angeles district attorney, but everything changes when Blake – who has now aligned himself with a group of neo-Nazis in the Aryan Brotherhood – escapes from prison and embarks on a violent and destructive revenge plot against the man who he claims destroyed his life. Ice-T plays Odessa, Styles’s former childhood friend who is now a drug dealer, and the whole thing culminates in a fight to the death atop Los Angeles’s iconic Watts Towers. The original screenplay, as written by Fred Dekker, was pitched as a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry sequel, but it was rejected for being ‘too grim,’ and was eventually re-worked by Steven E. de Souza and Menno Meyjes as a vehicle for Washington. Read more…
SOAPDISH – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A hilarious send-up of American daytime soap operas, Soapdish is directed by Michael Hoffman and features an all-star ensemble cast including Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Robert Downey Jr., Cathy Moriarty, Whoopi Goldberg, Carrie Fisher, and Elisabeth Shue. The film is set in the world of a fictional soap opera – The Sun Also Sets – and follows the various shenanigans both on-set and behind the scenes, involving professional rivalries and former love interests, familial drama, raging egos within the cast, and desperate attempts by the show’s producers to revive their flagging ratings by coming up with new storylines, each one more sensational and implausible than the last. It’s a fun, fast-paced, knowing parody of the genre, but unfortunately it wasn’t a hit with either critics or audiences, who presumably would rather stay home watch the real thing. Read more…
PREDATOR 2 – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Following the enormous critical and commercial success of the movie Predator in 1987, it was only a matter of time before Twentieth Century Fox commissioned a sequel. However, when Arnold Schwarzenegger declined to reprise his role as Dutch, the producers were forced to come up with a new idea, and so instead of focusing on the humans, they switched to focusing on the aliens. Predator 2 is set in 1997 and sees a second predator visiting Earth; however, instead of hiding in the jungles of South America, the alien makes for the urban jungle of Los Angeles, which is caught up in a turf war between rival Colombian and Jamaican drug cartels. LAPD detective Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) is investigating the cartels and trying to stop the carnage, but instead becomes embroiled in a deeper mystery when criminals from both sides of the drug war turn up dead – killed by the Predator, although Harrigan does not know this at the time. Eventually, Harrigan teams up with FBI special agent Peter Keyes (Gary Busey), who is aware of the Predator’s existence, and wants to capture him alive. The film co-stars Rubén Blades, Maria Conchita Alonso, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Peter Hall as the Predator, and was directed by Stephen Hopkins. Read more…
THE WITCHES – Alan Silvestri
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Roald Dahl’s The Witches has become one of the world’s most beloved fantasy/horror stories for children in the years since it was first published in 1983. The story takes place in a reality where secret covens of child-hating witches exist all over the world; the witches are governed by the evil and powerful Grand High Witch, who has just arrived at a luxurious hotel in England to organize her final plan to eradicate all the children in the country by turning them into mice. However, the plot is uncovered by an unnamed ‘hero boy’ and his grandmother, a former witch hunter, who are coincidentally staying in the same hotel, and the two of them resolve to stop the witches’ plan – and end the Grand High Witch’s reign of terror for good. The story was turned into a well-loved film in 1990 by director Nicolas Roeg, which saw Anjelica Huston playing the Grand High Witch. This newer version, directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Zemeckis, Guillermo del Toro, and Alfonso Cuarón, relocates the action from England to 1960s Alabama, and casts Anne Hathaway as the beautiful but evil Grand High Witch, Jahzir Kadeem Bruno as the Hero Boy, Octavia Spencer as his grandmother, and Stanley Tucci as the downtrodden hotel manager. Read more…
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