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THE SHIPPING NEWS – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Films set in Newfoundland are few and far between, and scores based upon the musical heritage of that uniquely isolated part of Canada are rarer still. The Shipping News, Miramax’s big Oscar movie of 2001, is not a film about the indigenous people of Newfoundland, but the white European settlers who moved there centuries ago, and as such embraces their culture wholeheartedly, allowing composer Christopher Young to explore a musical style he had never before attempted: Celtic music. Adapted from the novel by E. Annie Proulx and directed by Lasse Hallström (The Cider House Rules, Chocolat), The Shipping News stars Kevin Spacey stars as Guy Quoyle, a lonely New Yorker who returns to his childhood home in Newfoundland with his daughter after emerging from a tragic, loveless marriage to Petal (Cate Blanchett). Moving in with his long lost aunt (Judi Dench) and taking a job writing the shipping news column in the local newspaper, “The Gammy Bird”, Quoyle finds his world-vision slowly changing his life… that is, until he meets widow Wavey (Julianne Moore), an emotionally damaged woman with whom Quoyle begins to come to terms with his own life, heal the rift with his daughter, and put his past behind him. 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…
THE BIG KAHUNA – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
How does one write music for a film, 99% of which takes place in an anonymous hotel room, and which features a cast of characters that barely exceeds the three leads – in this case Kevin Spacey, Danny De Vito and newcomer Peter Facinelli? If your name is Christopher Young, you write a brilliant contemporary jazz score for a selected group of sixteen instrumentalists and invest it with more life, energy and pizzazz than any music for this kind of film has a right to contain. Read more…
THE HURRICANE – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Over the years, Christopher Young has continually found himself scoring the most dismal films Hollywood has the cheek to release, which makes it all the more gratifying to see him attached to a movie of such genuine quality as The Hurricane. Already, The Hurricane has garnered a Golden Globe for Denzel Washington for Best Actor, multiple nominations in other categories, and it tipped to be a hot property at the Oscars. Brilliant but under-appreciated composers like Young need this kind of exposure to ensure that they continue to score high-profile, worthy pictures which actually befit the excellent music Young is able to provide. Read more…
IN TOO DEEP – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I suppose everyone can have an off day once in a while, and even though Chris Young’s off days are often better than other composer’s best, In Too Deep still remains one of his least-inspired scores for many a year. It’s interesting that Young should score movies like this because – and I don’t want this to sound in any way racist – he is one of the few white composers who can write music for black movies. Normally, the director of a film like In Too Deep would employ someone like Terence Blanchard or Stanley Clarke to provide a culturally appropriate underscore. But Young, having written for movies like Tales From The Hood and Set It Off, seems able to convincingly convey the same musical identity. Read more…
ENTRAPMENT – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Entrapment is Chris Young’s second big-budget action score in as many years and is an ideal comparison to the work he undertook for Hard Rain because, if nothing else, it effectively demonstrates Young’s ability to tackle similarly-themed movies in vastly different ways. Whereas Hard Rain was firmly rooted firmly in the musical traditions of the American midwest, Entrapment is a fluid, hi-tec action score which combines efficient, modern orchestral grooves with the some unexpected textures and styles. The film itself is a flawed, but audience-friendly thriller about a beautiful insurance investigator who teams up with an aging breaking-and-entering expert with the express intent of fingering him for the high-profile robbery she thinks he has committed. Things become a little more complicated, though, when he persuades her to join him in undertaking a final, ambitious break-in, and then get even worse when she inexplicably finds herself falling for him in a big way. Disregarding the unlikely love interest between sixty-something Sean Connery and twenty-something Catherine Zeta-Jones, Entrapment works well as an “event picture”, providing the right combination of thrills, spills and technobabble to keep increasingly touchy viewers happy. Most of all, though, it is highly satisfying to finally see Young getting a much-deserved and long overdue shot at the Hollywood big time. Read more…
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