Archive
THE UGLY TRUTH – Aaron Zigman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A modern day battle-of-the-sexes comedy, The Ugly Truth stars Katherine Heigl as Abby, a TV producer with a disastrous romantic life, whose world begins to change when a misogynistic shock-jock named Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler) is hired to present a segment on her morning news show. Mike, who claims to be an expert in knowing what a man really wants from a woman, offers to help Abby woo the man of her dreams: a hunky doctor who lives in the same apartment building. Despite her misgivings at Mike’s sexist outlook on life, Abby agrees, but in spite of their initial mutual dislike, the more time Abby and Mike spend with each other, the more romantic sparks between the mis-matched pair start to fly. Read more…
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE – Nicholas Hooper
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Nicholas Hooper really has been given one of the best, and worst, jobs in the world in taking over the musical voice of the Harry Potter franchise. On the one hand, this is the gig of a lifetime: working on a globally successful, massively popular series of films which are guaranteed to be enormous box office hits and bring his name and voice to millions. On the other hand, he’s taken over from arguably the most popular living film composer – John Williams – and as such faces the ire of countless film music fans who don’t like his music because his first name isn’t John and his second name isn’t Williams. As much as Hooper’s first score for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in 2007 was disappointing, I think I was still a little guilty of having that frame of mind going in: he doesn’t sound like John Williams, so it can’t be good. It can’t possibly add anything to the Potterverse. I was one of the few who managed to take Patrick Doyle’s Goblet of Fire score at face value, and so coming in to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince I was determined not to pre-judge it this time round. And you know what? Having adopted that frame of mind, I really enjoyed it. Read more…
ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The third film in the series of director Carlos Saldanha’s popular Ice Age animated features, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs continues the adventures of sarcastic woolly mammoth Manny (Ray Romano), irritable saber toothed tiger Diego (Dennis Leary) and scatterbrained sloth Sid (John Leguizamo). With Manny and his mammoth mate Ellie settling down and starting a family, Sid decided he wants a family of his own; as such, he steals some dinosaur eggs to raise. However, a visit from the eggs’ real mother results in Sid being taken to a lush and strange underground ‘lost world’, causing Manny, Diego and the others to mount a rescue. Read more…
PUBLIC ENEMIES – Elliot Goldenthal
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Waiting for Public Enemies has been a test of patience for Elliot Goldenthal fans. It’s been a long six years since Goldenthal’s last theatrical score – S.W.A.T. in 2003 – although the intervening period has been an eventful one in Goldenthal’s life; he wrote his first opera, Grendel, in collaboration with his partner Julie Taymor, and produced the Beatles songs used in her 2007 film Across the Universe, but most seriously he suffered a potentially life-threatening head injury in 2005 when he fell off a chair and smacked his head on the marble floor of his kitchen, rendering him literally speechless for several months. So, is Public Enemies the triumphant return to the cinema fans of scores like Titus, Final Fantasy and Interview With the Vampire had wanted? The answer, a touch disappointingly, is no. Read more…
CHÉRI – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A romantic period comedy-drama based on a novel by the popular French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette and directed by Stephen Frears, Chéri is the story of an unusual romance between Léa de Lonval, an ageing courtesan in 1900s Paris, and Frederic Peloux – nicknamed ‘Chéri’ – the 19 year old son of Léa’s friend Charlotte Peloux. Despite the differences between them in age and class status, Léa teaches the eager Chéri about life, love, and sex, shattering stereotypes and upsetting the inflexible social order of the period. The film stars the luminous Michelle Pfeiffer as Léa – still as gorgeous as ever at the age of 51 – Rupert Friend as Chéri, and Kathy Bates, Felicity Jones and Frances Tomelty in supporting roles. The film also has an original score by Alexandre Desplat, whose work and stylistics would seem to fit this genre above any other. Read more…
MY SISTER’S KEEPER – Aaron Zigman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A moving family drama directed by Nick Cassavetes from the popular novel by Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper tells the story of Anna Fitzgerald (Abigail Breslin), the youngest daughter of Sara and Brian Fitzgerald (Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric). The unique thing about Anna is that she was conceived solely to be a blood and tissue donor for her elder sister Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), who has leukemia; now, at the age of eleven and having undergone dozens of medical procedures in order to keep her sister alive, Anna seeks out successful lawyer Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin), with a view to hiring him to earn medical emancipation from her mother.
The sensitive score for My Sister’s Keeper is by Aaron Zigman, working with director Cassavetes for the third time following John Q and The Notebook. Read more…
THE STONING OF SORAYA M. – John Debney
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A devastating drama exploring the subjugation of women in modern day Iran, The Stoning of Soraya M. is a tragic look at how women are mistreated under the stifling confines of Islamic Sharia law. Jim Caviezel stars as Freidoune Sahebjam, a journalist travelling through a remote part of Iran, when his car breaks down near a small village. While looking for help, Sahebjam is approached by a local woman named Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo), who tells him the story of her niece, Soraya (Mozhan Marnò), who was stoned to death by her husband, who wanted nothing more than an easy way out of his marriage.
While not based specifically on any one story, it’s easy to see parallels between Cyrus Nowrasteh’s film and real-life cases such as that of Du’a Khalil Aswad, who was stoned to death in Iraq for supposed adultery in 2007. Read more…
TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN – Steve Jablonsky
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I recently joked on a film music message board that I should simply recycle my review of Steve Jablonsky’s first Transformers score in order to pay homage to the sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I fully appreciate that sequel scores should maintain a certain thematic consistency with their predecessor, and predicted that in all likelihood Jablonsky would trot out the same tired power anthems and banal über-heroism that he saddled the first film with… but, really, it’s just going to be the same score again, right? Wrong. Somehow, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is actually worse. Read more…
YEAR ONE – Theodore Shapiro
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A high concept comedy directed by Harold Ramis and starring Jack Black and Michael Cera, Year One follows the fortunes of two prehistoric hunter-gatherers named Zed and Oh, who are banished from their tribe after eating from a forbidden tree, and embark on all manner of adventures, meeting the historical Biblical figures Cain and Abel, becoming slaves in the ancient city of Sodom, and falling in love with two fellow slaves, Maya and Eema. Despite taking a number of peculiar liberties with classical bible stories, following a very odd timeline, Year One features a quirky supporting cast (Oliver Platt, Hank Azaria, Juno Temple, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and even Vinnie Jones), and was a surprising box office success during the summer of 2009.
The score for Year One is by Theodore Shapiro, who seems to be stuck in a rut of scoring big-budget comedies, despite his talent in other genres. Read more…
MOON – Clint Mansell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An existential sci-fi drama written and directed by Duncan Jones (formerly known as Zowie Bowie, and son of rock icon David Bowie), Moon stars Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, an employee of Lunar Industries who is coming to the end of his three year stint working at a gas production facility on the moon. As the sole employee of the lunar station, and with limited communication possible with Earth, Sam spends most of his time conversing with GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), an intelligent super-computer programmed to attend to his needs. However, after Sam is knocked unconscious in accident, he awakens to find that he is no longer alone on the moon, and slowly begins to realize that his world is not what he thought it was. Read more…
THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 – Harry Gregson-Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A remake of the classic 1974 film of the same name, The Taking of Pelham 123 is a taut thriller about a gang of criminals led by mastermind Ryder (John Travolta), who hijack a New York City subway train, holding the passengers hostage in return for a ransom. However, Ryder doesn’t count on coming into contact with subway dispatcher Walter Garber (Denzel Washington), whose normal work day suddenly turns into a battle of wits. The film was directed by Tony Scott, co-stars Luis Guzman, John Turturro and James Gandolfini, and has an original score by Scott’s composer of choice Harry Gregson-Williams.
Whereas the original Pelham 123 has a groundbreaking jazz score from David Shire, Gregson-Williams version is a fairly straightforward modern thriller score; orchestra, grungy electronics and urban rhythms Read more…
LAND OF THE LOST – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A big-budget remake of the classic 1970s TV series, Land of the Lost is directed by Brad Silberling and stars Will Ferrell as Dr. Rick Marshall, a world renowned scientist and paleontologist who, along with his beautiful research assistant Holly (Anna Friel) and a redneck survivalist called Will (Danny McBride), is sucked into an intergalactic wormhole and is transported to an alternate universe where dinosaurs still rule the world. Played as much for laughs as it is its action/adventure element, Land of the Lost was critically mauled and, as a result, became a spectacular box-office flop; this unexpected lack of quality also transferred itself to Michael Giacchino’s score, which marks one of the few instances where his music doesn’t quite hit the spot. Read more…
DEPARTURES – Joe Hisaishi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 2008 Academy Awards, Departures is a gentle, moving Japanese film directed by Yôjirô Takita, starring Masahiro Motoki as Daigo, a professional cellist who, following the break-up of his orchestra, moves back to his hometown and takes a job as a “Nokanshi”, an undertaker’s assistant who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life.
The score for Departures is by the wonderful Joe Hisaishi, whose reputation in the west continues to grow, mainly as a result of his regular collaborations with legendary Anime director Hayao Miyazaki. Departures, however, is a very different score from the likes of Ponyo or Princess Mononoke. Read more…
DRAG ME TO HELL – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Drag Me To Hell is the best pure horror score I have heard in probably a decade – at least since Brian Tyler’s Darkness Falls in 2003, and probably since a great deal before then. It’s also one of the best scores of Christopher Young’s entire career – and that’s saying something for the man who wrote such stellar scores as Hellbound: Hellraiser II and Murder in the First. So, now that I have made these two potentially outrageous statements, let me clarify why I think this is the case.
Drag Me To Hell is Sam Raimi’s return to his roots. A clever, gory, and occasionally very funny horror story in the Evil Dead tradition, Drag Me To Hell stars Alison Lohman as Christine Brown, a New York loan officer with a decent job and a warm, loving boyfriend (Justin Long). Read more…
UP – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When we look back on his career, 2009 could well be seen as a watershed year for Michael Giacchino in terms of public awareness and his place in the film music hierarchy. Film music fans have known about Giacchino for a long time, of course, initially through his work on the Medal of Honor video game series and the TV shows Lost and Alias. This year alone he has already scored the rebooted Star Trek movie and a new big screen version of Land of the Lost. However, it is his new status as one of Pixar’s go-to guys (alongside Randy and Thomas Newman) that may cement his reputation. The Incredibles was a critical and commercial success, Ratatouille earned Giacchino his first Academy Award nomination, and now he has Up, which many writers have acclaimed as the best Pixar movie to date. Read more…
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