Archive
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When I wrote my review of Klaus Badelt’s score for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl back in 2003, my opening paragraph read: “In giving Pirates of the Caribbean a four-star review, I’m making myself undergo a crisis of conscience. How can I, as a “respected” reviewer of film music, give such a high rating to a score which is quite blatantly inappropriate for the movie, predictable to the extreme, and derivative of virtually every major Media Ventures action score written in the last ten years?”. Three years later, and Hans Zimmer’s score for the sequel, Dead Man’s Chest, has me thinking the exact same thing. Yet again, though, the bottom line is this: it may be inappropriate, and simplistic, and bear no relation to either the Disney ride or the musical genre conventions of pirate movies, but each and every time I listen to it, I have a bloody good time, and thoroughly enjoy the experience. Read more…
SUPERMAN RETURNS – John Ottman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
As much as Marco Beltrami was walking into a film music minefield by being asked to follow on from Jerry Goldsmith’s score for The Omen, John Ottman’s task following in the footsteps of John Williams on Superman Returns was probably too daunting to imagine. John Williams between the mid 1970s and the early 1980s was enjoying arguably the most creatively fruitful period of his career, writing Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. within eight years of each other. The original Superman came right in the middle of this golden period in 1978, and became an instant classic, with Williams’ music providing the right amount of thrills and spills and heroic ebullience the film required. The Superman March has since gone on to become one of film music’s most well-loved and recognisable themes. Read more…
THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT – Brian Tyler
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’ve never actually seen any of the films, so it’s quite possible I could be missing something, but I’ve never fully understood how The Fast and the Furious became a franchise. The films themselves seem to be little more than elongated car chases filled with various kinds of sexy imagery – shiny chrome bodywork on the autos, scantily clad women draped over them – and star increasingly anonymous hunky male leads caught up in some kind of flaccid crime plot which involves having to drive at ludicrous speeds. Having already gone through Paul Walker, Vin Diesel and Tyrese Gibson, the third instalment stars Lucas Black (all grown up after his performance as a kid in the Oscar-winning Sling Blade), as Sean Boswell, a teenage troublemaker sent to live with his strict military father in Japan, and who gets caught up in the underground world of ‘drift racing’ round the streets of Tokyo. Read more…
THE OMEN – Marco Beltrami
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When Marco Beltrami was asked to score director John Moore’s remake of The Omen, it’s difficult to know whether he jumped for joy, or groaned in dismay. Jerry Goldsmith won his one and only Academy Award for his score for the original Omen in 1976, and in doing so added a new dimension to the way horror movies are scored: the ‘Latin Chant’ has become so-over used these days that it’s almost a cliché, but back in the day when Goldsmith first used them, they were groundbreaking. Beltrami is, of course, a former student of Goldsmith’s at USC, and so stepping into his great teacher shoes must have been a daunting prospect indeed. The wonderful news is that, ultimately, Beltrami has produced a wonderful modern horror score which is original to Beltrami’s musical sensibility, but can also stand as a loving homage to his mentor. Read more…
X-MEN: THE LAST STAND – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The third, and possibly most eagerly-awaited X-Men movie yet, The Last Stand ushers in the 2006 summer season as one of the first genuine blockbusters of the year. Directed by Brett Ratner, it sees the returning cast of the previous instalments (Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, Rebecca Romijn, Anna Paquin) joining up with some new faces (Kelsey Grammer, Vinnie Jones, Olivia Williams, Shohreh Aghdashloo) in a complicated plot involving a cure for mutantism, a resurrected mutant whose powers are out of control, and a powerful war between the good and evil mutants for the fate of humanity. It’s all lofty, exciting-sounding stuff, and deserving of a score to match its epic aspirations. Read more…
THE DA VINCI CODE – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s not often that a work of fiction generates such a frenzy of attention that the Vatican itself is compelled to comment on its contents, but that’s what happened in the aftermath of the release of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code in 2003. The book, which offers controversial theories about subjects as wide ranging as the life of Jesus Christ, the nature of the Holy Grail, corruption within the Catholic church, the roles of several Masonic orders, and the legacy of artists and scholars such as Isaac Newton, Claude Debussy, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci himself, has sold more than 40 millions copies world-wide, making it one of the most successful books of the 21st century. Critics have denounced it as a work of poorly-written fiction whose subject matter is tantamount to blasphemy; admirers of Brown’s work have lauded it as an enjoyable work in its own right, which as well as being a thrilling page-turner, highlights a number of important questions which scholars of world history have been asking for many years. I personally enjoyed it immensely. Read more…
POSEIDON – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The latest addition to the ever-growing list of unnecessary Hollywood remakes (following hot on the heels of the likes of The Pink Panther and When a Stranger Calls), Poseidon is a big-budget action-adventure disaster movie directed by Wolfgang Peterson – who is himself no stranger to watery problems, having previously directed Das Boot and A Perfect Storm. When a luxury cruise liner is capsized by a massive tidal wave on New Year’s Eve, the surviving revellers – Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Emmy Rossum – find themselves desperately climbing through the wrecked ship, trying to escape before the whole thing sinks and drowns them all… and that’s basically it. It’s a very simple plot, which sticks close to director Ronald Neame’s 1972 original (which starred Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters and Roddy McDowall among others), but will be totally redundant for anyone who remembers it, or its classic John Williams score. Read more…
THE PROMISE – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
So, here’s a statement you won’t see me make very often: The Promise is the best score of Klaus Badelt’s career, and one of the best scores to be released in the first half of 2006. As I have written on many, many occasions, one of my favourite styles of film music is the combination of a western orchestra with solo performances by Chinese instruments, and Badelt’s score for director Chen Kaige’s visually sumptuous film is the latest to join a long and distinguished list, along with the likes of Rachel Portman’s The Joy Luck Club, Conrad Pope’s Pavilion of Women, Basil Poledouris’s The Touch, and Tan Dun’s Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Read more…
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s not so long ago that JJ Abrams was just another budding writer/director in Hollywood, and Michael Giacchino was a promising young composer writing music for video games. However, following the huge success of Abrams’ TV shows Alias and Lost, and Giacchino’s work on the box-office blockbuster The Incredibles, the pair of them are now cinematic hot properties, working together on one of summer 2006’s most-eagerly awaited and high-profile action movies: Mission Impossible III. The third film based on the classic 1960s spy thriller show, Mission: Impossible III once again stars Tom Cruise as special agent Ethan Hunt, trotting around the globe to all manner of exotic locations, on a secret mission to thwart the nefarious plans of the film’s arch-villain, Owen Davian, played by recent Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman. Along for the ride is a big name supporting cast which includes Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne, Billy Crudup and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and by all accounts the film is a spectacular, gadget-filled, explosion-laden thrill ride which pushes all the right blockbuster buttons. Read more…
AN AMERICAN HAUNTING – Caine Davidson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Cashing in on the currently in-vogue “demonic possession” sub genre of films, initiated by last year’s surprise hit The Exorcism of Emily Rose, An American Haunting stars Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek and young Rachel Hurd-Wood, and tells the allegedly true story of the Bell family, settlers in rural Tennessee in the early 1800s, who became the first family in American history to have a family member be killed by a malevolent spirit, and to have the death officially recorded as such. The film is directed by Courtney Solomon, whose debut feature was the poorly-received fantasy Dungeons & Dragons in 2000. American Haunting has fared much better, bringing in over $15 million at the US Box Office to date. Read more…
UNITED 93 – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There can scarcely be a person who doesn’t remember where they were and what they were doing on September 11th 2001, when four passenger aircraft were hijacked by terrorists from the extremist Al Qaeda group and flown into the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre in New York, destroying the latter completely. Many people of my generation refer to it as our ‘Pearl Harbor’, or our equivalent of the day JFK was shot. A cultural touchstone which, for some, has becoming a defining moment of the 21st century. I vividly remember sitting in my old office in Regent Court at the University in Sheffield, working on some project, and a colleague sticking their head round my door. It was about 2:00 in the afternoon. “Have you heard what’s going on in America?” they asked. I shook my head no, flicked on to Yahoo news, and read about the unfolding horror. Sky News went on the TV as soon as I got home, and stayed on almost for the next 24 hours as I watched the rest of the footage with increasing disbelief. Read more…
ABOMINABLE – Lalo Schifrin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Abominable may have the unique honour of being the first ever film where an established Hollywood composer scored the feature directorial debut of their offspring. Certainly no other filmmaking-children-of-composers spring to mind. The director in question is Ryan Schifrin, the 33 year-old son of Lalo Schifrin, and the film in question is Abominable, a horror-thriller set in the Pacific North-West, where action man Preston Rogers (Matt McCoy) is recovering in an isolated cabin after a climbing accident. His recuperation is put on hold, however, when he sees the legendary Bigfoot – and realises that the supposedly-friendly Sasquatch is in reality a vicious man-eating beast! The only problem is that, after years of hoax sightings, no-one believes Preston’s tale, and it falls on his shoulders to warn everyone before the beast goes on a bloody rampage. The film also stars Lance Henriksen, Jeffrey Combs, Dee Wallace Stone (from ET), the late Paul Gleason, and newcomer Haley Joel, and will be released straight-to-DVD in October 2006. Read more…
V FOR VENDETTA – Dario Marianelli
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Remember, remember, the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot; I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.
In the UK, every November the 5th is celebrated as “bonfire night”, a rather odd but very popular tradition which commemorates the events of 5 November 1605, when a group of Catholic conspirators led by a fellow named Guy Fawkes tried to assassinate the Protestant King James I by blowing up the Houses of Parliament with barrels of gunpowder (their ultimate aim was to return a Catholic monarch to the throne). Fawkes was chosen as the one who would physically light the barrels and set off the explosions, but the plot was apparently foiled when he fell asleep in one of the chambers under Parliament and was discovered by guards. He was arrested, confessed under torture, and identified his co-conspirators. Fawkes was subsequently convicted of treason and executed by being hung, drawn and quartered, and as a final ignominy, had his remains burnt in public, a sort of “taste of his own medicine”, to do to him what he would have done to the King. Read more…
FIREWALL – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s funny how, all of a sudden, a composer comes out of nowhere and becomes one of your favourites. French composer Alexandre Desplat first appeared on the international scene in 2000 with his elegant score for the chess-themed romantic drama The Luzhin Defence; since then, through scores such as Girl With a Pearl Earring, Birth, Hostage, The Upside of Anger and Syriana, he has risen to become arguably the most exciting Gallic composer since Georges Delerue, with the capacity to write both thrilling action music and sensitive orchestral material with equal skill. Two Golden Globe nominations and a recent César Award for ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped’ would seem to reinforce his place in the bigger scheme of things. His score for Firewall will hopefully be just as well received, and cement his position as one of Hollywood’s brightest stars. Read more…
NANNY McPHEE – Patrick Doyle
Original Review by Peter Simons and Jonathan Broxton
A Mary Poppins fantasy for the modern age, Nanny McPhee is based on Christianna Brand’s successful series of Nurse Matilda children’s books, adapted for the screen by actress Emma Thompson. Thompson herself plays the titular nanny, a hook-nosed, wart-faced, fright-wigged governess who uses magic and good humour to control the children in her charge. Newly-widowed Cedric Brown (Colin Firth) is failing to control his seven children, who have already chased away 17 nannies with their unruly behaviour. However, when a mysterious voice urges Cedric to hire Nanny McPhee, she arrives at the Brown home quickly stamps her authority over hew new charges. Things seem to finally be settling down, until trouble erupts when Cedric’s cantankerous Great-Aunt Adelaide (Angela Lansbury) tells him he must be married by the end of the month, or she’ll cut off his money and separate the children – so Nanny McPhee and the oldest Brown sibling Simon (Thomas Sangster) team up to find a wife for Cedric, thereby keeping the family together. The film, directed by Kirk Jones, has a supporting cast full of heavyweight British thespians (including Derek Jacobi, Imelda Staunton, Celia Imrie, and Kelly Macdonald), and features a delightful, whimsical score by Patrick Doyle. Read more…
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