Archive
MONK DAWSON – Mark Jensen
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A hit last year on the British arthouse scene, Monk Dawson is a contemporary romantic drama with a religious twist. Starring John Michie, Ben Taylor, Paula Hamilton and Martin Kemp and directed by first-timer Tom Waller, the film tells the tale of a Benedictine monk who abandons his sheltered existence in a North of England monastery and heads for London, only to find that love, betrayal, loneliness and despair are commonplace outside the protective walls of the church – and that his life to date has left him ill equipped to cope with the world at large. Read more…
DEEP BLUE SEA – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ever since Jaws, the concept of the “killer shark” has been the staple of many thrillers, from the original’s three sequels to watery mimics such as Leviathan, Deep Star 6, Deep Rising and other films beginning with the word deep. Unlike its predecessors, Renny Harlin’s Deep Blue Sea returns to more familiar, more terrifying territory by making the villains of the piece a couple of Mako sharks instead of nasty alien crustaceans, and is a better and more believable film because of it. Starring Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane and Samuel L. Jackson, the film is a generally straightforward action thriller set on a Pacific Ocean research installation, where a team of scientists are conducting experiments on the aforementioned sharks in an attempt to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. When a storm hits the station and all power is lost, the sharks – which have become more intelligent as a result of the experiments – escape from their pens. All hell, as they say, breaks loose. Read more…
THE HAUNTING – Jerry Goldsmith
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Although I personally enjoyed it immensely, Jan De Bont’s modern reworking of Robert Wise’s 1963 classic The Haunting was one of the more high-profile casualties in the summer of 1999’s blockbuster stakes. Despite a headline cast including Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and boasting some truly marvelous special effects, audiences complained that the film concentrated far too much on the visual side of the film and less on actually scaring the audience. To be fair, both visually and aurally, the film was absolutely magnificent, with Eugenio Zanetti’s Gaudi-inspired architecture teeming with cherubic faces and Gothic opulence, and Gary Rydstrom’s resonant sound design echoing majestically through the cinema’s surround sound stereo system. In terms of plot and acting, however, the film performed pretty badly, with several unrealistic contrivances and unconvincing performances from all the leads sealing its critical fate. Read more…
MUPPETS FROM SPACE – Jamshied Sharifi, Rupert Gregson-Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Perhaps it has something to do with my own preconceptions about films starring fuzzy puppets, but I never expect Muppet movies to have any good music in them. Of course, in the past, composers as eminent as Hans Zimmer and the late Miles Goodman have lent their talents to the adventures of Henson’s creations, but come on! How can a film in which the majority of the main characters are sculpted bits of material with a guy’s hand jammed up their asses produce anything worthwhile? Well, it can, and this time I have been proved wrong by the combined talents of Jamshied Sharifi and Rupert Gregson-Williams, whose music turns out to be surprisingly enjoyable, if a little lightweight and more than a little derivative. Read more…
LAKE PLACID – John Ottman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In recent years, Hollywood has regurgitated the “mutant killer something-or-other” storyline for an alarmingly large number of films: cockroaches in Mimic, lizards in Godzilla, crustaceans in Deep Rising, sharks in Deep Blue Sea, the list goes on. Crocodiles are the newest addition, with the arrival of Steve Miner’s Lake Placid, a new horror thriller set in the very same mountain town that staged the Winter Olympics back in 1980. Read more…
ARLINGTON ROAD – Angelo Badalamenti
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Arlington Road, directed by hot young independent filmmaker Mark Pellington, is a disturbingly convincing suburban fairy tale starring Jeff Bridges as a widowed college professor who slowly begins to suspect that his seemingly innocuous next door neighbors, Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack, may actually be terrorists involved in a bombing campaign across the United States. Composer Angelo Badalamenti, best known for his work with cult director David Lynch on films such as Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart and the Twin Peaks TV series, has collaborated with computer technology composers Tomandandy for the score which, while you’re hearing it in the cinema, sounds absolutely astounding. Alternatively, a friend describes the CD as “appropriately atmospheric” – his own expression which can be translated as meaning “a load of rubbish”. Personally, I quite enjoy it. Read more…
SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER & UNCUT – Marc Shaiman, Trey Parker, Matt Stone
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
For anyone who has been living in a cocoon for the last few years, South Park is an animated TV series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, set an the isolated Colorado town, and is all about four eight-year-old friends (Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovsky, Eric Cartman and the immortal Kenny McCormick) who, quite simply, wreak havoc in every episode, aided and abetted by recurring characters such as the sex machine school Chef (voiced by Isaac Hayes), Stan’s girlfriend Wendy Testaburger (who gets puked upon whenever Stan talks to her because he’s so nervous), and kooky schoolteachers Mr. Mackey and Mr. Garrison, who wears a puppet on his left hand called “Mr. Hat”. The thing about South Park is the style – the animation is extremely crude and simplistic, but the scripts are ironic, satirical, and surprisingly intelligent, with messages and morals easily identifiable in amongst each episode’s gross-out gags. Read more…
WILD WILD WEST – Elmer Bernstein
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When Elmer Bernstein scores a western, you know exactly what you’re going to get. With a track record that includes scores like The Magnificent Seven, The Commancheros, True Grit and The Shootist (his last “true” western back in 1976), it is obvious that Bernstein is a master of the musical depiction of the vast open prairie, of six-shooters and ten-gallon hats, and Wild Wild West is a welcome return to the genre which made him world famous. Read more…
A LETTER FROM THE WESTERN FRONT – Ryan Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A short review for a short score, but one which marks the emergence of a composer who could one day be very popular. Ryan Shore is Howard Shore’s nephew, and has already undertaken orchestrating duties for his uncle on a number of scores, notably the recent Dogma and Existenz. His debut score as a solo composer is for the highly regarded World War I animated drama A Letter from the Western Front, directed by NYU student filmmaker Daniel M. Kanemoto and which won several respected student film and animation awards in 1998, including the coveted Gold Medal at the Student Academy Awards. Read more…
THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER – Carter Burwell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Director Simon West burst onto the cinema screens in 1997 with his big, brash, in-your-face debut Con Air, a film which effectively ushered in a whole new era of films with a cumulative effect akin to drinking seventeen cups of espresso coffee – you leave the cinema with eyes like saucers, stunned into submission at the sheer spectacle of what you have just witnessed. Thankfully, Jerry Bruckheimer is not involved at all in The General’s Daughter, West’s follow up, and therefore it does not bear any of his overbearing influence, although the slick, polished cinematic style associated with his work remains firmly in place. Read more…
INSTINCT – Danny Elfman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Here’s a statement that’ll make your toes curl: Instinct is Danny Elfman’s best score in six years. Whoa! Hold on a minute! We didn’t see that one coming! What about his Oscar nominations, Good Will Hunting and Men In Black? What about Black Beauty and Dolores Claiborne? What about Mission Impossible, widely regarded as one of the best action thriller scores in years? What about A Civil Action and A Simple Plan, two of his recent complex dramas? Well, in the opinion of this reviewer, Instinct blows each and every one of those worthy scores out of the water with its combination of soaring strings, passionate brasses, African percussion and that heavenly, heavenly female choir which hasn’t been used to this extent since Edward Scissorhands almost a decade ago. Read more…
STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE – John Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
At long, long last, the waiting is over. I don’t think I can ever remember a soundtrack being as highly anticipated as The Phantom Menace was – not even Titanic. Ever since George Lucas announced his intentions to make a second Star Wars trilogy, score fans the world over literally started drooling as they pondered the possibilities. Of course, John Williams would write the music, but what would he do? Would any of the familiar themes make an appearance? Would the full score be released? Would it be a 2-CD release? What would be the cue titles? Such has been the speculation and avid discussion, especially on the Internet, that with only a few weeks to go until its premiere, it has almost become a frenzy. As such, reviewing a score like this impartially and without bias is now virtually impossible – even I have been caught up in Phantom Menace fever, especially with the tantalizing glimpses of the trailer in my local multiplex. Read more…
L’ASSEDIO/BESIEGED – Alessio Vlad
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The curse of Bernardo Bertolucci strikes again. Bernardo – or, as one British film critic recently called him Bore-nardo Bertolucci – has never recreated the masterful triumphs of Last Tango in Paris or The Last Emperor, despite having an excellent eye for detail and a sumptuous cinematic style. Besieged (also known as L’Assedio), his latest offering, is the story of a love triangle between an English composer and pianist (David Thewlis), his black African housekeeper (Thandie Newton), and her unseen political prisoner husband. The crux of the film is to do with love, and how it is expressed in different ways by different people. It’s all very stately and very “arthouse”, and has been dismissed by many as being nothing more than a dry and dusty character study. Read more…
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM – Simon Boswell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A film score that opens with the entire 11-minute Overture from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream can’t be all bad, and in fact this album from Decca is one of the finest examples I have heard with regards to combining true classical music with modern film music into a satisfying, enjoyable whole. Director Michael Hoffman restaged Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in renaissance-era Tuscany, allowing him to shroud his film in the sights and sounds of one of the history’s most romantic periods. As a result, the images on screen glow with vivid shades of green and gold, reveling in the opulence of luxurious production design, glittering costumes and natural, healthy beauty. For those who don’t know the play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream follows the fortunes of four bickering lovers: Helena (Calista Flockhart), who loves Demetrius (Christian Bale), who loves Hermia (Anna Friel), who loves Lysander (Dominic West). One midsummer’s night, the four venture into the woods near their home and become embroiled in the war of words between Oberon (Rupert Everett), the king of the fairies, and his bride Titania (Michelle Pfeiffer). Receiving instructions from Oberon, the mischievous sprite Puck (Stanley Tucci), casts a spell which causes the four to fall regularly in and out of love with each other, turns an innocent weaver named Bottom (Kevin Kline), who is rehearsing a play in the same woods, into an ass, and causes Titania to fall in love with him. Read more…
THE CASTLE – Edmund Choi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Initially, the music for the quirky Australian comedy The Castle consisted of a few original cues by composer Craig Harnath and a multitude of “library cues” picked arbitrarily to fill the gaps in the dialogue. It was released across most of the world in this original format but when the might Miramax corporation bought the film for distribution in the USA, the head honchos decided that a new musical approach was needed. Enter Edmund Choi, a young, talented 28 year old, whose remit was to take the orchestration of the original score, but write his own new themes to fit the bill. Choi, whose only previous scoring work was for Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan’s earlier features Praying With Anger and Wide Awake, responded with a lovely, lush orchestral work which pegs him as a talent to watch. Read more…
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