Archive
THE HILL – Geoff Zanelli
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Hill is a biographical sports drama directed by Jeff Celentano, which tells the true story of Rickey Hill, a young boy growing up in Texas in the early 1970s who dreams of becoming a baseball player despite wearing leg braces and suffering from a degenerative spinal disease. His father, a strict but kind pastor, tries to dissuade young Rickey from following his baseball dreams as he is worried that the physical toll of the game will result in him suffering further injuries, but Rickey persists, and eventually catches the eye of a legendary Major League Baseball scout who encourages him to try out to play for the Montreal Expos. The film was written by Angelo Pizzi – the screenwriter of such classic sports dramas as Hoosiers and Rudy – and contains many of the rousing, overcoming-the-odds touchstones that those iconic films featured. It stars Colin Ford as Rickey, who is supported by screen icons including Dennis Quaid, Scott Glenn, and Bonnie Bedelia. Read more…
MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL – Geoff Zanelli
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The 2014 film Maleficent, a revisionist re-imagining of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale told from the point of view of the story’s ‘villain,’ was an unexpected box office hit for Walt Disney Pictures, and so it was inevitable that a sequel would follow. That sequel is Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and it once again stars Angelina Jolie and her razor-like cheekbones in the title role, bringing back her cut glass English accent to terrorize elocutionists the world over. It is a continuation of the original film’s story and sees young Aurora – newly crowned the Queen of the Moors – falling in love with the handsome Prince Philip of Ulstead. After Philip proposes marriage, Aurora and Maleficent are invited to Philip’s home castle by the king and queen, John and Ingrith; however, unknown to all, Ingrith has been hiding a deep lifelong hatred of fairies and moorland people, and has a plan to destroy them all. The film co-stars Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Harris Dickinson, and is directed by Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Rønning, who took over duties from Robert Stromberg. Read more…
CHRISTOPHER ROBIN – Geoff Zanelli and Jon Brion
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Winnie the Pooh has been a character beloved to millions of children all over the world since author A. A. Milne first created him in 1926. The honey-loving bear of ‘very little brain’ has been a part of the Disney stable of characters since the 1960s, and has gone on to appear in multiple animated films. This new film, Christopher Robin, is somewhat different. Directed by Marc Forster and starring Ewan McGregor, it is the first ever live action Pooh film, and the first one ever to explore the lives of the characters after the books and stories ended. McGregor plays the adult Christopher Robin, now all grown up and living in post-war London with his wife Evelyn and young daughter Madeline. As a manager at a struggling luggage company, Christopher Robin spends far too much time at work, neglecting his family; he has also seemingly forgotten all about his beloved childhood friends, and lost the gift for playful imagination that he had in abundance as a youth. During one particularly stressful weekend, having been forced to work by his superior instead of going to the countryside with his family, Christopher Robin is visited by Winnie the Pooh; Pooh tells him that all his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood – Piglet, Eeyore, and the rest – have vanished and he needs Christopher Robin’s help to find them. The film co-stars Hayley Atwell, Mark Gatiss, and Bronte Carmichael, as well as the voices of Jim Cummings and Brad Garrett. Read more…
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES – Geoff Zanelli
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Dead Men Tell No Tales is the fifth entry in Disney’s tentpole Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, based on the classic dark rides found at Disney theme parks the world over. Directed by Norwegian filmmakers Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, it picks up the story of Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) several years after the events of the fourth film, On Stranger Tides. Down on his luck and having to resort to robbing banks to make ends meet, Jack becomes embroiled in a new adventure when the ghost of Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem), fearsome pirate hunter of the Spanish Navy, is released from a cursed prison in the so-called Devil’s Triangle; Salazar, who blames Jack for his long imprisonment, begins to track Jack’s ship looking for revenge. In an effort to stop Salazar, Jack teams up with Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), an intelligent young woman accused of being a witch; his old nemesis Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), now a wealthy shipping fleet owner; and Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), the now-adult son of Jack’s old friends Will and Elizabeth. Together, they search for the mythical Trident of Poseidon, which they believe has the power to break Salazar’s curse… and may hold other magical powers too. Read more…
THE ODD LIFE OF TIMOTHY GREEN – Geoff Zanelli
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A couple of years ago I wrote a review of the soundtrack for the film Gamer, by Geoff Zanelli and Robb Williamson, in which I posted my now-famous ‘polar bear with a migraine’ photo, and basically called it was one of the worst film scores I have ever heard in my life. Despite hating the music for that particular film, I was very careful not to criticize the composer himself, who was clearly providing exactly what the director and producer of that film wanted in terms music – which just happened to be music I cannot tolerate. A lot of us tend to forget, myself included sometimes, that a film composer’s primary motivation is to support with music the director’s vision of the film being made, and any secondary life the music takes on apart from the film is entirely inconsequential to the reason the music exists in the first place. A composer might be asked to write grating and grinding electronics for one film, as Zanelli was on Gamer, and a less-experienced critic might call him a hack, or whatever other derogatory terms spring to mind. But all composers, by necessity, have to be versatile, and Geoff Zanelli’s versatility and talent is highlighted by his work on The Odd Life of Timothy Green, a film score at the other end of the musical spectrum from Gamer as it is possible to be. Read more…
THE PACIFIC – Hans Zimmer, Geoff Zanelli and Blake Neely
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When the TV mini-series Band of Brothers first aired in 2001 it was hailed as a great piece of television art; a thoughtful, emotional, well-produced, well-acted and well-directed look at the lives – and deaths – of the men who served in the US military in Europe during World War 2. Almost a decade later, the same group of talented individuals have come together again to make The Pacific, which tells the simultaneous story of the men and women who fought in the Pacific theater against the Japanese at Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and all across the Pacific Ocean. The series stars Joseph Mazzello, Jon Seda, William Sadler and James Badge Dale, and began airing on HBO in the United States on March 14, 2010.
The late, great Michael Kamen wrote one of the finest scores of his career for the original Band of Brothers series. For The Pacific, the producers turned to the composing trifecta of Hans Zimmer, Geoff Zanelli and Blake Neely to write almost nine hours Read more…
GAMER – Geoff Zanelli and Robb Williamson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The official website for Gamer calls it a “high-concept action thriller set in a near future when gaming and entertainment have evolved into a terrifying new hybrid where humans can control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online gaming environments”. Directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, it’s basically an excuse for lead actors Gerard Butler, Michael C. Hall and Terry Crews to run around shooting things, making things explode, and generally behaving in an unseemly manner ill-befitting a gentleman.
I was going to write a long and vociferous diatribe on everything that is wrong with the score for Gamer, which was written by Geoff Zanelli and Robb Williamson. Read more…
OUTLANDER – Geoff Zanelli
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A science fiction Viking epic, Outlander is a genre-bending action movie starring Jim Caviezel as Kainen, a soldier from a faraway planet who crashes his spaceship on Earth in Norway in the year 709, and is captured by the local Norsemen; however, when a deadly alien creature called the Moorwen – which had stowed away on Kainen’s ship – begins a vicious killing rampage through the Viking village, Kainen and the Vikings team up to stop the intruder.
The film is directed by Howard McCann, features an eclectic supporting cast that includes Sophia Myles, Ron Perlman and John Hurt, and has an original score by Geoff Zanelli. The score sounds pretty much like you would expect it to sound, and is built around a rousing brass main theme in the finest Zimmer power anthem tradition Read more…
DISTURBIA – Geoff Zanelli
Original Review by Clark Douglas
“The Island”. “Mr. Brooks”. “Deja Vu”. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. “When a Stranger Calls”. “Poseidon”. “16 Blocks”. These are just a few of the incredibly limp thriller scores that leapt to mind when I heard that Geoff Zanelli was scoring “Disturbia”. You see, Zanelli is one of a large group of Hollywood composers who learned his craft under Mr. Hans Zimmer and the good folks at Zimmer’s company, Remote Control (formerly known as Media Ventures). Despite Zimmer’s remarkable talents, very few of his protégés have developed unique voices in any way whatsoever, and are often content to provide recycled versions of recycled versions of better film scores. Still, every score deserves to be judged on it’s own merits, and “Disturbia” has a little bit more than some of the aforementioned titles. Read more…
Shop at the Movie Music UK Store
Member of the
MOVIE MUSIC UK 