Archive
BEYOND RANGOON – Hans Zimmer
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Beyond Rangoon is a political drama/thriller directed by John Boorman, inspired by the real events of the 1988 Burmese Uprising, when students and civilians protested against the military regime of then-dictator Ne Win, leading to thousands of deaths. Patricia Arquette stars as Laura Bowman, an American doctor who travels to Burma (now Myanmar) in the late 1980s with her sister Andi (played by Frances McDormand) in an attempt to recover from the traumatic murder of her husband and son. Their vacation unexpectedly coincides with the uprising, and while attempting to leave the country Laura loses her passport, inadvertently becoming trapped in the increasingly volatile nation. As she navigates a dangerous and unfamiliar landscape, Laura becomes a reluctant witness to the government’s violent repression of student demonstrators; however, she is guided by a former university professor turned dissident U Aung Ko (playing a fictionalized version of himself) who helps her understand the political crisis engulfing the country, and to flee to safety. Read more…
F1: THE MOVIE – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s lights out and away we go!
Anyone who knows me in real life knows that I have been a massive fan of Formula 1 motor racing for many, many years. My grandfather, who was also a big fan, introduced me to it in the late 1980s – the first race I actively remember watching was the 1987 British Grand Prix, when I was 11, which was won by Nigel Mansell in extraordinarily emotional circumstances – and since then I have watched virtually every race of every subsequent season, cheering on a succession of great British drivers, from Mansell to Martin Brundle, Damon Hill and Johnny Herbert, Jenson Button, and now Lando Norris and George Russell. I love everything about the sport; the incredible skill and strength of the drivers, the chess-like tactics and strategies of the teams, the world-class engineering. You become invested in the lives of everyone involved, their triumphs and tragedies, and you watch it unfold across the world every two weeks at speeds approaching 200mph. There’s nothing like it. Read more…
THE LION KING – Hans Zimmer, Elton John, and Tim Rice
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s interesting how, quite often, you never realize in the moment that you’re experiencing a cultural touchstone. I went to see The Lion King at the cinema the week it opened when it came out in the UK with very little in the way of anticipation, and vividly remember being shocked at having to wait in line for almost an hour beforehand to get in (these were the days before pre-assigned seating), such was its massive popularity.
The Lion King is, of course, Disney’s groundbreaking animated feature film that follows the journey of a young lion named Simba. The story begins with Simba’s birth in the Pride Lands of Africa, where he is introduced as the future king. However, Simba’s uncle, Scar, covets the throne and conspires with a pack of hyenas to kill both Simba and his father, King Mufasa, in an orchestrated wildebeest stampede. Scar’s plan partially succeeds; Mufasa is killed, and Simba, guilt-ridden and believing himself responsible, runs away and grows up in the jungle with his new friends Timon, a meerkat, and Pumbaa, a warthog. Eventually, encouraged by his childhood friend Nala and the mandrill shaman Rafiki, Simba returns to the Pride Lands to confront Scar and reclaim his rightful place as king. Read more…
THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS – Hans Zimmer
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The House of the Spirits is an epic family drama based on Isabel Allende’s novel, a seminal work in Latin American literature, renowned for its magical realism and rich storytelling. Set in an unnamed South American country, widely believed to be inspired by Allende’s native Chile, the story spans several generations of the Trueba family as they experience the complex history and social dynamics of the country, beginning with the family patriarch, Esteban Trueba, his wife Clara, and their descendants. Esteban is a self-made man who amasses wealth and power through his land holdings, but his authoritarian nature and violent tendencies tend to alienate him from his family. Meanwhile, Clara possesses supernatural gifts and serves as a counterbalance to Esteban’s brutality with her gentle and intuitive nature. Years pass and the political and social upheaval in the country deeply affects the Truebas; in particular their daughter Blanca is forced to navigate the tumultuous political landscape of their country, which is marked by social injustice, oppression, and revolution. The film was directed by Bille August, has an exceptional cast including Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Winona Ryder, and Antonio Banderas, and has a score by Hans Zimmer. Read more…
DUNE, PART TWO – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The first true blockbuster of 2024, Dune Part Two is the continuation of director Denis Villeneuve’s epic adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel. I’m not going to recap the plot of the first film – if you’ve seen it, you know it, if you haven’t, go watch it – but it essentially picks up immediately where the first film ends, with young Paul Atreides, having survived the attack on his family that killed his father, heading into the desert with the Fremen, the native inhabitants of the desert planet Arrakis. Meanwhile the Harkkonens – the sworn enemies of House Atreides – have taken back stewardship of the planet and resumed mining the valuable ‘spice’ that is only found in Arrakis’s vast sand dunes. However, as Paul begins to adopt the Fremen ways, and falls in love with Fremen warrior Chani, his mother Jessica is subtly manipulating events in the background to bring about the prophecy that has followed Paul since his birth – that he is both the kwisatz haderach and lisan al gaib, a messiah figure across different cultures. Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, and Javier Bardem reprise their roles from the first film, while Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, and Christopher Walken, join the ensemble cast. Read more…
THE CREATOR – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Creator is a science fiction epic from writer/director Gareth Edwards, set in a world where artificial intelligence has become wholly integrated into society, in the form of both robots and human/A.I. hybrids known as ‘sims’. However, after the A.I. detonates a nuclear warhead in Los Angeles, essentially destroying the city, the world descends into war and chaos. Years later, US army special forces agent Joshua is recruited to hunt down and kill ‘the creator,’ the elusive architect of a mysterious new type of advanced A.I. weapon that has the power to end the war and destroy humanity. However, things change for Joshua when he discovers that this ‘super weapon’ is actually a genetically modified child, who just wants humans and sims to live in peace. The film stars John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Alison Janney, and newcomer Madeleine Yuna Voyles as the mysterious child, and it’s mostly good. It has been marketed as a cerebral, ambitious new science fiction story, and while it is certainly visually and technically impressive, I found it to be a weird conceptual mishmash derivative of other, better films: one part Blade Runner, one part Apocalypse Now, with some other Vietnam allegory thrown in for good measure. Unusually, the central relationship between Joshua and the mystical child actually kept reminding me of the one between Eddie Murphy and The Golden Child from the 1986 film of the same name, which I’m sure is not what the filmmakers envisioned. I liked it, but I wanted to like it more than I did. Read more…
POINT OF NO RETURN – Hans Zimmer
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Point of No Return, also known as The Assassin, is an action thriller film directed by John Badham, and is a remake of the 1990 French film La Femme Nikita directed by Luc Besson. The story follows Maggie Hayward (Bridget Fonda), a drug-addicted criminal who is sentenced to death for her involvement in a robbery that resulted in a police officer being killed. However, instead of being executed, she is given the opportunity to become a government assassin under the guidance of her handler, Bob (Gabriel Byrne). Maggie undergoes intensive training and transformation to become a skilled and professional killer; she is given a new identity as Claudia and is sent on missions to eliminate high-level targets. Along the way, she becomes involved in a romantic relationship with J. P. (Dermot Mulroney), a man who works as a computer expert for Bob. However, things take a dark turn when Maggie’s loyalty is questioned, and she must decide whether to continue her life as a killer or to risk everything to escape and start anew. The film co-starred Anne Bancroft and Harvey Keitel in major supporting roles, and was popular box office success, which cemented the-then 28-year old Bridget Fonda’s status as a viable leading lady. Read more…
A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN – Hans Zimmer
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most popular comedy-drama films of 1992 was A League of Their Own, a film about baseball and how there is no crying in said sport. Set in 1943, the film tells a fictionalized account of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), which was established when the outbreak of World War II shut down Major League Baseball and the men all went off to fight the Nazis in Europe. With sexism and misogyny rampant in American society at the time, the women who sign up to play are faced with obstacles at every turn – one of whom is Jimmy Dugan, the old ball player who is reluctantly hired to coach them – but though tenacity and friendship, the women of the Rockford Peaches get to live out their sporting dreams. The film was directed by Penny Marshall from a screenplay by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, and had a fantastic cast including Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna, Lori Petty, Jon Lovitz, David Strathairn, Garry Marshall, and Bill Pullman; it was also a great hit, grossing more than $130 million at the box office, and spawning a popular soundtrack album that included two successful singles. Read more…
TOP GUN: MAVERICK – Lorne Balfe, Harold Faltermeyer, Lady Gaga, and Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In the summer of 1986 the world fell head over heels in love for Maverick, Goose, Iceman, and the men and women of Top Gun – the Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program of the United States Navy, which trains some of the best military combat pilots in the world. With its combination of intense jet fighter action, macho camaraderie, and steamy romance, the film was a massive box office blockbuster, and cemented its star Tom Cruise as one of Hollywood’s premiere leading men – a position he continues to hold, more than 35 years later. Fans of the film have been clamoring for a sequel for decades, and production on it finally began in May 2018, with an intended release date of July 2019 – but it was pushed back and back and back, initially to June 2020, then December 2020, then July 2021, then November 2021, due to the combined impact of re-shoots, the COVID pandemic, and then a clogged schedule. It eventually hit cinemas at the end of May 2022 – almost four years to the day since they started making it – but it was more than worth the wait: reviews were stellar, both from audiences and critics, and at the time of writing it has already grossed $291.6 million at the US box office alone. Read more…
RADIO FLYER – Hans Zimmer
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Radio Flyer was a somewhat misguided nostalgic drama directed by Richard Donner from a screenplay by David Mickey Evans. The film stars Tom Hanks as Mike, a middle-aged man telling the story of his childhood in the 1960s to his two sons; 11-year-old Mike (Elijah Wood) and his younger brother Bobby (Joseph Mazzello) find their lives altered irrevocably when their divorced mother (Lorraine Bracco) marries a man they know as ‘the King’ and moves them all to California. The King is a drunk and is physically abusive, especially towards Bobby, and so as a way to escape their situation the boys fantasize about modifying their ‘Radio Flyer’ toy wagon into an aeroplane, and flying away. Despite clearly being a look at an abusive relationship through the eyes of a child, and an unreliable narrator at that, the film was heavily criticized for what some saw as trivializing a serious subject, with critic Roger Ebert being especially ‘appalled’ by the film’s ending. As such, the film is mostly forgotten today, a footnote in the otherwise successful careers of its creators and stars. Read more…
DUNE – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In the years since it was first published in 1965, Frank Herbert’s Dune has grown consistently in stature and acclaim, and is now considered one of the greatest works of science fiction in the history of the genre. It’s a story about intergalactic power and control, alliances and betrayals, prophecy and mysticism, and is focused on events on the desert planet Arrakis. Arrakis is the sole source of ‘spice,’ a hallucinogenic spore naturally found in the sands of Arrakis, the use of which is what makes interstellar space travel possible; as such, spice is the most valuable commodity in the universe. Mining spice is a dangerous task, due to the inhospitableness of the planet, the presence of giant deadly sand worms, and the constant attacks by the native Fremen population, who despise their off-world colonizers. The main crux of the story follows the noble house of Atreides, which is sent to Arrakis by the Emperor of the galaxy to take over the running of the spice mines from the house of Harkonnen, their bitter rivals. What follows is essentially a power struggle for overall control of the galaxy between the Emperor, House Atreides, House Harkonnen, and the mysterious female-led religious order of the Bene Gesserit, with Paul Atreides, the young son of the duke of House Atreides, as the focal point of it all. Read more…
NO TIME TO DIE – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
After what feels like an eternity, wherein the film suffered delay after delay after delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 25th James Bond film No Time To Die has finally reached cinemas. It marks the end of the journey for Daniel Craig as 007 – he will be replaced by a new actor before the next film is released, whenever that may be – and also marks the climax to the arc of a series of films that began with Casino Royale in 2006 and which actually presents a fairly linear narrative across multiple films, something the Bond franchise had never attempted to do before. The film picks up the story almost immediately after the events shown in Spectre, and sees Bond travelling in Italy with Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), the psychiatrist who helped him capture his arch-nemesis Blofeld (Christoph Waltz). However, an apparent betrayal sends Bond into a tailspin and into retirement – he’s leaving MI6 and the spy game for good. Years later, Bond is coaxed out of retirement by his old CIA colleague Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) after a top secret scientist goes missing, and before long Bond is facing off against a new adversary in the shape of terrorist Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek), while teaming up with a new Double-0 agent (Lashana Lynch) who views Bond as a broken, misogynistic relic from the past. The film is directed by Cary Fukunaga, and was written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Fukunaga, and the great Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who was brought in to give the screenplay a contemporary edge. Read more…
THE BOSS BABY: FAMILY BUSINESS – Hans Zimmer and Steve Mazzaro
Original Review by Christopher Garner
Dreamworks’ The Boss Baby: Family Business takes place after Tim and Ted Templeton (the characters from the first Boss Baby) have grown up and grown apart. Older brother Tim has had two children of his own, Tabitha and Tina. Younger brother Ted has become a successful businessman, but work keeps him from having any personal connections with his brother’s family or anyone else. It turns out that baby Tina is a boss baby like her uncle Ted was, and has been tasked with bringing the brothers back together again and stopping evil Dr. Armstrong who runs Tabitha’s school, and who is bent on enslaving all parents so that children can be free. Tom McGrath returned to direct the sequel. Alec Baldwin reprises his role from the first film, and James Marsden, Amy Sedaris, Ariana Greenblatt, and Jeff Goldblum join the cast as grown-up Tim, Tim’s children, and the villainous Armstrong respectively. The film has had mixed reviews from critics. It’s not exactly intellectual cinema, and the whole idea of a sequel kind of undercuts the frame of the first film, but it has a lot of laughs for parents and kids, and Baldwin, Marsden, and Goldblum (at his Goldblummiest) are clearly having a great time. Read more…
REGARDING HENRY – Hans Zimmer
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Regarding Henry is an emotional drama film written by the then-25-year-old J.J. Abrams, and directed by Mike Nichols. Harrison Ford stars as Henry Turner, a wildly successful but callous and unethical New York lawyer, whose work often means he neglects his wife, Sarah (Annette Bening), and their children. One night Henry is shot in the head when he accidentally interrupts a robbery in a convenience store; he survives, but is left with brain damage, amnesia, and physical handicaps, to the extent that he barely remembers his former life. Henry also undergoes a significant personality change, becoming almost child-like with friendliness, curiosity, and a new-found sense of ethics. The film goes on to explore how this sudden change, and slow recovery, affects Henry’s life, his career, and his relationship with his family. I have always liked the film a great deal, and consider it to be one of Harrison Ford’s career best straight dramatic performances. Read more…
THELMA & LOUISE – Hans Zimmer
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A classic road movie about revenge and female empowerment, Thelma & Louise stars Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis in the titular roles as a pair of meek housewives who get a new lease on life when they decide to go on a weekend vacation away from their husbands in Thelma’s 1966 Ford Thunderbird. Things go horribly wrong when the pair stop for a drink at a roadhouse bar, and Thelma is attacked and almost raped in the parking lot by a local. The incident leaves the attacker dead of a gunshot wound – killed by a furious Louise – and results in an extended chase across the American west, as the two women are pursued by a dogged sheriff (Harvey Keitel) determined to bring them to justice. The film was directed by Ridley Scott, co-starred Michael Madsen and a very young Brad Pitt, and received a great deal of critical and commercial acclaim, with its screenplay by Callie Khouri winning the Oscar that year. The on-screen relationship between Thelma and Louise has been called a breakthrough for feminist filmmaking, while the final scene at the rim of the Grand Canyon is now considered iconic. Read more…
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