Archive
INFERNO – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Inferno is the latest in the series of films based on Dan Brown’s immensely popular Robert Langdon novels, after The Da Vinci Code in 2006, and Angels & Demons in 2009. Tom Hanks returns to the leading role as the genius Harvard University professor of religious iconology and symbology; in this story, Langdon finds himself racing around ancient historical sites in Florence and Venice, as he attempts to uncover the truth behind the suicide of a billionaire scientist, and how it relates to a missing biological weapon, and the various writings and artworks of Dante Aligheri and Sandro Botticelli that define our modern concept of hell. The film is directed by Ron Howard, and co-stars Felicity Jones, Omar Sy, Ben Foster, Sidse Babett Knudsen, and Irrfan Khan; also returning to the team is composer Hans Zimmer, whose scores for The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons are amongst his most popular of the last ten years. Read more…
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE – Hans Zimmer and Tom Holkenborg
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In an attempt to compete with Marvel and their cadre of interlocking super-hero pictures, DC Comics have begun to develop their own version of a cinematic universe. It began with Man of Steel in 2013, director Zack Snyder’s re-imagining of the Superman story, and continues with this second film, which sees the introduction of Batman and several other DC characters into a single, shared story space, setting up what will eventually become the Justice League. Rather than continuing Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice takes yet another fresh look at Gotham’s cowl-wearing warrior, replacing Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne with Ben Affleck and Michael Caine’s Alfred with Jeremy Irons. The film inserts Wayne into the immediate aftermath of the finale of Man of Steel by having him witness the conclusive fight between Superman (Henry Cavill) and General Zod over Metropolis, and the devastation that accompanied it, from the ground. Jump forward 18 months, and Wayne has committed himself to exposing Superman as an unstoppable threat to humanity. Meanwhile, Superman’s alter-ego, newspaperman Clark Kent, has become concerned with Batman’s personal brand of vigilante justice in nearby Gotham, and resolves to expose him. However, unbeknownst to either Kent or Wayne, their mutual plans are being manipulated by technology mogul Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), who has megalomaniacal tendencies of his own, and wants both Batman and Superman out of his way. Read more…
INTERSTELLAR – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is a science fiction epic on a grand scale. Set in a future where life on Earth is in jeopardy due to a series of environmental disasters, the film follows Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former pilot turned corn farmer, whose precocious daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) believes she is receiving messages written in dust from a ghost in her bedroom. One of these messages eventually leads Cooper to a secret NASA installation where, under the radar and away from the public eye, Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and astronauts Amelia (Anne Hathaway) and Doyle (Wes Bentley) have been working on a project to save humanity. Their plan involves piloting a ship to the space around Saturn, where friendly ‘fifth-dimensional beings’ have placed a wormhole to the far side of the galaxy. The hope is that, on the other side of the wormhole, a new planet capable of sustaining human life can be found and colonized. Read more…
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
As the second movie in Sony’s “reboot” of the Spider-Man franchise, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 sees Andrew Garfield returning as the teenage web-slinging super hero Peter Parker, still attending high school by day, while battling super-villains at night. The plot this time round sees young Peter in a healthy relationship with the lovely Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) as they prepare to graduate from Midtown Science, although he is haunted by the promise he made to Gwen’s late father to keep her safe, as well as the memory of the death of his parents several years earlier, and the mystery surrounding their work and legacy. Peter’s world is shattered further, however, with the emergence of a new threat: Electro (Jamie Foxx), a mild-mannered engineer working for the multinational conglomerate Oscorp, who develops the capacity to manipulate and control electricity – and a deep hatred of Spider-Man – following an industrial accident. Not only that, but Peter’s childhood friend Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) returns to the city following the death of his father Norman Osborn (Chris Cooper), the head of Oscorp, only to discover that the illness that killed his father is hereditary, and that the only cure may be inside Spider-Man’s blood. The film is again directed by the appropriately-named Marc Webb, and has an original score by Hans Zimmer, replacing the first film’s composer James Horner. Read more…
12 YEARS A SLAVE – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most important and acclaimed films of 2013, 12 Years a Slave tells the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York in the pre-Civil War United States, who is tricked, abducted and sold into slavery. Arriving in the South, the story chronicles the next twelve years of his life as he faces cruelty after cruelty, indignity after indignity, relentlessly barbaric treatment at the hands of a malevolent slave owner, and his struggle to maintain some semblance of dignity and humanity as he strives to find a way back home to his family. The film is directed by British filmmaker Steve McQueen, stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northup, and features an outstanding supporting cast including Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sarah Paulson, Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano, Alfre Woodard, Brad Pitt, and newcomer Lupita Nyong’o, who is destined for an Academy Award nomination for her soulful performance as Solomon’s fellow slave, Patsey. A brutal, difficult, and at times excruciatingly raw film, 12 Years a Slave is clearly one of the year’s best films, in that it examines in unflinching detail one of the most heinous periods in American history, and features a powerhouse central performance from Ejiofor as the man who refuses to be beaten down by the wrongs done to him. Read more…
RUSH – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’ve been a fan of Formula One motor racing for over twenty years; my grandfather, who was also a big fan, introduced me to it in the late 1980s, and since then I’ve followed every season, cheering on a succession of great British drivers – Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Jenson Button – and getting caught up in the intrigue, drama, excitement, adrenaline and masterful engineering each new season brings. It takes a certain kind of personality to hurtle down a straight towards a blind hairpin bend at 200mph with a machine as powerful as an F1 car under your right foot – the very next corner could, literally, be their last – and so the drivers who do this for a living tend to be larger-than-life themselves, prone to a certain sense of eccentricity and egotism. When I first started watching the sport, the biggest rivalry was between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, but a decade previously the two dominant personalities were the flamboyant and brilliant Englishman James Hunt, and the equally mercurial but slightly taciturn Austrian Niki Lauda. Read more…
THE LONE RANGER – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The character of The Lone Ranger first appeared on WYXZ radio in Detroit, Michigan in 1933, the brainchild of station owner George Trendle and writer Fran Striker. Over the course of the next 70 years the character appeared in almost 3,000 radio shows, countless books and comics, in a much-loved 1950s TV series starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels, and in several theatrical movies, the most of recent of which – The Legend of the Lone Ranger – was released in 1981. Following the adventures of a former Texas ranger, morally forthright and unfailingly just, battling bad guys in the Wild West with the aid of his trusty Indian guide Tonto and his horse Silver, The Lone Ranger was massively popular during the early part of the 20s century, but has become something of an old fashioned cliché in recent years, despite numerous attempts to resurrect the character for modern audiences. Sadly, Disney’s $250 million blockbuster seems to be following the trend on the back of appalling reviews and disappointing box office returns, possibly consigning the masked man to the annals of history forever. Read more…
MAN OF STEEL – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Before I begin this review of Man of Steel, let me make one or two things perfectly clear. I do not hate Hans Zimmer, or his music. I’ve met him on a couple of occasions, and he’s an extremely nice and friendly man. As a composer, I think he’s very talented. He was a genuinely groundbreaking artist when he first emerged on the scene in the late 1980s, and broke the film music mould when he wrote scores like Black Rain, Backdraft and Crimson Tide. I absolutely adore many of his works, ranging from A League of Their Own to The Prince of Egypt, The Last Samurai and Pearl Harbor. I think Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is a masterpiece, and close to being the best score of his entire career. I have a few issues with the way his Remote Control organization has come to dominate the mainstream Hollywood film scoring world, but I admire him as a shrewd businessman, and he did help launch the careers of John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams among others, which is praise-worthy in itself. Having said that, I think Man of Steel is a colossal failure of both musical ingenuity and conceptual approach. Read more…
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Dark Knight Rises is director Christopher Nolan’s eagerly-awaited final installment in the Batman trilogy he initiated with Batman Begins in 2005, and continued with The Dark Knight in 2008. Set seven years after the conclusion of the second film, The Dark Knight Rises finds the billionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) living in seclusion, having allowed his crime-fighting alter-ego Batman to take the blame for the crimes committed by the former DA Harvey Dent, including the murder of Wayne’s soul-mate, Rachel. However, Wayne’s self-imposed isolation is threatened by two very different interlopers into Gotham City: the formidable masked terrorist Bane (Tom Hardy), who seems to be masterminding a plan to undermine the very fabric of contemporary society, and sophisticated cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), who breaks into Wayne Manor to steal a necklace, but comes away with much more. To combat the rising threat, Wayne is forced to become Batman once more, but is he strong enough – mentally, and physically – to face the challenge? The film has an all-star supporting cast, including Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard, and has become one of the most popular and successful box-office hits of 2012, ending Nolan’s vision on an undisputed high note, but cleverly paving the way for future installments by different directors. Read more…
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, subtitled On Stranger Tides, came a little belatedly, four years after the conclusion of the well-received third entry in the record breaking series, At World’s End. Although Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush return at the strutting Captain Jack Sparrow ad his nemesis Barbossa, gone are co-stars Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, as is director Gore Verbinski. In their place is new director Rob Marshall – whose last film, the musical Nine, couldn’t have been more different – while the new supporting players include Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane. The story follows the search for the mythical Fountain of Youth; Cruz plays Angelica, one of Captain Jack’s old flames, while McShane plays the legendary Blackbeard, Angelica’s father and Jack’s rival in the hunt for eternal life. Read more…
MEGAMIND – Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A silly-but-fun animated action/comedy set in a world of super-heroes and super-villains, Megamind features the voice talent of Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, Tina Fey and Jonah Hill. After their respective planets are destroyed Superman-style, two alien babies – one who looks human, one with a giant blue head and superior intellect – crash land on Earth. The human-looking baby grows up to be Metro Man, the savior of the fictional Metro City, while the other grows up to be Megamind, his arch enemy and super-villain. After kidnapping beautiful reporter Roxanne, Megamind hatches a typically hare-brained scheme to kill Metro Man but – as much to his own surprise as anyone else’s – actually succeeds in apparently dispatching his nemesis. However, rather than being happy with his triumph, Megamind quickly becomes depressed with having no-one to fight, and concocts a new scheme: to genetically alter Roxanne’s hapless cameraman Hal, turning him into a new hero… Read more…
INCEPTION – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An action thriller dealing with the manipulation of dreams, Inception is the latest film from Batman Begins and Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan. Leonardo di Caprio stars as Cobb, one of an elite group of corporate espionage specialists who have mastered the technology of ‘dream invasion’, which allows him to literally enter the dream world of a subject while he is asleep. A man with a tortured past, Cobb and his cohort Arthur (Joseph Gordon Levitt) are hired by wealthy industrialist Saito (Ken Watanabe) to infiltrate the mind of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), a corporate rival, and perform an ‘inception’, a dangerous procedure where, rather than extracting information, an idea is surreptitiously placed into the subject’s subconscious without them realizing. After assembling his team (Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao), Cobb begins his journey into dreamworld, where he not only has to contend with the dangers presented by the task, but also his own personal demons, in the form of his long-dead wife Mal (Marion Cotillard). 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…
SHERLOCK HOLMES – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
This version of Sherlock Holmes is apparently the 223rd occasion the ubiquitous detective has been portrayed on either the big or small screen, but as far as I’m aware this is the first time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary character has been a traditional Hollywood action hero. A succession of actors – from Basil Rathbone to Peter Cushing and Jeremy Brett – have portrayed Holmes as a thoughtful, cultured, albeit rather eccentric English gentleman, and although Doyle’s novels have often spoken of his prowess as a bare knuckle fighter and swordsman, as well as his drug use, Holmes was never an ‘action man’ in the traditional sense. It seems the filmmakers have made a rather unfortunate misjudgment of character on this film, making this Holmes a young, bare-chested hunk rather than an analytical mind. Read more…
ANGELS & DEMONS – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The second film based on author Dan Brown’s enormously popular series of novels about the adventures of Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, Angels & Demons is actually a prequel to the popular and controversial The Da Vinci Code. Tom Hanks returns as Langdon, who becomes embroiled in another labyrinthine plot of mysteries and clues following the death of the Pope. Before the conclave to choose a his successor can begin, the four senior bishops in line for the position are kidnapped by a group claiming to be the ancient cult of the Illuminati, who want revenge against the Vatican for centuries of persecution at the hands of the catholic church. Read more…
Shop at the Movie Music UK Store
Member of the
MOVIE MUSIC UK 