Archive
CLOSED CIRCUIT – Joby Talbot
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Closed Circuit is a British political thriller about domestic terrorism. Directed by John Crowley and written by Steven Knight, the film stars Eric Bana as Martin Rose, a lawyer who, after his predecessor is found dead, is hired to defend Farroukh Erdogan, a Turkish native accused of masterminding a successful terrorism attack on a busy London market several months previously. Due to the sensitive nature of the case, and peculiarities in British judicial law, a second lawyer is also hired to defend Erdogan, but unlike Martin, she is allowed to have access to classified and potentially damaging secret evidence that can only be aired in a closed court. The problem is that the second lawyer is Claudia Simmons-Howe (Rebecca Lowe), Martin’s secret former lover. However, as Martin and Claudia build their respective cases, evidence comes to light of a much bigger and more wide-spread case of corruption and underhandedness which could spread all the way into MI5, Britain’s secret service agency. The film features a plethora of heavyweight British character actors in supporting roles, including Jim Broadbent and Ciarán Hinds, as well as Julia Stiles in an extended cameo as an American journalist. Read more…
SON OF RAMBOW – Joby Talbot
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Son of Rambow is an English coming-of-age story set in the 1980s about two young boys – one a school bully, the other coming from an oppressive religious family – who, having sneaked in to see First Blood at the local cinema, decide to make their own home-made action movie, with which they hope to win a young filmmakers competition. The film was written and directed by Garth Jennings, and is scored by the supremely talented English composer Joby Talbot, who scored Jennings’ last film, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the cult TV series The League of Gentlemen. Read more…
PENELOPE – Joby Talbot
Original Review by Clark Douglas
“Penelope” stars Christina Ricci as a girl who is cursed with the nose of a pig. Everyone makes fun of her, but handsome young James McAvoy is able to see past Penelope’s outer flaws and see her inner beauty. Hmmm. I wonder what the film’s message could possibly be? The movie also stars such funny people as Catherine O’Hara, Richard E. Grant, Reese Witherspoon, and Peter Dinklage. The film has gotten generally positive notices, and sounds like a perfectly likable effort (despite the fact that it sat on a shelf for two years awaiting a release).
The film’s score is provided by Joby Talbot, a composer who is probably best known to film score fans for his entertaining work on the 2005 feature film version of “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” Read more…
THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN’S APOCALYPSE – Joby Talbot
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Regular readers of Movie Music UK will know by now that I am a huge fan of the BBC TV series The League of Gentlemen, an unremittingly twisted comedy creation which follows the lives of the inhabitants of fictional English town of Royston Vasey. Having built up something of a cult following since its debut in 1999, it was to be expected that a cinematic spin-off would follow – and so we have The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse, a deliciously dark satire with hints of Hammer horror and even time travel! Directed by regular TV helmsman Steve Bendelack, Apocalypse begins when the inhabitants of Royston Vasey discover that they are fictional creations, dreamed up by the twisted imaginations of writers Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reese Shearsmith. Read more…
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY – Joby Talbot
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s interesting to watch what happens when a cult becomes a phenomenon. When British author Douglas Adams first developed The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as a play for radio in 1978, he could scarcely have imagined the impact on British popular culture his inventive imagination would have. Since that date, Hitchhiker’s has grown to encompass a follow-up novel, four sequels (“The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, “Life the Universe and Everything”, “So Long & Thanks For All The Fish” and “Mostly Harmless”), a well-respected British TV series in 1981, and now a multi-million dollar movie produced by Touchstone Pictures. Several phrases and ideas from the books have entered common language, from the online language translator Babelfish to the popular instant messaging programme Trillian and the chess super-computer Deep Thought. Read more…
Shop at the Movie Music UK Store
Member of the
MOVIE MUSIC UK 