Archive
SILVER QUEEN – Victor Young
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1942 Paramount Pictures decided to approve for production, a western by Forrest Halsey and William Allen Johnston, which offered a story about a woman gambler. To implement their vision the purchased a package deal from Warner Brothers, who loaned them actors Pricilla Land and George Brent, along with director Lloyd Bacon. Independent producer Harry Sherman was assigned production and writers Cecile Kramer and Bernard Schubert would write the screenplay. George Brent would star as James Kincaid with Priscilla Lane as Coralie Adams. Joining them would be Bruce Cabot as Gerald Forsythe and Lynn Overman as Hector Bailey. For reasons I could not discover, Paramount in the end did not distribute the film. Instead, United Artists is listed as the production company, which suggests the film was one of several sold to United Artists from 1942 – 1943. Read more…
HOLD BACK THE DAWN – Victor Young
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
The genesis of Hold Back the Dawn was writer Ketti Frings’ story, “Memo to a Movie Producer”. Paramount executives decided that the romantic drama would translate well to the big screen, and so paid $5,000 for the film rights. After the novel was published and well received, the working title of the movie was changed to the novel’s title, “Hold Back the Dawn”. Arthur Hornblow Jr. was assigned production, Mitchell Leisen was tasked with directing, and Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Richard Mailbaum wrote the screenplay. A stellar cast was hired, which included Charles Boyer as Georges Iscovescu, Olivia de Havilland as Emmy Brown, Paulette Goddard as Anita Dixon, Victor Francen as Van Den Lueken, and Walter Abel as Inspector Hammock. Read more…
NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE – Victor Young
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1939 legendary director Cecil B. DeMille decided that his next project, which would be his first film shot in technicolor, would be an epic Western. He purchased the film rights for the 1938 novel The Royal Canadian Mounted Police by R. C. Fetherstonhaugh and sold his vision to Paramount Pictures. DeMille would manage production with a smaller budget than he wanted. As such due to budget restrictions, the movie was filmed on sound stages at the Paramount lot as well as on location in Oregon and California, even though the film was based on a real-life incident in Saskatchewan, Canada. Demille would also direct and narrate, and Alan Le May, Jesse Lasky Jr. and C. Gardner Sullivan would write the screenplay. For the cast, Gary Cooper would star as Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers, joined by Madeleine Carroll as April Logan, Paulette Goddard as Louvette Corbeau, Preston Foster as Sergeant Jim Brett, Akim Tamiroff as Dan Duroc, and Lon Chaney Jr as Shorty. Read more…
HAMNET – Max Richter
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Director Chloe Zhao’s film Hamnet, which is based on the 2020 novel by Maggie O’Farrell, is a lyrical reimagining of the brief life and death of Hamnet Shakespeare, the son of the legendary poet and writer William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes “Anne” Hathaway, musing on the fact that his passing may have inspired the creation of one of the greatest works of literature in history. The story centers mostly on Agnes, who is portrayed as a perceptive, intuitive woman with a deep connection to nature; the first half of the film looks at Agnes and William’s early courtship, their subsequent marriage, and offers a portrait of family life in Elizabethan England circa 1580, following the birth of their twin children Hamnet and Judith. In time William begins traveling to London to write and perform his plays, but eventually the spread of plague brings sickness to the Shakespeare household, and Judith falls gravely ill. Hamnet, who has been charged by his father with looking after the family in his absence, desperately attempts to help her, and asks God if he can swap places with her; Judith eventually recovers, but Hamnet contracts the plague too, and dies aged just eleven. After Hamnet’s death, the story then explores how Agnes and William grieve differently: Agnes’s sorrow is visceral and consuming, while William channels his grief into his work. Read more…
DARK COMMAND – Victor Young
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Renowned novelist W.R. Burnett had a well-established reputation for writing modern day crime stories. However, his 1938 novel “The Dark Command” was a departure, a rare historical drama, which became a best seller. Republic Pictures decided to capitalize on its success and purchased the film rights. Sol C. Siegel was assigned production with a $750,000 budget, Raoul Walsh was tasked with directing, and a team of four screenwriters was hired; F. Hugh Herbert, Lionel Houser, Grover Jones, and Jan Isabel Fortune. A stellar cast was assembled, which included Claire Trevor as Mary McCloud, John Wayne as Bob Seton, Walter Pidgeon as Will Cantrell, Roy Rogers as Fletch McCloud, Gabby Hayes as Doc Grunch, Porter Hall as Angus McCloud, Marjorie Main as Mrs. Adams, and Raymond Walburn as Judge Bruckner. Read more…
SABRINA – John Williams
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Sabrina is a modern remake of Billy Wilder’s 1954 romantic comedy which starred Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and William Holden, and which was itself based on the stage play Sabrina Fair by Samuel Taylor. Directed by Sydney Pollack, the story follows Sabrina Fairchild (Julia Ormond), the shy and awkward daughter of a chauffeur who works for the wealthy Larrabee family on Long Island. Sabrina has spent her life quietly pining for David Larrabee (Greg Kinnear), the charming but superficial younger son. After a transformative stay in Paris, she returns home confident and stylish, immediately catching David’s attention, just as he is about to marry a woman whose family is vital to a major business deal. To protect the merger, David’s older brother Linus (Harrison Ford), the work-obsessed head of the Larrabee corporation, inserts himself into Sabrina’s life to distract her. His plan is to win her over and then send her back to Paris, but as they spend time together, Linus unexpectedly falls in love with her, and she discovers her long-standing infatuation with David has been eclipsed by a deeper connection with Linus. Read more…
NIXON – John Williams
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I am not a crook! — Richard Nixon, November 17, 1973
I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow — Richard Nixon, August 8, 1974
Director Oliver Stone’s film Nixon is an epic biographical drama tracing the life of the 37th President of the United States, Richard Nixon. Structured as a psychological portrait, the film moves back and forth in time, depicting a number of major turning points: his humble California upbringing in the 1930s and 40s, his early political rise in the 1950s and his stint as Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower, his triumphant election victory in 1968, the pressures of the Vietnam War, and above all the widening shadow of the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up which led to his eventual downfall and his resignation as president in 1974. Stone presents Nixon as both deeply ambitious but profoundly insecure, a man shaped by personal trauma and driven by a desire for power and recognition that eventually turned to paranoia, criminality, and disgrace. Watergate, for those who don’t know, refers to an event where a group of Nixon operatives broke into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington DC in order to illegally plant surveillance equipment, ostensibly to obtain political intelligence on the Democratic Party prior to the 1972 election. Read more…
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY – Patrick Doyle
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
“I come here with no expectations, only to profess, now that I am at liberty to do so, that my heart is and always will be… yours.”
Although she had always been popular, 18th century English writer Jane Austen received a new surge of publicity in 1995 following the release of adaptations of two of her best-known works: the BBC mini-series based on Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle and featuring that swimming scene, and this film, adapting her 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility. The story of Sense and Sensibility follows the Dashwood sisters – practical and reserved Elinor, passionate and romantic Marianne – after their father’s death leaves them in reduced financial circumstances. Forced to relocate to a modest cottage in Devon, they navigate love, heartbreak, and the constraints placed on women of their class in Georgian-era England; both sisters are expected to marry to secure their family’s future, and while Elinor quietly longs for the earnest Edward Ferrars, Marianne falls deeply for the dashing but unreliable John Willoughby, overlooking the steadier Colonel Brandon. Read more…
TOY STORY – Randy Newman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
To infinity and beyond!
There are only a few films that you can point to as marking a genuine turning point in the history of cinema, but 1995’s Toy Story is one of them. Directed by John Lasseter and produced by Pixar Animation Studios in collaboration with Walt Disney Pictures, it was the first entirely computer-animated feature film, and as such is a landmark of the genre. Pixar’s roots trace back to Lucasfilm’s Computer Division, founded in 1979. Among the early team members was John Lasseter, an animator who had previously worked at Disney but was dismissed after pushing too hard for computer animation in an era when Disney remained committed to traditional hand-drawn techniques. At Lucasfilm, Lasseter found a place where computer graphics were the focus, and he began experimenting with short animated sequences that combined storytelling and new technology. Read more…
FRANKENSTEIN – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s astonishing to think that there have been more than 50 cinematic adaptations of the story of Frankenstein since it was first penned, one haunted summer in 1818, by the then 20-year-old English author Mary Shelley. In writing Frankenstein Shelley essentially invented the science fiction literary genre as we know it; before Frankenstein, stories about the unnatural or the fantastic were usually supernatural, rooted in magic, myth, or divine intervention. Shelley’s innovation was to ground the creation of life in the science of the time, and it changed everything. On film, adaptations have differed wildly in tone and approach, from the early classic James Whale films starring Boris Karloff, to the Hammer horror films of the 1950s and 60s with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, Mel Brooks’s campy comedy Young Frankenstein, and director Kenneth Branagh’s Gothic take from 1994. This new version, by the Oscar-winning Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, may be the best of them all. Read more…
BUGONIA – Jerskin Fendrix
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The term ‘bugonia’ comes from Latin and Greek, and relates to an ancient concept or myth describing the spontaneous generation of bees from the carcass of a dead ox. Philosophically and symbolically, bugonia reflects beliefs in the idea that living creatures can arise from non-living matter, as well as themes of death, rebirth, and transformation. In literary and religious contexts, it often serves as a metaphor for resurrection, drawing parallels between natural cycles and human or divine renewal. All this explains perfectly many of the underlying themes of director Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film, Bugonia. The film stars Jesse Plemons as disaffected conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz, who has persuaded his autistic cousin Don (newcomer Aidan Delbis) to help him kidnap Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), the wealthy and powerful CEO of a pharmaceutical megacorporation. Teddy has convinced himself that Michelle is secretly an alien from Andromeda who wants to destroy Earth, and he is determined to make her admit her true identity, and then take him to meet her ‘emperor’ so that he can initiate peace talks with them. Read more…
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT – Marc Shaiman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Looking back now, considering where we are today in terms of what the American political landscape has become over the past decade, it seems almost unbelievably naïve and quaint to think that, in the 1990s, people were still making films about US presidents who were good, upstanding people who cared about their jobs and the electorate that voted for them. The American President is one of those films; written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Rob Reiner, the film is a romantic drama set in the White House. Michael Douglas plays President Andrew Shepherd, a widower nearing the end of his first term. He is well-liked, pragmatic, and politically savvy, but cautious about jeopardizing his public image. Things change when Shepherd becomes romantically involved with Sydney Wade (Annette Bening), an environmental lobbyist who comes to Washington to push for a bold emissions-reduction bill. Their relationship quickly becomes serious, but because it unfolds under intense media scrutiny, it also becomes a political liability. As Shepherd’s approval ratings fall, his opponents – especially conservative senator Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss) – exploit the situation, framing the relationship as unpresidential. Shepherd initially tries to keep politics and romance separate, hoping the story will fizzle out, but before long public pressure forces him to choose between maintaining power and standing up for the values he claims to represent. Read more…
UNSTRUNG HEROES – Thomas Newman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Unstrung Heroes is a coming-of-age comedy-drama directed by Diane Keaton, adapted from journalist Franz Lidz’s memoir of the same name. The story is set in the 1960s and follows twelve-year-old Steven Lidz (Nathan Watt), a sensitive and imaginative boy growing up in Los Angeles. Steven’s father Sid (John Turturro) is a brilliant but eccentric inventor who is emotionally distant, while his mother, Selma (Andie MacDowell), is warm, loving, and supportive. However, when Selma is diagnosed with terminal cancer, the family is shaken; struggling to cope with his mother’s illness and his father’s inability to express vulnerability, Steven decides to leave home and live with his two eccentric uncles, Arthur (Michael Richards) a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and Danny (Maury Chaykin), a gentle, childlike dreamer. Though unconventional, the uncles provide Steven with comfort, eccentric wisdom, and a sense of belonging, and through their unconventional guidance, Steven learns to process grief, embrace imagination, and find resilience in the face of loss. Read more…
POCAHONTAS – Alan Menken, Stephen Schwartz
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The idea to make a movie about the life of Pocahontas was first pitched to Walt Disney studios in 1990, shortly after the success of The Little Mermaid, and as Beauty and the Beast was in production. The studio was looking to diversify its slate with more mature, emotionally grounded stories, and chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg was eager to pursue more prestigious, award-caliber projects. He saw Pocahontas as a chance for Disney to do a “serious” animated film with Oscar potential, aimed at adults as much as children, and described the film as potentially Disney’s equivalent of West Side Story or Dances with Wolves – emotionally resonant, message-driven, and grounded in real-world conflict. Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg were hired as directors, and during development Pocahontas was considered the “prestige” project compared to another film in development simultaneously – The Lion King. Many animators reportedly lobbied to work on Pocahontas, which was expected to win awards, while The Lion King was seen as the “B project,” although ironically it was The Lion King that would become a much bigger global phenomenon, both critically and commercially. Read more…
IL POSTINO – Luis Enríquez Bacalov
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most surprising global hits of the 1990s was Il Postino, The Postman, an Italian romantic drama film based on the novel Ardiente Paciencia by Antonio Skármeta, and directed by English filmmaker Michael Radford. The film is set in the early 1950s on a small, picturesque island off the coast of Italy and centers on Mario Ruoppolo, a shy and uneducated local man who takes a job as a postman. His only task is to deliver mail to Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet, who has taken refuge on the island after fleeing Augusto Pinochet’s government and going into political exile. As Mario and Neruda begin to interact, Mario becomes fascinated by the poet’s charisma, politics, and especially his romantic use of language; eventually, Mario seeks Neruda’s guidance in learning how to express himself, particularly because he has fallen in love with Beatrice Russo, a beautiful but reserved woman who works at a local café. Read more…
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