Archive
THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN – Carter Burwell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Banshees of Inisherin is a dark comedy-drama written and directed by Martin McDonagh, set on a remote island off the coast of Ireland in 1923. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson star as Pádraic Súilleabháin and Colm Doherty, long-time friends and drinking partners. Colm is a folk musician and fiddle player, and dreams of writing a classic song that will seal his legacy. Things change for the pair when, out of the blue, Colm decides that he no longer wants to be associated with Pádraic, and begins to ignore him. Pádraic, distressed by the loss of one of his few friends, begins hounding Colm, to the point where an exasperated Colm gives Pádraic an ultimatum: if he doesn’t stop bothering him, he will start cutting off his own fingers. From there, things escalate further, with the entire town eventually becoming involved in their feud. The film co-stars Kerry Condon as Pádraic’s kind sister Siobhán, and Barry Keoghan as troubled local boy Dominic, and has been a massive critical success, picking up awards at the Venice International Film Festival, and receiving multiple Oscar, BAFTA, and Golden Globe nominations. Read more…
PETER IBBETSON – Ernst Toch
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In early 1935 Paramount Pictures executives decided that they would adapt and bring to the big screen George du Maurier’s1891 romantic fantasy novel Peter Ibbetson. Louis D. Lighton was assigned production and provided a budget of $750,000. Henry Hathaway was tasked with directing, and a team of screenwriters lead by John Meehan were hired to write the screenplay. A fine cast was assembled, but not without controversy. Fredric March and Robert Donat were originally envisioned for the titular role, but in a dubious decision, Hathaway decided to cast against type, Gary Cooper, who had achieved fame in Westerns and heroic dramas. Joining him would be Ann Harding as Mary, Duchess of Towers, John Halliday as the Duke of Towers, and Ida Lupino as Agnes. Read more…
BABYLON – Justin Hurwitz
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The first half hour of Babylon, director Damien Chazelle’s epic look at the excesses of early Hollywood in the 1920s, is a sensory overload that feels like too much of everything. It’s a literal orgy of sex, drugs, and debauchery, drinking and dancing and music and good times blended with the sort of bacchanalian overkill that would make even the most hardened party goer question their judgement. Within the opening few minutes we are treated to scenes of, among other things, a grossly overweight man receiving a golden shower, someone snorting a literal mountain of cocaine, dwarves on phallus-shaped pogo sticks ‘ejaculating’ onto a crowd, a lounge singer crooning about playing with ‘her girl’s pussy’, and an elephant with the worst case of diarrhea you have ever seen. But, somehow, out of this initially overwhelming celebration of Pasolini-esque depravity, a compelling story emerges focusing on three main characters: silent film matinee idol actor Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), ambitious but damaged starlet Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), and idealistic Mexican immigrant Manny Torres (Diego Calva), who just wants to work in the movies. Read more…
THE FABELMANS – John Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
At some point in the fall of 1973 a young 27-year-old filmmaker named Steven Spielberg was entering post-production on his second major film, The Sugarland Express, and was introduced to composer John Williams. Williams was the hot young composer in Hollywood – he had already been nominated for six Academy Awards at this point in his career, winning for Fiddler on the Roof in 1972, and had just scored the smash hit The Poseidon Adventure – and the two got on like a house on fire. The Sugarland Express was the first of their collaborations, and over the course of the next fifty years or so they would work together on more than 30 film and television projects, resulting in some of the most iconic and beloved scores in film music history: Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark and its sequels, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan… the list goes on and on. Steven Spielberg is now 75 years old, and John Williams is now 90, and if the stories in the press are true, Spielberg’s new film The Fabelmans will be their last collaboration together. Read more…
JEZEBEL – Max Steiner
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Warner Brothers executives were seeking a vehicle to showcase their star Bette Davis following her 1935 Oscar win for Dangerous. They believed they found their story with the 1933 play Jezebel by Owen Davis. William Wyler was tasked with production with a $1.25 million budget, and would also direct. The team of Clements Ripley, Abem Finkel and John Huston were hired to write the screenplay and a stellar cast was assembled, including Bette Davis as Julie Marsden, Henry Fonda as Preston Dillard, George Brent as Buck Cantrell, Donald Crisp as Dr. Livingston, Fay Bainter as Aunt Belle Massey, Margaret Lindsay as Amy Bradford Dillard and Richard Cromwell as Ted Dillard. Read more…
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE – Son Lux
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
REVIEW COMING SOON.
Read more…
ENCANTO – Germaine Franco, Lin-Manuel Miranda
Original Review by Christopher Garner
Disney’s 60th animated feature film, Encanto, had a unique path to popularity. Its one-month theatrical run was profitable by pandemic standards, but far less successful than these films usually are. After being released on Disney+, however, it has become a huge hit. It tells the story of the Familia Madrigal, a multi-generational Colombian family with magical powers that live in a sentient house they call Casita. The main character, Mirabel (voiced by Brooklyn 99’s Stephanie Beatriz) is the only descendent of the family matriarch, Abuela, who does not have a “gift.” She discovers something to be wrong with the family’s magic and takes it upon herself to discover the cause of the problem and find a solution. As of this writing, the film has already won the Golden Globe for best animated picture, and has also been nominated for an Academy Award. Read more…
MADRES PARALELAS/PARALLEL MOTHERS – Alberto Iglesias
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
While many people cite Spielberg and Williams, Fellini and Rota, Hitchcock and Herrmann, or Zemeckis and Silvestri as some of the greatest long-term director-composer collaborations in cinema history, for lovers of Spanish cinema the prime pairing is between Pedro Almodóvar and Alberto Iglesias. After having worked with Bernard Bonezzi during the early part of his career, and then flirting with composers like Ryuichi Sakamoto and Ennio Morricone, Almodóvar first hired Iglesias for The Flower of My Secret in 1995, and they have worked together on every film since. Their collaboration includes such acclaimed titles as All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Volver, The Skin I Live In, and Pain and Glory, 12 films and counting. Six of Iglesias’s 11 Goya Awards have been for his work on Almodóvar’s films, and every time a new one is announced it is met with great anticipation. The surprising thing about this is that, by and large, I haven’t really liked any of them. Read more…
THE LOST PATROL – Max Steiner
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Producer-Director John Ford saw opportunity with the birth of the new movie sound era, to remake the British silent film “Lost Patrol (1929). He decided that he would also draw upon the novel “Patrol” (1927) by Philip MacDonald, believing he could make a better adaptation of the suspenseful story for the big screen. Ford would join with Merian C. Cooper and Cliff Reid to oversee production with a $262,000 budget. Garrett Fort and Dudley Nichols were hired to write the screenplay, and Ford took on additional duties of director. Casting brought in Victor McLanglen as the Sergeant, Boris Karloff as Sanders, Wallace Ford as Morelli, and Reginald Denny as George Brown. Read more…
DON’T LOOK UP – Nicholas Britell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Pitching a satire at the right level is always a tricky task, especially when the thing you are satirizing is something that is happening at the time. Whether you are tackling politics, war (like Dr Strangelove or MASH), religion (like Monty Python’s Life of Brian), bureaucracy (like Brazil), or something else entirely, you run the risk of alienating the half of your audience that doesn’t agree with your stance – and this appears to have happened to Adam McKay with his new film Don’t Look Up. The film stars Leonardo di Caprio and Jennifer Lawrence as Randall Mindy and Kate Dibiasky, two astronomy scientists who make a shocking discovery – that a comet, larger than the one which killed the dinosaurs, is on a collision course with Earth, and will strike in six months with 99% probability. Despite their scientifically accurate (but, obviously, desperately dire) warnings, they face opposition and scorn at every turn: from politicians more concerned about their poll ratings, from a disinterested media more concerned with the latest celebrity breakup, and from an apathetic public who immediately become polarized based on their political and religious beliefs. The film co-stars Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Timothée Chalamet, and Ariana Grande, among many others, and has been the recipient of equal amounts of praise and scorn in the wake of its release. Read more…
MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY – Herbert Stothart
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1934 director Frank Lloyd was impressed by the 1932 novel Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. He believed that the historically based nautical adventure tale would transfer well to the bug screen. To that end he sought the assistance of producer Irving Thalberg to persuade MGM studio executives to purchase the film rights and fund the project. Lloyd’s diligence was rewarded and he was provided a $1.95 million budget. He and Thalberg would produce the film, and he would also take on director duties. For Lloyd this was a passion project and he insisted that screenwriters Talbot Jennings, Jules Furthman and Carey Wilson stay true to the actual novel. He also constructed the Bounty from plans obtained from the British Admiralty and considered the ship an important actor in the film. A stellar cast was hired, which included Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh, Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian, Franchot Tone as Roger Byam, Movita Casteneda as Movita, and Mamo Clark as Maimiti. Read more…
THE POWER OF THE DOG – Jonny Greenwood
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Power of the Dog is the latest film by acclaimed director Jane Campion. It’s adapted from the 1967 novel of the same name by Thomas Savage, and is ostensibly a western – it’s set on a remote cattle ranch in Montana in 1925 – but that’s not really what the film is about. It’s a film about relationships; between brothers, between lovers, between mothers and sons. It’s also a film about toxic masculinity – what it means to be a man in those times, and the lengths to which one will go to prove your masculinity to others. It’s a film about loneliness and isolation – both physically in terms of geography, but also emotionally, and what that does to a person. And, ultimately, it’s an exploration of gender and sexuality in that harsh, bleak setting, and how all those things manifest in the inter-personal dynamics of the people experiencing them. 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…
OF MICE AND MEN – Aaron Copland
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1938 producer Lewis Milestone saw opportunity after witnessing John Steinbeck’s play Of Mice and Men achieve a milestone of 207 Broadway theatrical performances, and win the prestigious New York Drama Critics’ Circle award in 1938. He convinced Hal Roach Studios and United Artists Studios to fund and distribute the film. Milestone would also direct the and tasked screenwriter Eugene Solow in adapting the play and original novella for the big screen. A fine cast was assembled, which included Burgess Meredith as George, Betty Field as Mae, Lon Chaney Jr. as Lennie, Charles Bickford as Slim, Noah Beery Jr. as Whit, and Bob Steele as Curley. Read more…
THE HURRICANE – Alfred Newman
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Actor James Hall’s uncle James Norman Hall co-wrote the 1936 novel The Hurricane, which he felt would provide an exiting romantic adventure set in the South Seas. He sold director John Ford on the idea, and financial backing for production was provided by Samuel Goldwyn Productions. A massive $2.0 million budget was provided with $450,000 allocated to special effects specialist James Basevi, who spent $150,000 building a native village and lagoon, and $250,000 destroying it! Screenwriters Dudley Nichols and Oliver H. P. Garrett were hired to adapt Hall’s novel, and Ford assembled a stellar cast, which included Dorothy Lamour as Marama, John Hall as Terangi, Mary Astor as Madame Germaine De Laage, Raymond Massey as Governor Eugene De Laage, C. Aubrey Smith as Father Paul, John Carradine as the Warden, Thomas Mitchell as Dr. Kersaint, and Jerome Cowan as Captain Nagle. Read more…
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