Archive
HER – Will Butler, Owen Pallett
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s difficult to describe Her without it sounding stupid because, basically, it’s about a man who falls in love with his computer – but it’s actually about much more than that. It’s about how loneliness can drive people to great lengths in order to find companionship. It’s about how technology is changing the way humans connect with each other. It’s about many things – but, ultimately, it’s about love. Set in Los Angeles in the near future, it stars Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore, who is in a deep depression after the ending of a long relationship, but who displays a sensitive side in his job, writing emotional personal letters for other people. When a new computer operating system comes onto the market, Theodore is intrigued – it advertises itself as an intuitive entity in its own right, individual to each user, capable of learning. Upon initiating it, he meets Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), an upbeat and curiously sexy female voice, who immediately begins organizing his life for the better. Quickly, Samantha displays an insatiable desire for knowledge and to understand human emotion, and as Theodore starts to fulfill those needs, the unlikely pair begins to fall in love. Read more…
SAVING MR. BANKS – Thomas Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The much-loved Disney feature Mary Poppins celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2014. It’s hard to believe that it’s been that long since the world first learned the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, or were first able to hear the worst Cockney accent in cinematic history courtesy of Dick Van Dyke, but it’s true, and the legacy and popularity of the film remains as strong today as it was in 1964. The new film Saving Mr. Banks, directed by John Lee Hancock, tells two parallel stories. Firstly, it charts how the film Mary Poppins was made, with the irascible English spinster P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) traveling from her home in London to Los Angeles, where she is wooed mercilessly by no lesser figure that Walt Disney himself (Tom Hanks), in an attempt to secure the rights to her book, which she is loathe to give up. Secondly, and possibly most importantly, it explores in flashback Travers’ childhood in rural Australia, and how her relationship with her loving, caring, but hopelessly drunk and irresponsible father (Colin Farrell) helped inspired her work, and her famous umbrella-wielding nanny. Read more…
PHILOMENA – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In 2009 former BBC journalist and British Labour party political advisor Martin Sixsmith wrote the non-fiction book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, about the forcible separation of a mother and child by the nuns of an Irish convent, and the subsequent attempts of the mother and child to contact one another. This book has now been adapted by director Stephen Frears and writer Steve Coogan into the film Philomena, which charts the odd-couple relationship between Sixsmith and Lee as they journey to the United States to try to track down her son, and provides an interesting and damning look at the topic of the forced adoptions practiced by the Roman Catholic Church in the 1950s. The film stars writer Coogan as Sixsmith, Dame Judi Dench as Philomena, and has an original score by Alexandre Desplat, who previously worked with director Frears on the films The Queen, Cheri and Tamara Drewe. Read more…
THE BOOK THIEF – John Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Book Thief, based on the popular novel by Markus Zusak, is a World War II drama set in Germany about the power of the written word. Young Sophie Nélisse stars as the lead character, Liesel, who is sent to live with foster parents (Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson), just as the specter of war looms over the country and Nazism begins to take hold. Through her innocent eyes Liesel begins to witness the first months of what would be eventually become the Holocaust, but through the compassion of her new parents, their imparted love of books and literature, and her friendship with of a young Jewish man named Max, she finds a way to deal with the atrocities that are starting to take place in her community. The film is directed by Brian Percival, best known for his work on the critically acclaimed TV series Downton Abbey, and has a score by the legendary John Williams. Read more…
GRAVITY – Steven Price
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There has never quite been a film like Gravity. In terms of plot, it’s fairly thin – two astronauts, played by George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, suffer a disaster while repairing the Hubble space telescope, and are left floating stranded in space, desperately trying to find a way to safety, and to home. Instead, it is the scope and majesty of Alfonso Cuarón’s film that takes audiences to a completely new sensory place. Space has never seemed so vast, so vivid, so beautiful, so terrifying. The cinematography and design of the film makes the viewer feel like it was genuinely shot in space, such is the sense of realism. Much more will be written about the film to convey how stellar it is, but I’m here to talk about the music, which also plays an enormous part in the success of the entire project. Read more…
LIFE OF PI – Mychael Danna
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Once in a while a film comes along which seems predestined to be scored by a certain composer; in 2012, that film is Life of Pi and that composer is Mychael Danna. Based on the successful novel by Yann Martel, and directed by Ang Lee, Life of Pi is a film which asks all the big questions – about life, death, religion, fate, identity, reality – and answers them through an incredible story told by Piscine Molitor Patel (Irfan Khan), commonly known as Pi, an Indian immigrant to Canada, who relates his life story to an enraptured journalist (Rafe Spall), who is researching a book. Born into a relatively wealthy family in Pondicherry, India, where his father owned a zoo, Pi’s life is thrown into chaos after the family decides to emigrate to Canada; the boat they are traveling on capsizes in a storm, leaving 16-year old Pi (Suraj Sharma) the only survivor – except for a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and an ill-tempered Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, who all are forced to share the same tiny lifeboat. What follows is an extraordinary story of friendship, trust, survival, faith and belief, as Pi must overcome his greatest fears and the overpowering forces of nature to reach safety. Read more…
ANNA KARENINA – Dario Marianelli
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Anna Karenina is a classic of Russian literature, written by the celebrated author Leo Tolstoy in 1873. It tells the story of the titular character, Anna, a Moscow socialite married to the taciturn Alexei Karenin, a stoic Government official 20 years her senior. Anna’s life is thrown into turmoil when she meets and falls for the dashing Count Vronsky, a handsome and wealthy cavalry officer who sweeps Anna off her feet, and shows her the true meaning of love. However, repressive societal norms, pressure from friends and family, and Anna’s own insecurities about what she wants from life means that her difficult choice between a safe, but dull life with Karenin and a wild, but potentially ostracizing life with Vronsky becomes agonizing. The story has been told on film many times over the years; this lavish new version is directed by Joe Wright from a screenplay by Tom Stoppard, stars Keira Knightley as Anna, Jude Law as Alexei, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Vronsky, and has a stellar supporting cast that includes Kelly Macdonald, Olivia Williams, Emily Watson and Matthew Macfadyen. Read more…
SKYFALL – Thomas Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Coming in to write the music for your first James Bond movie must be a massively daunting task. In composing the score for Skyfall, Thomas Newman – the multi-Oscar nominated composer of such seminal scores as American Beauty and The Shawshank Redemption – not only had to cope with 50 years of cinematic history after Ursula Andress first slinked out of the Caribbean sea in Dr. No in 1962, but legions of fans who treat the movie franchise as sacred property, and the legacy of the legendary music of John Barry and his heir-apparent, David Arnold. The ‘James Bond sound’ is so iconic and so well-established that it presents a composer as unique as Newman with a dilemma: does he abandon his own sound in an attempt to fit in with the overall sound of the series, risking giving up the very thing that makes him him, or does he compose music in his own inimitable way, establishment be damned, risking the wrath of those who would then surely accuse him of not being ‘Bond’ enough? It’s a challenging tightrope, and one which Newman had to skillfully navigate. Read more…
LINCOLN – John Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In the annals of American political history, virtually no-one is as universally admired, revered and respected as Abraham Lincoln. Born into relative poverty in Kentucky in 1809, Lincoln rose from being a simple country lawyer to being elected the 16th President of the United States in 1860. During the course of his presidency Lincoln essentially re-defined the United States as we know it today, successfully defeating the Confederacy in the four-year Civil War, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that essentially ended slavery in the country, and delivering the Gettysburg Address, one of the most famous political speeches of all time. He was re-elected in 1864 but, as we all know, was assassinated by actor John Wilkes Booth while watching a play in a Washington DC theatre in April 1865, before he could fully establish his second term. There have been many films over the years featuring Lincoln as a central figure, but director Steven Spielberg’s film – simply titled “Lincoln” – is a straightforward biopic of the man’s life and achievements. The film stars Daniel Day Lewis in the eponymous role, and features a stellar supporting cast including Sally Field as Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd, Tommy Lee Jones as republican leader Thaddeus Stevens, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Lincoln’s son Robert, David Strathairn as secretary of state William Seward, and Jackie Earle Haley, James Spader, John Hawkes, Jared Harris and Hal Holbrook in smaller roles. Read more…
ARGO – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979 saw 52 American diplomats being held for over a year by Iranian authorities after the American embassy in Tehran was stormed by students and military officials, in the wider context of the Iranian Revolution that ousted the pro-western Shah of Iran, and brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. Most people know that the public crisis was eventually ended diplomatically by the outgoing President Jimmy Carter, but what people didn’t know – at least, until documents were declassified in the 1990s – is that six embassy staffers escaped from the building before it was taken by the revolutionaries, and spent months hiding at the Canadian Ambassador’s house until they were dramatically rescued by a CIA operative working with a Hollywood makeup artist. This hitherto-unknown story is the basis of Argo, the latest film from actor-director Ben Affleck. Read more…
WAR HORSE – John Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A variation on the classic Black Beauty tale about of the life of a heroic horse, filtered through the cinematic lens of director John Ford, War Horse is director Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the well-regarded novel by Michael Morpurgo about the adventures of a horse named Joey during World War I. The action moves from rural Devon, where young Joey is raised as a plow horse by Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) to work on his father’s farm, to the battlefields of central Europe after he is sold to the British Army upon the outbreak of war and is adopted by a kindly cavalry officer as his personal mount. Moving from adventure to adventure, Joey makes his way through the mire of The Great War, serving on both sides of the conflict – and all the while young Albert, now himself serving in the trenches, never gives up hope of being reunited with his equine friend. The film co-stars Peter Mullan, Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Niels Arestrup, Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch, and of course has a score by the venerable John Williams, his second score of 2011 after several years away from the podium. Read more…
TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY – Alberto Iglesias
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A slow burning thriller based on the classic espionage novel by John le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a film about corruption at the highest level of the British spy game. Influenced in part by the real-life exploits of the British-Soviet double agent Kim Philby and set in Britain in the mid 1970s, the film stars Gary Oldman as George Smiley, a taciturn, but brilliant secret agent who becomes embroiled in a labyrinthine plot of bluff and double-bluff when he discovers that there is a mole leaking classified information to the Soviets, and that the mole might well be one of the highest ranking agents in MI5, Britain’s elite intelligence agency. This is not the secret world of James Bond however: these spies are thinkers and manipulators rather than men of action, with a strategic mind more akin to chess than swordplay and gunfights, and much of the film develops via hushed conversations in darkened corridors and furtive rifling through filing cabinets. The film features an all star cast including Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong, Simon McBurney and Ciaran Hinds, and is directed by Swede Tomas Alfredsson, making his English-language debut following his spectacular success with the original Swedish version of Let The Right One In. Read more…
THE ARTIST – Ludovic Bource
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Each year, around this time, an unexpected art house film emerges as a critical darling with Academy Awards potential. It happened to Life is Beautiful in 1998, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in 2000, Brokeback Mountain in 2005, Juno in 2007, Slumdog Millionaire in 2008, Precious in 2009… the list goes on and on. In 2011, that film could be The Artist, director Michel Hazanavicius’s story about a silent movie matinee idol in 1920s Hollywood whose career is threatened by the advent of sound in motion pictures. The difference here, unlike those other films, is that The Artist is a silent film itself, shot in black and white and in such a way that the style and tone of the piece mirrors the very films in which Hazanavicius’s protagonist appears. The movie stars Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell, Missi Pyle and Penelope Ann Miller, and has already opened to great critical acclaim in the United States. Read more…
HUGO – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
REVIEW COMING SOON.
Read more…
THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: THE SECRET OF THE UNICORN – John Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I think you have to be Belgian, or at least a Francophone, to fully appreciate all the subtleties and nuances of Tintin. Created by the Belgian artist and author Georges Rémi under his pen name Hergé, the character first appeared in print in 1929 and went on to appear in 23 adventure novels spanning a 46-year period up until 1975, followed by the posthumous publication of a final story in 1986, three years after Hergé’s death. Not only that, the stories have been adapted for radio, theatre, and a popular 1960s animated television show with its famous voiceover proclaiming that you are watching “Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin!” Despite all that, and for reasons I have never fully understood I was never a fan of the franchise – unlike Hollywood giant Steven Spielberg, who is not a Francophone, but who is adapting the story for its first major big screen adventure using state of the art-motion capture technology. Read more…
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