Archive
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…
BEN-HUR – Miklós Rózsa
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
This 1959 film version of General Lew Wallace’s best-selling novel achieved Oscar legend as it went on to win 11 Academy Awards including Best Score for Miklós Rózsa. The film tells the tale of Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur, played in exemplary fashion by Charlton Heston, who lives in Judea with his family during the time of Jesus Christ circa 33 C.E. Judah’s childhood Roman friend Messala returns to Judea as an ambitious Tribune intent on achieving fame and his destiny at any cost. When Judah refuses to provide Messala with the names of local Jewish dissidents, an offended Messala contrives a pretext to exact a terrible revenge. Messala orders the arrest of Judah and his family on patently false charges. Judah is then condemned to certain death on the Roman galleys, while his mother and sister are given life imprisonment.
Doomed to die chained to a galley oar, Judah’s hatred and the desire for vengeance fuels his will to live. Soon the hand of fate intervenes and he gains his freedom. Empowered with the help of a Roman General and a wealthy Arab sponsor he returns to Judea and challenges Messala to a chariot race. In an epic struggle Judah emerges triumphant while Messala lays defeated on the track, his body mangled irreparably by horses that trampled him. Meeting for a last time as surgeons wait to amputate Messala’s legs, Judah realizes the hollowness of his victory, of how unquenching it is to drink from the cup of revenge. He leaves Messala to death and rescues his family from a leper colony. Later he sees them cured as the pounding rains born of the crucifixion storm cleanses the sores from their bodies. Read more…
THE SOCIAL NETWORK – Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A film about Facebook, the online phenomenon of the 21st century, doesn’t sound especially interesting when you first think about it, but the history of its creation is actually quite fascinating. Mark Zuckerberg was a 20-year-old student at Harvard University when he and his roommate Dustin Moskovitz launched the first incarnation of Facebook into the world in 2004; despite various lawsuits, development problems, and other issues, Facebook eventually became the dominant social networking website with 500 million users worldwide, and eventually making Zuckerberg the world’s youngest multi-billionaire, worth $6.9 billion according to the Forbes 2010 Rich List. The film is directed by David Fincher from a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, and stars Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake and Rooney Mara. Read more…
UP – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When we look back on his career, 2009 could well be seen as a watershed year for Michael Giacchino in terms of public awareness and his place in the film music hierarchy. Film music fans have known about Giacchino for a long time, of course, initially through his work on the Medal of Honor video game series and the TV shows Lost and Alias. This year alone he has already scored the rebooted Star Trek movie and a new big screen version of Land of the Lost. However, it is his new status as one of Pixar’s go-to guys (alongside Randy and Thomas Newman) that may cement his reputation. The Incredibles was a critical and commercial success, Ratatouille earned Giacchino his first Academy Award nomination, and now he has Up, which many writers have acclaimed as the best Pixar movie to date. Read more…
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE – A. R. Rahman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Bollywood music has never really crossed over into the film music mainstream, despite being an enormous industry on the Indian sub-continent; the closest Bollywood has to a composer superstar is A.R. Rahman, so it perhaps stands to reason that he should really be the first one to make any kind of impact on the Hollywood mainstream. Rahman has worked in the Indian film industry since the early 1990s, and has since gone on to score over 100 films, some of which – Taal from 1999, Lagaan from 2001, Rang De Basanti from 2006, and Jodhaa Akbar from earlier this year – have enjoyed a modicum of international success. He has even dabbled in the Hollywood world before, working with Mychael Danna on Water in 2006 and with Craig Armstrong on Elizabeth: The Golden Age in 2007. In his homeland, however, Rahman is revered: he has personally sold 100 million records of his film scores and soundtracks worldwide, and sold over 200 million solo albums, officially making him one of the world’s all-time top selling recording artists. No wonder he is often called the “John Williams of Bollywood” and the “Mozart of Madras”. It’s just surprising that it has taken this long for the West to recognize him. Read more…
DANCES WITH WOLVES – John Barry
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
By the mid-1980s the cinematic western was almost dead, a relic of an older, less sophisticated Hollywood, which had long since left behind icons such as John Wayne and Gary Cooper. Thankfully, nobody told Kevin Costner. In 1989 Costner was one of Hollywood’s upcoming leading men, having starred in successful and popular movies such as Silverado, Bull Durham, No Way Out and Field of Dreams. When it was announced that he would direct, produce and star in a big screen version of Michael Blake’s novel Dances With Wolves, at first the news was treated with incredulity; later, with stories of spiraling costs and unconventional on-set activities, the film was expected to be a vanity project at best, a laughing stock at worst. No-one expected the film to be one of the best westerns ever made, but that is ultimately what happened. Read more…
ATONEMENT – Dario Marianelli
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A romantic drama based on the acclaimed 2001 novel by Ian McEwan, Joe Wright’s film Atonement is a period drama about lies, regret, and redemption. Keira Knightly and James McAvoy star as Cecilia and Robbie, two young lovers in 1930s England whose blossoming relationship is halted by the intervention of Cecilia’s 13-year-old sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan), who accuses Robbie of a heinous crime – but is he guilty, or simply the victim of a young girl’s fantasy? As a result their two lives diverge: Robbie becomes a soldier, fighting on the beaches of Dunkirk in World War 2, while Cecilia becomes a nurse caring for the sick and injured returning from the trenches. Briony, meanwhile, grows up to become a successful novelist – but is continually haunted by the consequences of her childhood actions. Read more…
BABEL – Gustavo Santaolalla
Original Review by Clark Douglas
So this is what it feels like on the other side. Last year, I wrote an very positive review of Paul Haggis’ “Crash”. In fact, I went so far as to call it the year’s best film. I spent a good portion of time arguing with others who said the film was cheap, overdramatic, and contrived. Now, here is “Babel”, which is receiving reviews eerily similar to those “Crash” received, and they’re just as divided… some critics call it a complex and thought-provoking masterpiece, others call it hokey rubbish. This time around, I absolutely agree with the dissenters, for some of their reasons, and for some of my own. “Babel” was directed by the talented Alejandro González Iñárritu, who also made the acclaimed “21 Grams” and “Amores Perros”. Both of those films were contrived, but convincing. Not so here. Read more…
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN – Gustavo Santaolalla
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When I first read the plot summary of Brokeback Mountain, I half-wondered whether it was a joke at the expense of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, specifically the episode of South Park where Cartman attends the Sundance film festival and loudly complains that “every fucking independent movie is about gay cowboys in Wyoming!” This is because Brokeback Mountain is, in fact, a movie about gay cowboys in Wyoming. It also happens to he a very, very good one, and is fully deserving of all the critical praise it has been receiving. Adapted from Annie Proulx’s short story by Lonesome Dove writer Larry McMurtry, and directed with sensitivity by Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, two young men – a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy – who meet in the summer of 1963 while working on a sheep farm in rural Wyoming, and unexpectedly embark on a brief, but passionate, homosexual encounter with each other. Read more…
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
And so, five years after his journey began, Howard Shore’s travels through the musical word of Middle Earth and the spectacular Lord of Rings trilogy comes to an end with The Return of the King, the final installment of Peter Jackson’s groundbreaking adaptation of the classic fantasy novel by J.R.R. Tolkein. To say that Shore has come a long way is understatement indeed. Before Lord of the Rings, Howard Shore was “the David Cronenberg guy” who specialized in dark, tortured scores for dark tortured movies. Now, he is the undisputed king of the epic adventure, with the potential to become the benchmark by which all future sword-and-sorcery scores are measured. Before Lord of the Rings, Howard Shore was a well-respected, but largely unheralded member of the film music world. Now, he is a household name, with an Oscar on his mantle, who sells out concert halls worldwide. It’s been one massive ride for the quiet, unassuming Canadian – and with the strength of this final score, his stock can only rise. Read more…
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
To say that Peter Jackson took on a mammoth task in undertaking a 9-hour, three-film cinematic version of The Lord of the Rings is an understatement indeed. Adapting J.R.R. Tolkien’s mammoth literary work for the screen took three years of the affable New Zealander’s life, and as the first part of the trilogy hits the world’s multiplexes, his vision and talent are for all to see. The Fellowship of the Ring is quite possibly the best fantasy film ever made, putting to shame Ralph Bakshi’s lamentable 1978 attempt to tell the same story through animation. Read more…
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON – Tan Dun
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
After spending much of its history consigned to art-houses, lauded by critics but unseen by the masses, Chinese cinema is suddenly big business. The emigration west of some of its biggest names, notably action stars such as Jackie Chan and Chow Yun Fat, has undoubtedly paved the way for Chinese-language movies to reach a wider audience, and now the first true crossover hit seems to have come: Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Director Lee has, of course, been making critically popular films in English for a number of years, from the Oscar winning costume drama Sense & Sensibility to the drama The Ice Storm and the civil war epic Ride With The Devil. Throughout his career, though, Lee has harbored a desire to make a wuxia pian, a Chinese costume drama combining traditional drama with martial arts. Lee has described Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon as “Jane Austen meets Bruce Lee”. Read more…
THE RED VIOLIN – John Corigliano
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It is very rare for a soundtrack to be embraced wholeheartedly and celebrated loudly by aficionados of both classical music and film music, but this is what has happened to John Corigliano’s The Red Violin. Despite being arguably one of the most brilliant and talented American composers of his generation, this is only John Corigliano’s third film score – his others being the wildly impressionistic, abstract, Oscar-nominated Altered States (1980) and the largely unknown Revolution (1985). Instead, Corigliano became an established member of the New York musical circle, writing original pieces, ballets, operas and suchlike, and it has taken fourteen years to tempt Corigliano back to the podium. It has been worth the wait for, as well as his own musical genius, he has brought with him some of the best and brightest talents of the classical world, including the brilliant Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the incredibly talented virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell. Read more…
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