Archive
PENNY DREADFUL – Abel Korzeniowski
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Penny Dreadful is a Gothic horror/drama series on the American Showtime network, set in Victorian London at the turn of the 19th century. Taking inspiration from the classic writings of Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde and others, as well as the “penny dreadful” magazines which told lurid tales of serial killers, highwaymen and cowboys, creator John Logan re-imagined these classic characters in a new setting, interacting with each other, and working together to defeat an ancient evil. The story follows Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett), a charming American gunslinger sojourning in the motherland, who is recruited by the mysterious Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) to help Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton), a famed African explorer, rescue his daughter Mina, who he believes has been kidnapped by a vampire-like creature. Needing help of a medical nature, Sir Malcolm also obtains the help of Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway), a brilliant young surgeon, who has a problem of his own: unknown to the others, Frankenstein has been conducting experiments involving death and resurrection, and one of his creations, the fearsome Caliban (Rory Kinnear), has come looking for his father… Read more…
RURONI KENSHIN: KYOTO INFERNO – Naoki Sato
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Rurôni Kenshin: Kyôto Taika-Hen (Rurôni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno) is the second film in the ongoing Rurôni Kenshin series of period action movies telling the story of the “romantic swordsman” Himura Kenshin, directed by Keishi Ohtomo, and starring Takeru Sato and Emi Takei. Following the events of the first movie, Kenshin has settled into a new life with his wife Kaoru and his other friends, when he is approached with a request from the Meiji government. Makoto Shishio, who like Kenshin is a former assassin, has been betrayed, set on fire and left for dead. Despite suffering grievous injuries, Makoto survived, and is now in Kyoto, plotting with his gathered warriors to overthrow the new government. Against Kaoru’s wishes, Kenshin reluctantly agrees to go to Kyoto and help keep his country from falling back into civil war. Read more…
LUCY – Éric Serra
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Lucy is a high-concept sci-fi action movie directed by Luc Besson and starring Scarlet Johansson in the eponymous role as a young woman who is tricked into being a mule for a Korean crime syndicate, carrying a highly valuable synthetic super-drug called CPH4 that can increase the user’s brain function capacity, and which has been sewn into a pouch in her abdomen. When the pouch begins to leak and the drug begins to enter Lucy’s bloodstream, she begins to manifest increasingly developed levels of consciousness and physical prowess: absorbing information instantaneously, telekinesis, mental time travel, and imperviousness to pain. So begins a race against time as Lucy tries to understand and control her new abilities, while simultaneously avoiding the drug lord’s private army, who have been charged with capturing Lucy and returning the drug to its intended recipient. The film also stars Morgan Freeman, Amr Waked and Choi-Min Sik, and has an original score by French composer Éric Serra. Read more…
WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE – Takatsugu Muramatsu
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When Marnie Was There (Omoide No Marnie) is a beautiful Japanese animated film, based on the popular children’s novel by Joan Robinson, directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi for Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli. It tells the story of a young girl named Anna, who is sent to live in the countryside for health reasons. There she meets an unlikely friend in the form of Marnie, a young girl with flowing blonde hair. As their friendship develops, a series of unusual development begin to suggest that Marnie has closer ties to the Anna than she originally expected. Read more…
DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the eighth film extrapolated from the ideas originally posited in Pierre Boulle’s 1963 French novel La Planète des Singes; after the five original films in the 1960 and 70s that began with the Charlton Heston classic, the 2001 Tim Burton movie everyone ignores, and the well-received first installment of the reboot series, Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011, we continue the story ten years after the conclusion of that film. Most of the world’s human population has been killed by the ALZ-113 virus, which was created in the first film as a possible cure for Alzheimer’s disease, but proved fatal to all humans except for a few random individuals with natural genetic immunity. Caesar, the chimpanzee who became super-intelligent during the first film, subsequently escaped into the woods near San Francisco with other apes he freed from captivity, and established a basic civilization there; like all non-humans, he is completely immune to the effects of ALZ-113. The plot concerns the conflict between Malcolm (Jason Clarke) and Dreyfus (Gary Oldman), the leaders of a group of survivors in what remains of San Francisco who must venture into ape territory to re-establish power at a hydroelectric dam, and Caesar (Andy Serkis) and Koba (Toby Kebbell), the leaders of the ape colony who face dangers both from the humans and from within their own community. Read more…
EARTH TO ECHO – Joseph Trapanese
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Essentially a remake of E.T. for the current youngest generation, Earth to Echo is a children’s sci-fi adventure directed by David Green and starring Teo Halm, Brian Bradley and Reese Hartwig as three young friends in suburban America. Two days before they are scheduled to separate – their neighborhood is being destroyed by a highway construction project – the boys begin receiving a strange series of signals on their cell phones. Convinced that something bigger is going on, they team up with another school friend, Emma, and set out to look for the source of their phone signals, filming their adventures on a hand-held video camera as they go. Much to their astonishment, the friends come face to face with a small alien who has become stranded on Earth, and quickly find themselves in a race against time to send their new friend home. Read more…
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
John Powell received his first – and, to date, only – Academy Award nomination for the surprise smash hit animated film from Dreamworks, How to Train Your Dragon, in 2010. The film was almost universally well-received, and grossed over $400 million worldwide, so a sequel was inevitable: so here we are, four years later, with How To Train Your Dragon 2. The film picks up five years after the events of the last film, and finds the heroic Viking dragon rider Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), his girlfriend Astrid (America Ferrara), and his dragon Toothless, happily exploring and mapping out new lands on behalf of his father Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler), the chieftain of Berk. However, on one of their expeditions, Hiccup and Astrid discover a terrible potential threat: an insane warrior named Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou) who has been capturing and enslaving dragons of his own for years, in order to help him conquer neighboring villages. Worst of all, Drago has a ‘bewilderbeast’, an alpha dragon which can control all other dragons it encounters – including Toothless… The film has an impressive voice cast, including Cate Blanchett, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill and Kit Harington from Game of Thrones, and – thankfully – sees John Powell returning to the scoring stage after his brief personal sabbatical last year. Read more…
LAIR – John Debney
GAME ZONE REVIEW
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Lair is a role-playing video game where the player assumes the role of a dragon-riding knight named Rohn Partridge. The player is given a variety of tasks to perform including; defending a certain realm, destroying certain objects, eliminating enemies or creatures, and other mission-based objectives. After each stage of the game, the player has an opportunity to earn gold, silver, or bronze medals, depending on their performance during the level. A rare platinum medal is also available, although unlike the other three medals its requirements are secret. Earning medals assists the player in unlocking combos and behind-the-scenes videos. lair takes place in a world threatened by numerous emerging volcanoes that are destroying the planet’s ecosystem. Two cultures contest; the Mokai, whose lands are arid and depleted of resources, and the Asylians, who live in one of the last remaining verdant areas. Desperate to survive, the Mokai attack and try to seize the granaries of the Asylians. The spiritual leader of the Asylians, called the Diviner, condemns the Mokai as pagans and savages. Thus war begins and the game revolves around the pursuits of Rohn Partridge, an Asylian Sky Guard. His allegiance wavers after the Diviner orders the assassination of the Mokai peace envoy Atta-kai, and he becomes a renegade when his attack on a Mokai ‘armory’ reveals instead a temple housing women and children. He thus assumes the mantle of a warrior for justice as he navigates the conflict and attempts to bring about a lasting peace. Read more…
MALEFICENT – James Newton Howard
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Walt Disney’s 1959 animated version of Charles Perrault’s classic 15th century fairy tale Sleeping Beauty is rightly considered a classic of children’s literature and cinema. In it, a beautiful princess is cursed by a wicked witch to prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a deep, death-like sleep, from which she can only be awakened by true love’s kiss. It’s a timeless tale, the basis of many fables, but in Disney’s new film Maleficent things turn on their head: it tells essentially the same story, but from the point of view from the “evil witch”. In this version, Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) is not truly evil, but instead a fairy from an enchanted world known as The Moors, who was betrayed and mutilated by her human lover. Vowing revenge on those who harmed her and her kind, Maleficent does indeed curse Aurora (Elle Fanning), the daughter of King Stefan (Sharlto Copley), but immediately regrets her actions; with the help of her minion Diaval (Sam Riley), Maleficent tries to protect Aurora throughout her childhood, while Stefan’s forces attempt to invade and destroy The Moors. The visually sumptuous film was directed by Robert Stromberg (the Oscar winning production designer of Avatar), and features a dazzling score by composer James Newton Howard. Read more…
A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST – Joel McNeely
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Seth MacFarlane is one of those people who you either seem to love or hate. Since the debut of his animated TV show Family Guy in 1999 he has polarized audiences, who seem to both love and loathe his crude humor, oddball characters and self-aware pop culture references in equal measure. I have always been firmly in the “love him” camp, having greatly enjoyed Family Guy, it’s spin-off The Cleveland Show, and his other project American Dad, as well as his big-screen debut project Ted, which I still think is one of the funniest comedies in years. His sophomore effort is, somewhat surprisingly, a western: A Million Ways to Die in the West, which stars MacFarlane himself as Albert Stark, a sheep farmer in old Arizona circa 1880, who hates everything about his life, especially the way in which the environment, the weather, and everyone and everything around him has the potential to kill him: hence the title of the film. After breaking up with his needy girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried), Albert thinks he has reached his lowest ebb – until the arrival of the beautiful and spunky Anna (Charlize Theron), to whom Albert takes an immediate shine. The only problem, however, is the fact that Anna is the estranged wife of Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson), the most dangerous bandit in the territory… and he wants his wife back. Read more…
MILLION DOLLAR ARM – A. R. Rahman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There aren’t many films about cricket, especially in the United States, where the sport is viewed as a foreign curiosity with impenetrable rules, archaic terminology and a sense of incredulity that it is the only contemporary competitive sport which builds breaks for meals into its schedule. This is despite the fact that much of the world is obsessed with the sport – especially in the Indian subcontinent – to the extent that legendary players are household celebrities. Disney’s film Million Dollar Arm isn’t likely to put the names Sachin Tendulkar or Muttiah Muralitharan on the lips of the average American, but it at least goes some way to trying to illustrate the importance of the game in Commonwealth countries. It stars Mad Men’s Jon Hamm as the real-life American baseball sports agent J.B. Bernstein, a man down on his luck, who comes up with a radical idea to revitalize his career: after accidentally catching a cricket match on TV while channel surfing late one night, he decides to organize a reality competition to find India’s first professional baseball pitcher. Along with cantankerous scout Ray Poitevint (Alan Arkin) and his business partner Ash Vasudevan (Aasif Mandvi), Bernstein travels to Delhi to search for talent, and is surprised when two young men (Life of Pi’s Suraj Sharma and Slumdog Millionaire’s Madhur Mittal) impress him with their skills. The film is directed by Craig Gillespie, based on Tom McCarthy’s screenplay, and has a score by A. R. Rahman. Read more…
X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST – John Ottman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
X-Men: Days of Future Past is the seventh film in Marvel’s “other” long-running super franchise, set in the world of mutants. The film begins in the future, long after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand and The Wolverine, in a world where civilization – both human and mutant – has been decimated almost to the point of extinction by massive machines known as Sentinels, which were initially created to combat ‘evil’ mutants, but eventually took it upon themselves to destroy all humanity. In a last, desperate attempt to literally save the world, the remaining mutants led by Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto (Ian McKellen) devise a complicated plan to send the consciousness of Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time to inhabit the body of his younger self in 1973; once there, he will locate the younger versions of Xavier and Magneto (James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender), and task them with helping him avert the individual event they believe triggered the creation of the Sentinels: the assassination of industrial scientist Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) by their fellow mutant Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence). The film is based on the extremely popular X-Men comic storyline by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, co-stars Halle Berry, Ellen Page, Nicholas Hoult, Evan Peters and Shawn Ashmore, and is directed by Bryan Singer, returning to the X-Men director’s chair for the first time since 2003. Read more…
GODZILLA – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
American film makers have been trying to do justice to Godzilla ever since he first appeared in director Ishiro Honda’s classic Japanese monster movie in 1954; although Godzilla is considered to be a significant icon of Japanese culture, Honda was himself inspired to create the King of the Monsters by watching Schoedsack and Cooper’s King Kong, and as such he has his roots in classic Hollywood. There have been 28 official Godzilla films released in Japan, the most recent coming in 2004, but only two American movies (three, if you count Cloverfield): the ill-fated Roland Emmerich directed disaster epic from 1998, which was scored by David Arnold, and this one, which is significantly superior to its predecessor, but still fails to capture the character’s essence according to the purists. Read more…
THE BLUE MAX – Jerry Goldsmith
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Director John Guillermin was inspired by the Jack Hunter novel “The Blue Max” and so adapted it for film. He assembled a stellar cast, which included George Peppard as Bruno Stachel, James Mason as General Count von Klugermann, Ursula Andress as Countess Kaeti von Klugermann and Jeremy Kemp as Willi von Klugermann. Set in the waning year of World War I on the Western front, it tells the story of a young man’s rise to glory and his tragic end. Stachel, is a classic anti-hero, a member of the lower cast who is driven by blind ambition. As such he leaves the Wehrmacht to join the Luftwaffe in search of personal glory – Germany’s most prestigious medal, Pour le Mérite, or the Blue Max. The prized medal is bestowed upon pilots for meritorious service and requires 20 dog fight kills. Driven with a grim, and relentless determination Stachel will allow nothing to stand in his way. His raw and unchivalrous demeanor offends his fellow pilots who hail from the German aristocracy and disdain this commoner among their ranks. Stachel’s rise is noticed by General von Klugermann, who seeks to exploit him as a national symbol in an effort to rally a weary public tiring of war. A tryst with the General’s wife only adds to Stachel’s ego and notoriety. While he ultimately succeeds in gaining the coveted prize, he does so by defiantly disobeying orders to defend ground troops. Von Klugermann does not wish to disgrace his ‘hero’ with a court marshal and so selects him to fly a proto-type mono-wing plane whose support struts he knows will not hold up. When Stachel dies in a crash von Klugermann’s dilemma is solved, he gains his “man of the people” hero and his air corps is not disgraced by scandal. The film was both a critical and commercial success. Read more…
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
As the second movie in Sony’s “reboot” of the Spider-Man franchise, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 sees Andrew Garfield returning as the teenage web-slinging super hero Peter Parker, still attending high school by day, while battling super-villains at night. The plot this time round sees young Peter in a healthy relationship with the lovely Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) as they prepare to graduate from Midtown Science, although he is haunted by the promise he made to Gwen’s late father to keep her safe, as well as the memory of the death of his parents several years earlier, and the mystery surrounding their work and legacy. Peter’s world is shattered further, however, with the emergence of a new threat: Electro (Jamie Foxx), a mild-mannered engineer working for the multinational conglomerate Oscorp, who develops the capacity to manipulate and control electricity – and a deep hatred of Spider-Man – following an industrial accident. Not only that, but Peter’s childhood friend Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) returns to the city following the death of his father Norman Osborn (Chris Cooper), the head of Oscorp, only to discover that the illness that killed his father is hereditary, and that the only cure may be inside Spider-Man’s blood. The film is again directed by the appropriately-named Marc Webb, and has an original score by Hans Zimmer, replacing the first film’s composer James Horner. Read more…
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