Archive
DIVERGENT – Tom Holkenborg
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Divergent is the latest “young adult” fantasy-action novel to be translated to the big screen, hoping to follow in the financially successful footsteps of The Hunger Games, and avoid the relative disaster that befell The Mortal Instruments. Directed by Neil Burger from the novel by Veronica Roth, it stars Shailene Woodley Tris, a young girl born into a post-apocalyptic society that defines and controls its citizens by their social and personality-related affiliation with five different factions representing selflessness, peacefulness, honesty, bravery and intelligence. When she comes of age, Tris discovers that she is a ‘divergent’ whose personality does not fit in with any one of the pre-determined factions, and is therefore a threat to the established order. Hiding her secret, Tris chooses to join the Dauntless faction associated with bravery, which is charged with the security of the city, but while she undergoes her training and initiation, Tris discovers a troubling plot which threatens to destabilize the world. The film co-stars Theo James, Ashley Judd, Jai Courtney, Ray Stevenson, Zoë Kravitz and Kate Winslet, and has a score by Dutch composer Tom Holkenborg, aka Junkie XL. Read more…
NOAH – Clint Mansell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The story of Noah, in terms of the Christian bible, is a fairly simple one: having become displeased with the corruption and cruelty of mankind, God makes the decision to essentially ‘wipe the slate clean’ and destroy humanity by way of a great flood. In order to preserve some semblance of life, God tasks Noah with building an enormous wooden ark into which he can fit a male and female specimen of every animal and bird on the planet – every creeping thing that creeps – so that life may begin again once the flood subsides. According to the story, which originally appears in the book of Genesis, it rains for forty days and forty nights, all of the evil of the world of washed away, and humanity began again anew. Darren Aronofsky’s visually staggering, theologically progressive film builds on the original biblical story and adds more action and fantasy elements, including a vicious antagonist who rebels against God and wants to take the ark for himself, and featuring a race of beings known as The Watchers, fallen angels cursed to be bound in a stony prison. Russell Crowe headlines the cast as Noah himself, with support from Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone and Emma Watson. Read more…
THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The latest film from the polarizing hipster director Wes Anderson is The Grand Budapest Hotel, a slightly farcical comedy-drama set 100 years ago in the fictional country of Zubrowka – a place Anderson describes as “part Czech, part Hungarian, part Polish, part Russian, part German, and a little bit 1930’s movie-studio in Culver City”. Ralph Fiennes stars as Gustave H, a legendary concierge at the famous European hotel of the title, and Tony Revolori as Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. Following the death of a wealthy elderly female guest Gustave and Zero become embroiled in a plot concerning the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for an enormous family fortune. The film features an enormous supporting cast drawn from Anderson’s ever-increasing roster of repertory players – F. Murray Abraham, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Jude Law, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, and Owen Wilson among them – and has an original score by composer Alexandre Desplat, working with Anderson for the third time.
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CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER – Henry Jackman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Once upon a time there was a director who, along with some friends – a writer, a cameraman, some actors – made a movie. It doesn’t matter what the movie was about. It could have been about aliens, or cowboys and indians, or a young couple suffering through a rocky relationship, or a bank robbery gone wrong. Whatever it was about, the director wanted to make the best movie he could make, and for the audience who saw that movie to care about the characters, and to empathize with the emotions they felt. At some point, he approached a composer, in order to give that film a musical voice. The composer – who was well-versed in musical theory and composition – was as much of a storyteller as the director was, and wanted to enhance the film with his music; to bring out subtle emotions so the audience could feel them, to highlight subtexts that acting alone could not convey, to make it a better film than it would be without the music being there. Read more…
DEMETRIUS AND THE GLADIATORS – Franz Waxman
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Demetrius and the Gladiators was the sequel to the first CinemaScope picture, “The Robe”. Twentieth Century Fox chief, Darryl F. Zanuck, decided that there was money to be made with the new revolutionary format and so production was already under way as “The Robe” premiered. Of the original cast, Victor Mature (Demetrius), Michael Rennie (Peter), and Jay Robinson (Caligula) returned to reprise their roles and were joined by newcomers Susan Hayward (Messalina) and Debra Paget (Lucia). The story unfolds as a classic tale of faith and personal redemption. Demetrius, the guardian of the Robe of Christ loses his faith when his love Lucia, is ravaged by Roman gladiators and apparently dies. When his fervent prayers fail to revive her he becomes bitter and angry with God. Demetrius abandons his faith and embarks upon a life of violence, indulgence and lust. But when he later discovers that Lucia had not died due to the grace of God he regains his faith and lives to see the day of the emperor Caligula’s death, when the long suffering Praetorian Guard at last turns on him. This sequel outperformed The Robe and was both a commercial and critical success. Read more…
GRAND PIANO – Víctor Reyes
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Grand Piano is an ingenious thriller directed by Eugenio Mira, starring Elijah Wood as Tom Selznick, a brilliant but reclusive concert pianist whose career was shattered by terrible stage fright. After finally agreeing to return to the concert hall for the first time in years, Selznick begins to play a brand new piano concerto, but discovers a terrifying note on the sheet music: there is a sniper with his gun trained on him, and if he stops playing, or if he plays a wrong note, he will be killed. The film, which also stars John Cusack, has an astonishing original score by composer Víctor Reyes, who wrote a brand new piano concerto for the film, which pulls double duty both as the piece performed on-screen, AND acts as the film’s score – the ultimate diegetic cinematic experience. Read more…
THE LEGO MOVIE – Mark Mothersbaugh
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Possibly the most unexpected box office smash of the last several years, The Lego Movie took cinemas by storm in the early months of 2014 with its combination of wild and wacky animation, knowingly self-referential pseudo-adult comedy, and some unexpected pathos towards the end which touches on themes of individuality and self-expression. The film is set in a fictionalized Lego universe, and follows the adventures of Emmett, an ordinary Lego mini figure who is mistakenly thought to be the extraordinary Master Builder, and is recruited by the sassy and spunky Wyldestyle and the blind wizard Vitrivius to help them in their quest to stop the evil tyrant Lord Business from destroying the universe. The film is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller – the directors of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs – and features an astonishing voice cast that includes Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Will Arnett, Elizabeth Banks, Channing Tatum, and even Anthony Daniels and Billy Dee Williams as Lego versions of C-3PO and Lando Calrissian from Star Wars. It’s an anarchic, chaotic mess of a movie that works as pure entertainment in spite of itself by throwing as many rapid fire verbal jokes and visual gags at you as it possibly can, in the hope that if at least half of them stick they’ll have a decent ratio of laughs to groans. Read more…
POMPEII – Clinton Shorter
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Roman city of Pompeii, near Naples in what is now Italy, was almost entirely destroyed in the year 79 AD following the volcanic eruption of the nearby Mount Vesuvius. The city was drowned in up to 20 feet of rock and ash, which killed a large portion of its 20,000 inhabitants, but also preserved many of the objects it buried, leaving an archeological treasure trove which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The movie Pompeii is a fictionalized re-telling of the story of the city’s destruction, told through the eyes of a slave named Milo, a Celtic tribesman who was captured in ancient Britain as a child and brought back to Rome to train as a gladiator. When Milo begins to catch the eye of Cassia, the daughter of a Roman senator, their forbidden love affair begins to cause ripples in the hierarchical circles in which Cassia moves, but before long they begin to have even more pressing problems when Mount Vesuvius begins to show signs of life… The movie stars Kit Harington from Game of Thrones, Carrie-Anne Moss, Emily Browning, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Kiefer Sutherland, and is directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. Read more…
KANO – Naoki Sato
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Kano is a Taiwanese sports drama movie, about the Kano baseball team from southern Taiwan, which comprised of Japanese, Taiwanese and aboriginal players, and overcame extreme odds to represent the island in the 1931 Japanese High School Baseball Championship, at a time when Taiwan was still under Japanese rule. It’s an important and famous story in Taiwanese sporting culture – a classic example of an overachieving underdog – with a similar sense of ‘triumph over adversity’ to American films like Rudy, The Natural or Miracle. The film is directed by Umin Boya, and has a score by the popular and acclaimed Japanese composer Naoki Sato. Read more…
HER – William 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…
A PASSAGE TO INDIA – Maurice Jarre
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
A Passage to India is a novel by English author E. M. Forster, which unfolds against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. David Lean became enamored after watching the stage presentation of the story and immediately sought and obtained the movie rights. He adapted the screenplay himself and secured a stellar cast, which included; Judy Davis (Adela), Alec Guiness (Godbole), James Fox (Fielding), Peggy Ashcroft (Mrs. Moore) and Victor Bannerjee (Dr. Aziz). The story revolves a fateful trip to the Marabar Caves where a recently engaged Adela finds herself captivated and aroused by the beauty and sensuality of Indian culture. One day on a day trek and while alone with Dr. Aziz in one of the caves, she experiences conflicting emotions towards Dr. Aziz, panics and flees. It is assumed that Dr. Aziz had attempted to assault her and he is brought up to trial for charges of rape. The trial serves as both a commentary and a volatile catalyst that unleashes the pent up racial tensions long simmering between the indigenous Indians and the British colonialists who rule India. When Adela finally relents and withdraws her charges, Aziz is set free, but friendships are ruptured and Aziz seems irreparably harmed. Years later Aziz and his dear friend James reconcile, which brings the sad tale to a pleasing closure. The film was both a critical and commercial success, earning eleven Academy Award nominations, which included a Best Score Oscar for Maurice Jarre. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2013, Part 5
SUNFLOWER – Henry Mancini
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Renowned producer Carlo Ponti and acclaimed actor-director Vittorio de Sica hired screenwriter Cesare Zavattini to create, in the finest traditions of Italian cinema, a tragic love story. For this grand effort they recruited the two iconic Italian actors of the day to play the principles; Sophia Loren (Giovanna) and Marcello Mastroianni (Antonio). After many incarnations and disputes between Ponti and De Sica, a final screenplay was finally achieved. It reveals the story of two lovers caught up and swept away by the unforeseeable and irresistible currents of history. Sunflower, known in its original Italian as I Girasoli, is set in a small town in the southern Calabria region of Italy in the waning months of World War II. Read more…
ROBOCOP – Pedro Bromfman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One thing I really love to see is when a young, new composer gets his first chance at the big time, scoring a major movie with huge box-office potential. Brazilian composer Pedro Bromfman is the composer getting that chance in the early months of 2014, having been hired to score the big-budget reboot of one of the great classic 1980s action movies, Robocop. 38-year old Bromfman is best known internationally for his scores for the popular Brazilian action movies in the Tropa de Elite series, which were directed by his old friend José Padilha; when Padilha was hired to helm the new Robocop, he brought Bromfman with him, and – shockingly – the executives at Sony Pictures gave the green light to allow this absolutely unknown composer to score their $130 million investment. This is the stuff that dreams are made of, where careers are launched and great new talents emerge – except, that in this case, the dream turns into a nightmare once you actually hear the music. Read more…
QUA TIM MÁU/VENGEFUL HEART – Christopher Wong, Garrett Crosby
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Vengeful Heart is a Vietnamese supernatural thriller directed by Victor Vu, starring Phuong Nha, Hoang Bach, and Thai Hoa, one of Vietnam’s most popular and successful comedians. It tells the story of Linh, a young woman who, after almost being killed in a car accident, survives after receiving a heart transplant. During her recovery Linh begins to have nightmares and hallucinations about a mysterious house in a forest. Tortured by her dreams, Linh eventually finds the house, which she finds inhabited by a very unusual Addams-esque family; worse still, it starts to become apparent that the recently deceased daughter of the family is Linh’s heart donor, and the family is becoming more and more attached to Linh. The film was massively successful in its home country, taking in more than 90 billion đồng, making it the all-time highest grossing domestic film in Vietnamese box office history. Read more…
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