Archive
LAS BRUJAS DE ZUGARRAMURDI/WITCHING & BITCHING – Joan Valent
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi – known in English as “Witching and Bitching” – is a bawdy horror-comedy directed by Álex de la Iglesia about two bumbling bank robbers (Mario Casas and Hugo Silva) who, after their latest botched crime, find themselves fleeing from both the police and their respective wives in the woods near the town of Zugarramurdi in northern Spain. However, unknown to the robbers, Zugarramurdi was the setting of the infamous Basque witch trials in the seventeenth century, and the sexy but cannibalistic descendants of those original witches still reside in the nearby “cuevas de las brujas”, hungry for human flesh… Read more…
CLOSED CIRCUIT – Joby Talbot
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Closed Circuit is a British political thriller about domestic terrorism. Directed by John Crowley and written by Steven Knight, the film stars Eric Bana as Martin Rose, a lawyer who, after his predecessor is found dead, is hired to defend Farroukh Erdogan, a Turkish native accused of masterminding a successful terrorism attack on a busy London market several months previously. Due to the sensitive nature of the case, and peculiarities in British judicial law, a second lawyer is also hired to defend Erdogan, but unlike Martin, she is allowed to have access to classified and potentially damaging secret evidence that can only be aired in a closed court. The problem is that the second lawyer is Claudia Simmons-Howe (Rebecca Lowe), Martin’s secret former lover. However, as Martin and Claudia build their respective cases, evidence comes to light of a much bigger and more wide-spread case of corruption and underhandedness which could spread all the way into MI5, Britain’s secret service agency. The film features a plethora of heavyweight British character actors in supporting roles, including Jim Broadbent and Ciarán Hinds, as well as Julia Stiles in an extended cameo as an American journalist. Read more…
JIMMY P. – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Jimmy P., Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian, is a French drama directed by Arnaud Desplechin. Based on the autobiography by Georges Devereux, an early French psychotherapist, it stars Mathieu Almaric as a doctor who specializes in ethnology and psychoanalysis, who is asked to treat Jimmy Picard (Benicio Del Toro), a Blackfoot Indian who has returned from World War II with debilitating symptoms that seem to indicate post-traumatic stress and possible schizophrenia. Although the movie sounds very talky and intellectual, the movie actually deals with very human emotions, as well as the development of ethnographic psychoanalysis as a legitimate field, and was critically lauded at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Read more…
COLETTE – Atli Örvarsson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Colette is a Czech film, directed by Milan Cieslar and based on the celebrated, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “A Girl from Antwerp” by Arnost Lustig. The film reveals the author’s personal experiences in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, his own recollections of several escape attempts from the hell that was Auschwitz, but most unexpectedly the romantic attraction and love he developed for a female fellow inmate. The film stars Jirí Mádl and Clémence Thioly, and opened in theaters in Europe in September 2013 to general acclaim.
It’s always interesting to me how different certain composers sound when they write music independently, away from the oversight of the Remote Control organization. Icelandic composer Atli Örvarsson, who has worked with Hans Zimmer for years, wrote the score for Colette, and it’s a beauty. Read more…
JOBS – John Debney, Josh Debney
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Steve Jobs, who died of cancer in 2011 at the age of 56, has been called by some the greatest American inventor since Thomas Edison. As the head of the Apple corporation, Jobs and his team of genius engineers gave the world not only the Apple Macintosh computer, which helped kick start the personal computer, but by the early 2000s has begun the personal entertainment revolution through his series of “I” devices, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, as well as the various retail outlets designed to facilitate the peripheral software and hardware for use on his devices. It’s safe to say that over the last decade or so Jobs and Apple – alongside the likes of Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin – literally changed the way the entire world connects with each other and stores its information; it will be interesting to see how future generations view their contribution to humanity, and whether they are seen as equals with other such communication pioneers as Johannes Gutenberg, William Caxton, Guglielmo Marconi, John Logie Baird and Alexander Graham Bell. Read more…
RUSH – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’ve been a fan of Formula One motor racing for over twenty years; my grandfather, who was also a big fan, introduced me to it in the late 1980s, and since then I’ve followed every season, cheering on a succession of great British drivers – Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Jenson Button – and getting caught up in the intrigue, drama, excitement, adrenaline and masterful engineering each new season brings. It takes a certain kind of personality to hurtle down a straight towards a blind hairpin bend at 200mph with a machine as powerful as an F1 car under your right foot – the very next corner could, literally, be their last – and so the drivers who do this for a living tend to be larger-than-life themselves, prone to a certain sense of eccentricity and egotism. When I first started watching the sport, the biggest rivalry was between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, but a decade previously the two dominant personalities were the flamboyant and brilliant Englishman James Hunt, and the equally mercurial but slightly taciturn Austrian Niki Lauda. Read more…
ISABEL – Federico Jusid
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Isabel is an epic Spanish-language TV series broadcast on the Televisión Española network about the life of Queen Isabella I of Castille. One of the most beloved and revered figures of Spanish history, in the 1450s she was instrumental in unifying various warring kingdoms under one crown – essentially creating the modern country of Spain – and funded the voyages of Christopher Columbus, leading to the discovery of the New World and the foundation of America. The show, which has just completed its second season, stars Michelle Jenner as Isabel, co-stars Ramon Madaula, Rodolfo Sancho and Ainhoa Santamaria, and boasts an astonishing score by the young Argentine composer Federico Jusid. Read more…
STAR TREK: INSURRECTION – Jerry Goldsmith
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
The Next Generation crew returned for their third film with the addition of villain J. Murray Abraham (Ru’afo) and Picard’s love interest Donna Murphy (Anij). This 9th installment of the franchise offers in the finest Star Trek tradition another classic morality play. The story explores Machiavellianism, which espouses that “Might Makes Right” and that evil means may be used to achieve a “Greater Good”. The story is set on the planet Ba’ku, which is located in isolation in Sector 441. Ba’ku’s planetary rings emit a unique metaphasic radiation, which are both regenerative to health and life prolonging. We see a Federation team collaborating with the So’na, later to be revealed as disaffected Ba’ku ex-patriots, covertly seeking to remove the Ba’ku so that they may harvest the planet’s ring matter for ‘the betterment of all’. When Data malfunctions and exposes the sordid plan to the Ba’ku a crisis is precipitated. Picard and his crew choose to violate the direct orders of the mission commander Admiral Dougherty and defend the Ba’ku, believing that his mission violates the Prime Directive. This elicits war with the So’na who begin the forced removal of the Ba’ku and the harvesting of the planet’s rings. Our heroes succeed in defeating Ru’afo and in reuniting the Ba’ku with their estranged children, the So’na. The film was a commercial success, doubling its production costs and achieved some critical acclaim with both Hugo and Saturn Award nominations. Read more…
THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES – Atli Örvarsson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Mortal Instruments is a series of “young adult” fantasy novels written by Cassandra Clare, following the adventures of teenager Clary Fray. After her mother mysteriously disappears, Clary discovers that she is part of a line of Shadowhunters, a secret force of young half-angel warriors locked in an ancient battle to protect our world from demons. Teaming up with a larger group of shadow hunters, all of whom are invisible to regular humans (“mundanes”), Clary heads into a dangerous alternate version of New York called Downworld, where she and her cohorts attempt to rescue her mother, and stop the demons from spilling over into the real world. Read more…
PASSION – Pino Donaggio
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The career of Brian De Palma confounds me. From his early-career highs crafting masterpiece movies such as Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow-Out and Scarface, in recent years his output has consisted mainly of a series of tawdry sex thrillers that either bomb at the box office, or go straight to video – The Black Dahlia, Femme Fatale, Redacted, and so on. His technical mastery remains unmatched however, as his latest film, Passion, attests. It’s a tawdry sexy thriller (of course), a remake of the 2010 French language film Crime d’Amour, and stars Noomi Rapace as Isabelle, an ambitious up-and-coming executive at an international company, who constantly suffers a series of professional and personal humiliations at the hands of her boss, Christine, played by Rachel McAdams. The tables begin to turn when Isabelle – who is secretly sleeping with Christine’s boyfriend Dirk (Paul Anderson) – hatches a plot to finally seek revenge on the manipulative Christine, one of the key parts of which is to seduce Christine herself… Read more…
CZAS HONORU/TIME OF HONOR – Bartosz Chajdecki
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most celebrated and popular Polish television series of all time, Czas Honoru (A Time of Honor) tells the story of a group of friends, their lives and loves, as they struggle to survive in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. Starring Maciej Zakoscielny, Jakub Wesolowski and Jan Wieczorkowski, the show has been a smash hit in its native country since it first began airing on the TVP network in 2008; now in its sixth season, it continues to attract large domestic audiences, has made stars of its lead actors, and helped launch the career of its composer, Bartosz Chajdecki. Read more…
JEUNE ET JOLIE/YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL – Philippe Rombi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The latest film from French director François Ozon, Jeune et Jolie (Young & Beautiful) is a powerful drama about a young girl discovering her sexuality. Marine Vacth plays Isabelle, a teenage girl on summer holidays with her family in the in the south of France. After a brief sexual encounter with a tourist leaves her cold, Isabelle decides she needs more experience – and soon starts working as a prostitute named ‘Lea’, meeting all kinds of clients and seeing her world of sexuality opening before her. The film co-stars Ozon’s regular muse Charlotte Rampling, as well as Géraldine Pailhas and Frédéric Pierrot, and has an original score by Ozon’s regular collaborator Philippe Rombi. Read more…
ELYSIUM – Ryan Amon
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Elysium is the sophomore theatrical film from South African director Neill Blomkamp, who made such a splash and received such critical acclaim following his debut effort, District 9, in 2009. The film is set in a post-apocalyptic future where 99% of the world’s population lives in overcrowded slums on the planet’s surface, eking out a meager existence as best they can despite desperate poverty and a lack of adequate healthcare. Meanwhile, the wealthiest 1% live in an orbiting space station, named Elysium, in lavish comfort, with access to the best of everything that money can buy. Matt Damon plays Max, an ex-con working in a factory, dreaming of a better life, but whose dreams are shattered when he is involved in an industrial accident and exposed to massive amounts of radiation, giving him just days to live. Desperate to find a way out of his dilemma, Max decides that his only possible salvation is to somehow make his way off the planet and up to Elysium, where their state-of-the-art medical facilities will easily cure his problems. However, when news of Max’s plan of action starts to spread around future Los Angeles, it causes stirrings of civil unrest and rebellion in the population, attracting the attention of Elysium’s harsh governess Delacourt (Jodie Foster), who will stop at nothing to enforce Elysium’s draconian anti-immigration laws which ensure that her utopian paradise remains isolated and protected from the masses below. To this end, Delacourt activates a sleeper assassin, Kruger (Sharlto Copley) to deal with the troublemakers – and Max is the first one in his sights. Read more…
MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS – Richard Rodney Bennett
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Producer Richard Goodwin secured film rights for Murder on the Orient Express from author Agatha Cristie, determined to create a “glamorous star-studded film that was gay in spirit… a soufflé.” He recruited some of the finest stars of the day, which included Albert Finney (Hercule Poirot), Lauren Bacall (Mrs. Hubbard), Ingrid Bergman (Greta), Sir John Gielgud (Beddoes), Sean Connery (Col. Arbuthnot) and Venessa Redgrave as Mary Debenham. The famous Orient Express was a train that ran from Istanbul to Calais and provided transit from Europe to the Middle East. Set in 1935, the story finds renowned and fastidious Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, as a late addition passenger who needs to get back to London immediately. As fate would have it a fellow passenger is found murdered in his stateroom. As Poirot questions the train’s valet, the victim’s accompanying staff, and the first class passengers he finds that many have both opportunity and motive. He soon realizes that several passengers have a connection to the Armstrong family kidnapping and thus he begins to solve a very complex crime. The film had sensational success commercially and received critical acclaim. Richard Rodney Bennett’s score was nominated for both Academy and BAFTA awards, and secured the BAFTA Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music award. Read more…
WHITE HOUSE DOWN – Thomas Wander, Harald Kloser
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Honestly, you wait around forever for a movie about terrorists blowing up the White House, and then two come along at once. Hot on the heels of Olympus Has Fallen is the second of 2013’s big screen demolitions in DC, White House Down, directed by the master of worldwide destruction, Roland Emmerich. Actually, White House Down was the first of the two films in pre-production, but Olympus Has Fallen was rushed out first, stealing some of this film’s thunder and potentially some of its box office spoils too. The film stars Channing Tatum as John Cale, a US Capitol police office and wannabe Presidential secret service agent, who is forced into action when a paramilitary group storms the White House, attacking the incumbent president James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx). The film also stars Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, Richard Jenkins and James Woods, and is by far the better of the two similar films, containing a better and more plausible plot, an underpinning of prescient political ideology, and some truly spectacular action. Read more…
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