Archive
FREE BIRDS – Dominic Lewis
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There aren’t many films about Thanksgiving, that most peculiar of American holidays where families gather together to show how thankful they are for everything they have in life by eating enormous meals and watching American football on TV. For those who don’t know, the holiday originated with the original pilgrims who emigrated to the continent from Europe, and who were so inadequately prepared for life on a new continent that they almost starved to death in their first winter, until they were saved by the local natives, who basically showed them how to hunt and plant crops and not die. The pilgrims were so thankful that they almost immediately began a 200-year systematic eradication of Native American life and culture, but that’s another matter entirely; nowadays, the holiday is most closely associated with mass consumption of the humble turkey, which were plentiful during pilgrim times. Free Birds is most likely the first film to feature a cast of anthropomorphic animated turkeys, but you can’t have a Thanksgiving film without those tasty tryptophan-enhanced morsels, and so here we are… Read more…
LA VÉNUS À LA FOURRURE/VENUS IN FUR – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Venus in Fur, a French-Polish co-production, is Roman Polanski’s big-screen adaptation of David Ives’s play, an erotic comedy-drama about the unusual relationship that develops between a theater director and a needy, manipulative actress during the audition process for a production of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s classic story of sexuality, desire and masochism, Venus in Furs. The film, which stars Mathieu Almaric as the director and Emmanuelle Seigner as the actress, explores the shifts in power between the pair as the relationship between those creating the play begins to mirror the one between the characters in the story itself. Read more…
MA MAMAN EST EN AMÉRIQUE, ELLE A RENCONTRÉ BUFFALO BILL/MY MUMMY IS IN AMERICA AND SHE MET BUFFALO BILL – Fabrice Aboulker
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ma Maman Est En Amérique, Elle a Rencontré Buffalo Bill is an animated French film directed by Marc Boreal and Thibaud Catel, based on the graphic novel of the same name by Jean Regnaud and Émile Bravo. It tells the story of Jean, a six year old boy starting a new school. Having grown up without a mother, and not knowing who or where she is, he begins to make up tall tales about her and her adventurous life in order to impress his new school friends – even going so far as to create fake postcards and letters from her from Africa and the United States. However, his neighbor Michele, knows the truth about Jean’s real life, and the young friends bond over their unusual, imaginary family. The score for Ma Maman Est En Amérique, Elle a Rencontré Buffalo Bill is by the French composer and songwriter Fabrice Aboulker, and is yet another unexpected delight. Light, playful, thematic, and with some lovely passages for piano, strings and woodwinds, the score belies its children’s cartoon roots almost entirely by containing surprisingly sophisticated writing, all performed superbly by the Macedonian Radio Symphonic Orchestra, recorded in Skopje. Read more…
THE WIND RISES – Joe Hisaishi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
If the rumors are true, it seems as though The Wind Rises will be the last feature film directed by the acclaimed Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. His is a career that stretches back 50 years, during which he has been largely responsible for the popularization of the anime genre in the West, through films such as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, all of which were produced by his production company, Studio Ghibli. His emotional, sensitive films tackle weighty issues to do with the environment, pacifism, dreams, and destiny, often presented through a series of fantastical and magical stories, nearly all of which feature a strong female protagonist. Read more…
EL TIEMPO ENTRE COSTURAS/THE TIME IN BETWEEN – César Benito
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
El Tiempo Entre Costuras, “The Time Between Seams”, is an epic Spanish TV series based on the novel by María Dueñas. Broadcast on the Antena 3 network in October 2013, it stars Adriana Ugarte as Sira Quiroga, a seamstress in Madrid in the 1930s, who is forced to flee her home when the Spanish Civil War breaks out. The score for El Tiempo Entre Costuras is by Los Angeles-based Andalusian composer César Benito, and it’s absolutely sensational. There’s something captivating, emotional, entrancing about César Benito’s work here. Epic, yet intimate, sweeping, yet personal, it’s one of the best scores for television you are ever likely to here. Beginning with the rhapsodic “Tema de Sira”, written for solo piano, the score opens up into the sparkling, busy “Madrid, 1922”, which captures the life and energy of pre-war Madrid through central theme which effortlessly moves around all sections of the orchestra, and features an especially gorgeous sequence for various solo woodwinds. Read more…
AMBASSADA – Bartosz Chajdecki
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ambassada is a Polish science fiction comedy film written and directed by Juliusz Machulski, about a young couple who move into a new apartment building, only to find that the building’s elevator is actually a time machine; using the machine, the couple find themselves going back in time to the 1940s and coming face-to-face with none other than Adolf Hitler! Yes, it is a comedy – it stars Magdalena Grąziowska, Bartosz Porczyk and Robert Więckiewicz, and has a score by one of the young rising stars of Polish film music, Bartosz Chajdecki.
The score is an interesting mix of contemporary jazz and large-scale science fiction action, which sounds like it shouldn’t work at all, but actually does. The opening cue, “Kosmopolityczny-Wood” introduces the Cosmopolitan theme, a fun piece of jazz, with a bouncy trumpet line offset by an accordion, piano and stand-up bass, which introduces the main characters and their deft comedic natures. “Żydowski Szybki” brings a hint of Jewish-Polish folk music into the score with a whirligig dance for harpsichord and strings, while “Woln Spokój”, “Holly” and the flamboyant finale “Nalewki Zmontowane“ return later in the score to revisit the jazz flavors of the opening cue. Read more…
ROMEO & JULIET – Abel Korzeniowski
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Since the very first years of cinema Romeo & Juliet, William Shakespeare’s timeless story of passionate doomed love, has been a well of inspiration for filmmakers, ranging from George Cukor’s 1936 film starring Norma Shearer, the classic Franco Zeffirelli version from 1968, and Baz Luhrmann’s revisionist interpretation from 1996, as well as the popular musical West Side Story, which replaces Montagues and Capulets with Sharks and Jets, and moves the story from Verona to New York City. Director Carlo Carlei’s new version was written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes and is a comparatively straightforward re-telling of the story, with Hailee Steinfeld and Douglas Booth in the lead roles as the star cross’d lovers, and a supporting cast that includes Damian Lewis, Paul Giamatti, Stellan Skarsgård, Ed Westwick and Kodi Smit-McPhee. The film is visually sumptuous, with opulent production design and costumes, and features an equally sumptuous and opulent score by Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski. Read more…
PRISONERS – Jóhann Jóhannsson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Prisoners is a dark, difficult, compelling film about the lengths to which one will go to find truth and justice. It’s the English-language film debut of French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve; set around Thanksgiving in a snowy Pennsylvania town, it follows two families: Keller and Grace Dover (Hugh Jackman and Maria Bello) and Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis), whose lives are thrown into chaos when both their pre-teen daughters go missing, presumed abducted. A suspect, Alex Jones (Paul Dano), is quickly arrested, but is just as quickly released when the lead detective (Jake Gyllenhaal) can find no evidence linking him to the crime. However, with the girls still missing, Keller Dover remains convinced that Alex is responsible, and will stop at nothing to prove his guilt. 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…
ZIPI Y ZAPE Y EL CLUB DE LA CANICA/ZIP & ZAP AND THE MARBLE GANG – Fernando Velázquez
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Zip & Zap and the Marble Gang – known in its original Spanish as “Zipi y Zape y el Club de la Canica” – is an action-comedy-adventure for children, directed by Oskar Santos, and based on the comic book adventures of the titular characters. Zipi and Zape are two ten year old twins, mischievous but lovable, who are sent to summer camp by their parents after they are caught stealing. Once there, the devilish duo quickly form a gang with the other kids and misfits at the camp, in defiance of the eye patch-wearing camp counselor, and embark on a series of thrilling adventures involving a hunt for missing treasure. Read more…
DIE ANDERE HEIMAT: CHRONIK EINER SEHNSUCHT/HOME FROM HOME: CHRONICLE OF A VISION – Michael Riessler
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An expansive, 3½-hour German historical drama, Die Andere Heimat: Chronik Einer Sehnsucht is a theatrical sequel to the influential three-part 1980s mini-series Heimat, once again written and directed by Edgar Reitz. Set in a small village in the Hunsrück mountains, it centers on a young man, Jacob Simon (Jan Dieter Schnieder), who longs to leave home and settle in America with his love, Jettchen (Antonia Bill). However, when Jacob’s brother Gustav (Maximilian Scheidt) returns from Prussian military service, the love between Jacob and Jettchen is shaken, and Jacob’s life begins to head in a completely different direction from what he had originally planned.
The score for Die Andere Heimat: Chronik Einer Sehnsucht is by jazz clarinetist and composer Michael Riessler, who worked on previous Heimat stories in 2004 and 2006, but whose work is virtually unknown outside his native Germany. Read more…
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…
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