Archive
THE FINAL DESTINATION – Brian Tyler
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
As if they hadn’t squeezed enough life out of this franchise yet, The Final Destination – the fourth film in the horror movie franchise – again follows the fortunes of a set of teenagers who cheat death, but then find that Death doesn’t like being cheated, and sets out to claim them anyway. The film is directed by David R. Ellis and stars Bobby Campo as college student Nick O’Bannon who, while attending a NASCAR race, has a premonition that a car wreck will cause a stand to collapse, killing himself and his friends; he convinces everyone to leave before the disaster occurs, but in the weeks following the event, his friends all die one by one in freak accidents.
The late, great Shirley Walker set the musical tone for the first three Final Destination films prior to her untimely death in 2006, and her mantle has now been picked up by the resourceful Brian Tyler Read more…
HALLOWEEN II – Tyler Bates
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Cult director Rob Zombie’s ultra-violent re-imagining of the classic Halloween legend continues with Halloween II. Picking up immediately from where the last film left off, the film stars Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie Strode, who has been taken to hospital to recover from the wounds inflicted on her by her psychotic, murderous brother Michael Myers (Tyler Mane). However, Laurie’s recuperation is short lived when the supposedly dead Michael returns, very much alive, intent on reuniting with his sister, even if it means murdering everyone in the hospital who stands in his way. Read more…
TAKING WOODSTOCK – Danny Elfman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I missed out on being a part of the Woodstock generation by a good decade or more, having been born six years after it took place, but growing up I was acutely aware on how much the seminal 1969 music festival shaped the musical, social and political mindset of a generation. Calling Woodstock a ‘music festival’ is to underplay its significance: not only did it popularize the music of artists as varied as Jimi Hendrix, Crosby Stills & Nash, the Grateful Dead, Joan Baez and Janis Joplin, it also became a cultural touchstone for the hippie movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement. Ang Lee’s new film Taking Woodstock takes a gently comedic look at the events leading up to the festival; it stars Demetri Martin as Elliot Tiber, the actual organizer of the festival, Eugene Levy as Max Yager, on whose farmland the festival took place, and features Dan Fogler, Imelda Staunton, Henry Goodman, Liev Schreiber and Emile Hirsch in supporting roles. Read more…
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS – Ennio Morricone/Various Artists
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s sixth film, Inglourious Basterds is a World War II movie with attitude. Set in mainland Europe at the height of the conflict, it stars Brad Pitt as Aldo Raine, the leader of a crack platoon of Jewish-American soldiers who have dubbed themselves ‘the Basterds’, and who actively seek out and savagely kill as many German servicemen as possible, with the intent of creating fear and discord amongst the troops. His opposing number is Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a cruel and ruthless SS officer also known as ‘The Jew Hunter’, whose actions in murdering the family of a young Franco-Jewish family comes back to haunt him when the only survivor, a young girl named Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), embarks on a plot to assassinate Hitler at the premiere of a Nazi propaganda film. Read more…
CAPTAIN ABU RAED – Austin Wintory
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The first film made in Jordan for over 50 years, Captain Abu Raed was that country’s first ever Foreign Language Film submission, at the 2008 Academy Awards. Directed by Amin Matalqa, the film stars Nadim Sawalha as the titular character, a cleaner at Amman’s International Airport, who after finding a discarded pilot’s hat in the trash, is mistaken for a pilot by some local children, who he then regales with fantastical stories of his world travels. Eventually, Abu strikes up a friendship with a boy named Murad, who is being abused by his drunken father. After one particularly violent episode, Abu vows to try to help Murad and his mother escape from their domestic hell. Read more…
DISTRICT 9 – Clinton Shorter
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Each cinematic year seems to produce a “sleeper hit”, a little film which comes out of nowhere, captures the public’s imagination, and strikes box office gold, often as a result of creative marketing and positive word of mouth. Sleeper hits over the years have included little films like The Terminator, The Blair Witch Project and The Full Monty; if the early buzz is anything to go by, 2009’s sleeper hit looks likely to be District 9, a South African science fiction allegory written and directed by Neill Blomkamp, and executive produced by Peter Jackson.
The film is a damning indictment of the apartheid regime which blighted South Africa for almost 50 years, dressed up as a science fiction action movie. Read more…
THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE – Mychael Danna
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The belief that true love can conquer the boundaries of time and space is not a new one in the world of romantic cinema. Films like Somewhere in Time and Ghost have all toyed with the notion that a powerful interpersonal connection can survive beyond the realms of reality, beyond the realms of linear time, reveling in the strong emotions that such stories elicit. The latest such film to tackle the subject is The Time Traveler’s Wife, directed by Robert Schwentke and based on the popular novel by Audrey Niffenegger. Eric Bana stars as Henry DeTamble, a Chicago librarian with one unique feature: he involuntarily travels backwards and forwards in time, which obviously causes great problems for himself and his true love, Clare Abshire (Rachel McAdams). Read more…
G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA – Alan Silvestri
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Looking back at my childhood, I now realize that I was probably very unconventional in how I spent my time. I never read comic books. With the exception of the classic Kenner Star Wars ones, I never played with action figures very much. I was never really into guns and army toys and ninjas and whatnot. I played soccer and tennis, watched a lot of movies and sports on TV, read a lot, and wrote a lot. All this probably goes to explain why, when I first heard that they were making a big budget G.I Joe movie (and unlike several of my friends, who were positively giddy with excitement), my response was a disinterested shrug. Read more…
JULIE & JULIA – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There aren’t many mainstream movies about cooking. There are even less movies about the lives celebrity chefs and bloggers who are inspired by them – but that basically sums up the plot of Julie & Julia, the latest comedy/drama from director Nora Ephron. The film tells two parallel stories: firstly that of the life of chef Julia Child (Meryl Streep), who became America’s first celebrity chef in the 1950s when she wrote her groundbreaking French cookbook ’Mastering the Art of French Cooking’; and that of Julie Powell (Amy Adams), whose quest to cook all 524 recipe’s in Child’s cookbook, and her blog about her experiences, made her famous within the modern New York foodie crowd. It’s a quirky little film, but a critically acclaimed one nonetheless, with Streep’s performance as Child receiving notable praise. Read more…
A PERFECT GETAWAY – Boris Elkis
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A honeymoon on an idyllic Pacific island turns deadly in A Perfect Getaway when two pairs of newlyweds – Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich, Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez – discover to their horror that a serial killer is stalking and murdering tourists on their holiday hideaway. Written and directed by David Twohy, the man behind the Chronicles of Riddick, A Perfect Getaway was an unexpected box office success; it also marked the mainstream debut of Russian composer Boris Elkis, a classically trained composer who previously worked as a synth programmer and arranger for Graeme Revell for many years.
The opening cue, “A Perfect Getaway”, introduces the main theme, a slurred, insistent, rattling string motif accompanied by various electronic enhancements Read more…
ALIENS IN THE ATTIC – John Debney
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A family sci-fi adventure, Aliens in the Attic follows in the footsteps of films like Jumanji and Zathura in pitting a group of resourceful children against a group of fantastical creatures invading their home. Carter Jenkins, Austin Butler, Ashley Boettcher and Ashley Tisdale from the High School Musical series star as a quartet of kids who discover that their summer home has become infested with knee-high aliens who want to take over the world. The film is directed by John Schultz and has a fun, if a little derivative, score by John Debney.
Written for a full and lavish symphony orchestra, Aliens in the Attic spends quite a bit of time channeling both Danny Elfman and Bernard Herrmann, mainly through its liberal use of a theremin to depict the alien invaders. Read more…
ORPHAN – John Ottman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Evil movie kids: don’t you just love ‘em? From Regan in The Exorcist and Damien in The Omen to those freaky twins in The Shining and anything starring Macaulay Culkin, the murderous minor has been a staple of the horror genre for decades, playing our worst fears and nightmares. The latest addition to the list is Esther, the protagonist of the film Orphan. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and starring Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard and the truly menacing 12-year old actress Isabelle Fuhrman, Orphan tells the story of a typical husband and wife Kate and John Coleman who, having lost their unborn child, instead decide to adopt a young girl instead; subsequently, into their lives comes Esther, a seemingly angelic child from an orphanage. However, before long, alarming events occur, leading the Colemans to think that there may be more to Esther than meet the eye… Read more…
THE UGLY TRUTH – Aaron Zigman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A modern day battle-of-the-sexes comedy, The Ugly Truth stars Katherine Heigl as Abby, a TV producer with a disastrous romantic life, whose world begins to change when a misogynistic shock-jock named Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler) is hired to present a segment on her morning news show. Mike, who claims to be an expert in knowing what a man really wants from a woman, offers to help Abby woo the man of her dreams: a hunky doctor who lives in the same apartment building. Despite her misgivings at Mike’s sexist outlook on life, Abby agrees, but in spite of their initial mutual dislike, the more time Abby and Mike spend with each other, the more romantic sparks between the mis-matched pair start to fly. Read more…
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE – Nicholas Hooper
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Nicholas Hooper really has been given one of the best, and worst, jobs in the world in taking over the musical voice of the Harry Potter franchise. On the one hand, this is the gig of a lifetime: working on a globally successful, massively popular series of films which are guaranteed to be enormous box office hits and bring his name and voice to millions. On the other hand, he’s taken over from arguably the most popular living film composer – John Williams – and as such faces the ire of countless film music fans who don’t like his music because his first name isn’t John and his second name isn’t Williams. As much as Hooper’s first score for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in 2007 was disappointing, I think I was still a little guilty of having that frame of mind going in: he doesn’t sound like John Williams, so it can’t be good. It can’t possibly add anything to the Potterverse. I was one of the few who managed to take Patrick Doyle’s Goblet of Fire score at face value, and so coming in to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince I was determined not to pre-judge it this time round. And you know what? Having adopted that frame of mind, I really enjoyed it. Read more…
ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The third film in the series of director Carlos Saldanha’s popular Ice Age animated features, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs continues the adventures of sarcastic woolly mammoth Manny (Ray Romano), irritable saber toothed tiger Diego (Dennis Leary) and scatterbrained sloth Sid (John Leguizamo). With Manny and his mammoth mate Ellie settling down and starting a family, Sid decided he wants a family of his own; as such, he steals some dinosaur eggs to raise. However, a visit from the eggs’ real mother results in Sid being taken to a lush and strange underground ‘lost world’, causing Manny, Diego and the others to mount a rescue. Read more…
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