Archive
GRAN TORINO – Kyle Eastwood, Michael Stevens
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Gran Torino is the second of Clint Eastwood’s films as director; this time he also stars, as grizzled, grumpy, racist former auto worker and Korean War vet Walt Kowalski, who having been recently widowed now spends his time sitting on his porch in suburban Detroit, growling at anyone who ventures on to his lawn, and generally being a disagreeable old bastard to his family and neighbors. His one true love is his beloved 1972 Ford Gran Torino, which he has lovingly restored to its former glory – so, when his Hmong neighbor Thao (Bee Vang) attempts to steal it as part of a street gang initiation, Walt is understandably not very happy. However, it soon becomes clear that the bookish Thao is not really very interested in being a gangbanger, and gradually Walt and Thao form an unlikely friendship. However, as Walt gradually warms to the ‘gooks and chinks’ next door, which includes Thao’s fiery and spirited sister Sue (Ahney Her), he also begins to run afoul of the street gang, who want to maintain control of their turf and their community. Read more…
THE READER – Nico Muhly
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’m trying to remember the last time a composer in his 20s scored a film with as much importance, class and critical acclaim as Nico Muhly has with The Reader. Certainly none of the biggies – John Williams was 34 when he scored his first “serious” movie, The Rare Breed in 1966. Jerry Goldsmith was 33 when he scored Lonely Are the Brave in 1962. Elmer Bernstein was 33 when he scored The Man with the Golden Arm in 1955. The only one who springs to mind is James Horner, who was 29 in 1982 when he scored Star Trek II, but since then film composing has become, if not an old man’s game, then certainly a game for men older than Nico Muhly, who is but a comparative child at just 27. However, listening to his score for The Reader, one would be forgiven for thinking that it was the work of an older, seasoned, and more experienced composer, such is its confidence and technical strength. Read more…
FROST/NIXON – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
From a modern vantage point it’s remarkably easy to look back at the events of 1974, to the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal and forget just what a momentous moment in American political history it was. The aftermath of scandal – which included incidences of campaign fraud, political espionage and sabotage, illegal break-ins, tax fraud and illegal wiretapping – were far-reaching, and changed the political landscape of the nation forever. Three years after Nixon’s resignation he was interviewed by the British TV journalist and satirist David Frost for the show ‘Frost on America’, and the resulting encounter between the men became one of the most notorious moments in television history when, during the interviews, Nixon made a tacit admission of guilt regarding his role in Watergate, despite having been officially absolved of responsibility and pardoned by President Gerald Ford. This fascinating series of encounters between these two remarkably intelligent and astute men was turned into a play by screenwriter Peter Morgan starring Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost. The play was hugely successful, and was nominated for several Tony Awards, and has now been turned into a feature film by acclaimed director Ron Howard, with Langella and Sheen reprising their roles on the big screen. Read more…
AUSTRALIA – David Hirschfelder
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A romantic epic in the grand Hollywood tradition, Australia is director Baz Luhrmann’s cinematic ode to his homeland. The main focus of the story is the romance between English aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) and rugged cowboy Drover (Hugh Jackman), and is set against a backdrop of some of the most important events in early Australian history, including the expansion into Aboriginal territory by the white settlers and the social and racial tensions that arise as a result, and the bombing of the Northern Territory by the Japanese in World War II.
In addition to Kidman and Jackman the film features pretty much every major Australian character actor working today – notably David Wenham, Jack Thompson, Bryan Brown and David Gulipilil – and boasts impressive production values that garnered the film an Academy Award nomination for costume design. Read more…
FOUR CHRISTMASES – Alex Wurman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A smash hit seasonal comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, Four Christmases is very much a festive flick for the new millennium, as it follows the fortunes of a couple who have to spend their holiday season visiting their four parents – Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight and Mary Steenburgen – all of whom are divorced, and who bring their own problems and peculiarities to the already hectic lives of their children, most notably in the form of various siblings – Jon Favreau, Kristin Chenoweth and country star Tim McGraw.
The widely-available commercial soundtrack CD features the usual roster of wintry favorites – Perry Como singing “Home For the Holidays” Read more…
MILK – Danny Elfman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Although many people nowadays will not know his name, Harvey Milk remains a hugely important figure in American political history. As the first ever openly gay man ever elected to public office in the United States, Milk served one term as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the late 1970s, and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city, before being assassinated by fellow city supervisor Dan White in November 1978. Having already been the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, ‘The Times of Harvey Milk’, in 1984, director Gus Van Sant’s new film charts the life and death of a man who has since been labeled ‘a martyr for gay rights’ in dramatic narrative; the film stars Sean Penn as Milk, Josh Brolin as White, and features Emile Hirsch, Diego Luna and James Franco in supporting roles. Read more…
OORLOGSWINTER/WINTER IN WARTIME – Pino Donaggio
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Dutch cinema doesn’t get much press beyond the confines of its borders. Similarly, Dutch film music gets fairly short shrift from the world at large, despite several acclaimed composers having worked there in recent years, notably Henny Vrienten, Loek Dikker and Fons Merkies. It’s also been quite some time since Italian composer Pino Donaggio had any time in the spotlight – at least since Up At the Villa in 2000, and in reality probably since Never Talk to Strangers in before that in 1995. So, it’s quite gratifying to see Donaggio’s score for the Dutch wartime drama Oorlogswinter (‘Winter in Wartime’) getting some attention.
The film is directed by Martin Koolhoven from the novel by Jan Terlouw, and stars Martijn Lakemeier as Michiel, a 14 year old boy living in a small town in the Netherlands in the winter of 1944, who witnesses an English fighter plane crash near his home. Read more…
I WANT TO BE A SHELLFISH – Joe Hisaishi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
For all his success in the west with his scores for Hayao Miyazaki’s films – Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and the like – Joe Hisaishi’s scores for non-animated films remain strangely underappreciated by Western audiences. His latest undiscovered masterpiece is the curiously-named I Want to be a Shellfish – or ‘Watashi Wa Kai Ni Naritai’ to give it its proper Japanese title. Contrary to its absurd-sounding name, the film is a quite serious and profound drama set in post-WWII Japan, based on a famous novel by Tetsuharo Kato and directed Katsuo Fukuzawa. It tells the story of a man named Toyomatsu Shimizu (Masahiro Nakai), a quiet family man who works as a barber, who is unexpectedly arrested by the occupying American forces and tried for war crimes by a military tribunal. Read more…
BOLT – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The 48th official film in the Disney animated feature canon, Bolt is the story a small dog – the Bolt of the title, voiced by John Travolta – who has lived his entire life on the set of a TV show in which he portrays a superhero dog and, as a result, thinks that his superpowers are real. However, when Bolt is accidentally shipped from his Hollywood soundstage to New York City, he embarks on a cross-country journey to reunite with his owner and co-star, Penny (voiced by Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus). Along the way, he teams up with a jaded alleycat named Mittens (voiced by Susie Essman) and a TV-obsessed hamster named Rhino (voiced by Mark Walton). Read more…
TWILIGHT – Carter Burwell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It has recently become apparent to me that, without my knowledge or active participation, I have become old and out of touch. I had this revelation when I realized that, until about three weeks ago, I had never heard of Twilight. I knew nothing about Stephenie Meyer’s novels. I had never heard of Edward Cullen or Bella Swan. I had no clue that teenage girls the length and breadth of America were going to bed at night dreaming of being swept up into the arms of a hunky young vampire and being made one of the sexy undead. I guess this is what happens when you turn 33 and you realize that all your cultural touchstones now date back almost 20 years. Read more…
QUANTUM OF SOLACE – David Arnold
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The re-boot given to the James Bond franchise with Casino Royale in 2006 was possibly the best thing that could have happened to 007. The film itself was arguably the best Bond movie since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969, and Daniel Craig’s gritty, wounded portrayal of MI6’s finest brought him firmly into the new millennium. Quantum of Solace, the second movie in the new rebooted series, continues the story from the immediate point where Casino Royale concluded; it’s essentially a revenge film, with Bond attempting to bring the killers of Vesper Lynd from the previous film to justice, while locking horns with a new adversary – evil multimillionaire businessman Dominic Greene (Mathieu Almaric). The film is directed by Marc Forster, also stars Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton as the new Bond girls, Camilla Montes and Strawberry Fields, and features Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright and Giancarlo Giannini in recurring supporting roles. Read more…
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE – A. R. Rahman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Bollywood music has never really crossed over into the film music mainstream, despite being an enormous industry on the Indian sub-continent; the closest Bollywood has to a composer superstar is A.R. Rahman, so it perhaps stands to reason that he should really be the first one to make any kind of impact on the Hollywood mainstream. Rahman has worked in the Indian film industry since the early 1990s, and has since gone on to score over 100 films, some of which – Taal from 1999, Lagaan from 2001, Rang De Basanti from 2006, and Jodhaa Akbar from earlier this year – have enjoyed a modicum of international success. He has even dabbled in the Hollywood world before, working with Mychael Danna on Water in 2006 and with Craig Armstrong on Elizabeth: The Golden Age in 2007. In his homeland, however, Rahman is revered: he has personally sold 100 million records of his film scores and soundtracks worldwide, and sold over 200 million solo albums, officially making him one of the world’s all-time top selling recording artists. No wonder he is often called the “John Williams of Bollywood” and the “Mozart of Madras”. It’s just surprising that it has taken this long for the West to recognize him. Read more…
MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Yikes, what on earth happened with this album? “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” may very well be the worst score that composer Hans Zimmer has ever been involved with (I hesitate to say “written”, as the score was created by the usual gang of Remote Control affiliates). The film is a sequel to the popular Dreamworks animated film “Madagascar”, which was also scored by Zimmer and co.
That disappointing album featured some pleasant yet insubstantial scoring alongside some dull pop songs and a nice performance of John Barry’s “Born Free”. That album was bliss compared to what Zimmer has produced this time around. Things actually start out well enough, with a typical little action piece called “Once Upon a Time in Africa”. The score never hits that level of satisfactory banality again. Read more…
DANCES WITH WOLVES – John Barry
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
By the mid-1980s the cinematic western was almost dead, a relic of an older, less sophisticated Hollywood, which had long since left behind icons such as John Wayne and Gary Cooper. Thankfully, nobody told Kevin Costner. In 1989 Costner was one of Hollywood’s upcoming leading men, having starred in successful and popular movies such as Silverado, Bull Durham, No Way Out and Field of Dreams. When it was announced that he would direct, produce and star in a big screen version of Michael Blake’s novel Dances With Wolves, at first the news was treated with incredulity; later, with stories of spiraling costs and unconventional on-set activities, the film was expected to be a vanity project at best, a laughing stock at worst. No-one expected the film to be one of the best westerns ever made, but that is ultimately what happened. Read more…
SPLINTER – Elia Cmiral
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Czech/Swedish composer Elia Cmiral has fallen a long way down the film music pecking order since the comparative heights of Ronin in 1998 and Battlefield Earth in 2000, to the point where is now a go-to guy for a large number of low budget horror directors. Cmiral’s latest film, Splinter, is another one in a long list of gore-fests: directed by Toby Wilkins, it stars Shea Whigham, Paulo Costanzo and Jill Wagner as a young couple and an escaped convict who find themselves trapped in an isolated gas station by an evil parasite which, when contracted, mutates the body of the host into something resembling a human porcupine. Read more…
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