Archive
RUSH HOUR 3 – Lalo Schifrin
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Perhaps the least necessary sequel of the summer, “Rush Hour 3” still managed to scrape up a decent amount of money, proving… um… some terribly depressing point, I would imagine. The film stars Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker as a couple of cops who have to find terribly contrived and exotic ways to solve various crimes. The talented supporting cast includes Philip Baker Hall, Max Von Sydow, and Roman Polanski, and not one of them has a single interesting thing to do. It’s a pretty mediocre movie, and as with the previous two “Rush Hour” efforts, the highlights are Jackie Chan’s stunts (much more limited in this installment) and Lalo Schifrin’s score. Read more…
STARDUST – Ilan Eshkeri
Original Review by Clark Douglas
With the enormous success of the “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” films, we have seen endless fantasy productions popping up left and right. In the past few weeks, I’ve seen trailer after trailer for upcoming fantasy films that all look roughly the same. “The Golden Compass”. “The Spiderwick Chronicles”. “The Seeker: The Dark is Rising”. “The Dragon Wars”. “Beowulf”. “The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep”. It goes on and on. Some of these will undoubtedly be better than others, but they all basically look alike, portentous journeys into tired lands of “mystery” and “wonder”. Ho-hum. Read more…
BECOMING JANE – Adrian Johnston
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
With the likes of Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility being such popular works of both the written and visual media, it was only a matter of time before someone made a screen biography of their author, the erstwhile Jane Austen. Julian Jarrold’s film Becoming Jane is just such a film; American star Anne Hathaway adopts an English actress to play the pre-fame author, growing up in 18th century Hampshire, and falling in love with a handsome Irishman named Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy); Jane’s encounters with him, and her dalliances with the societal niceties of the day seek to shape her literary style and her outlook on life. Read more…
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM – John Powell
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Though I’m no fan of “MTV-style” action movies, where things whiz and pop so quickly that everything becomes incomprehensible, Paul Greengrass impressed me a great deal with his fast, jerky, shaky stylings on “The Bourne Ultimatum”. There was a method to the madness, a certain precision and caution taken to insure that the chaos was more than merely chaos. Soundbites and quick images of actors like Matt Damon, Joan Allen, and David Strathairn were edited into what looked like impressive performances, and the story proved to be a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Read more…
HOT ROD – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Rod Kimble (Andy Samberg) wants nothing more than to be a stuntman. He practices very hard, every single day. He has a team of cohorts (Bill Hader, Jorma Taccone, Danny McBride) who help him train. The only problem is, Rod is perhaps the world’s worst stuntman. He is absolutely awful at everything he attempts in the stunt department, and his incompetent friends don’t help any. Still, every time Rod attempts a stunt, he believes quite sincerely that he is going to make it.
Stunts aren’t the only thing Rod has trouble with. He also continually loses fights… yes, physical fights… with his step-father Frank (Ian McShane). He explains to his friend, “Fathers automatically love you Read more…
SKINWALKERS – Andrew Lockington
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Skinwalkers is a Canadian horror-action film about werewolves, directed by James Isaac and starring Jason Behr, Elias Koteas, Rhona Mitra, and Tom Jackson. It follows the fortunes of a young boy named Timothy (Matthew Knight) who, unbeknown to him, is a member of a ‘good’ werewolf family, and who upon his thirteenth birthday will begin to fulfil an ancient prophecy and “cure” his family and other werewolves of their lycanthropy. However, a gang of other werewolves, who have embraced their flesh-eating ways, are searching for the boy, determined to stop the prophecy from coming true. It’s an interesting premise which, unfortunately, lost something in translation between the page and the screen, and generated some surprisingly negative reviews. Read more…
UNDERDOG – Randy Edelman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
All you really need to know about Underdog is that it’s about a canine super-hero voiced by Jason Lee, based on an animated cartoon series which debuted in 1964. That one line plot description gives you ample opportunity to decide what Frederik Du Chau’s film is all about – and whether it’s a worthwhile investment of time to seek it out. Despite a fairly impressive supporting cast that includes Amy Adams, Brad Garrett, James Belushi and Peter Dinklage, the film was a comparative commercial failure; this lack of financial success also ultimately led to the mainstream cancellation of the planned soundtrack CD, which would have featured Randy Edelman’s original score. Read more…
I KNOW WHO KILLED ME – Joel McNeely
Original Review by Clark Douglas
No, I didn’t see “I Know Who Killed Me”. Let’s be honest, you didn’t either. In fact, looking at the box office stats for the R-rated Lindsay Lohan thriller, it seems that hardly anyone did. And why would they? The film’s trailers looked just plain terrible, the critic’s reviews were just plain terrible, and Lohan’s acting is just plain… well, to be fair, mediocre. It looks like the sort of film that was made to flop at the box office… the era of the sleaze thriller is over, kids, “Basic Instinct” was 15 years ago. You’d think they would learn a little quicker.
Speaking of that, I never expected “I Know Who Killed Me” to produce the finest trashy thriller score since Jerry Goldsmith’s effort for “Basic Instinct”. Music is provided by Joel McNeely, who undoubtedly accepted this assignment because he couldn’t get anything better. That’s a real shame, because McNeely is a fabulous composer. Read more…
NO RESERVATIONS – Philip Glass, Conrad Pope
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A gastronomical romantic comedy starring Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhart, No Reservations follows the fortunes of top New York chef Kate (Jones), and the way her life changes when she unexpectedly becomes the guardian of her young niece, Zoe (Abigail Breslin from Little Miss Sunshine). Director Scott Hicks’s cute romance was a comparative box-office success, but had a somewhat checkered musical history.
Originally Philip Glass – yes, Philip Glass! – was hired to write the music for his first Hollywood romantic comedy, and recorded a full score; however, during the film’s post-production the executives at Castle Rock decided that a warmer and more traditional romantic score was required in certain places Read more…
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Clark Douglas
By now the subject has been talked to death… but at a first glance, it is a little confusing that Hans Zimmer is scoring “The Simpsons Movie”. Why not Danny Elfman, who wrote the classic main theme for the television show? Was he not available, or uninterested, or what? And if not Elfman, why not Alf Clausen, who has been tirelessly writing fun music for the television show for nearly two decades? The choice of Zimmer probably comes from the fact that James L. Brooks has always been involved with the Simpsons, and Zimmer has had several successful collaborations with Brooks (“As Good as it Gets”, “I’ll Do Anything”, and “Spanglish”). Read more…
THIS IS ENGLAND – Ludovico Einaudi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A gritty, challenging film from the critically acclaimed British filmmaker Shane Meadows, This Is England examines the skinhead subculture which permeated much of English society in the early 1980s from the point of view of a 12-year old boy named Shaun, whose adoption into a mischievous, but misunderstood skinhead gang in the northern English city of Nottingham provides the him with a new family who understands him better than his one at home does. Featuring, as usual, a cast of unknown amateur actors, Meadows’ film is a reflection on one of the most turbulent periods in recent British history, whose political and social outlook was shaped by events like the Falklands War, the rise to power of Margaret Thatcher, and the influence of the punk movement on the music scene. Read more…
HAIRSPRAY – Marc Shaiman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Marc Shaiman took a break from the film scoring world in the early 2000s to embark on a Broadway career in the company of his lyricist partner Scott Wittman. The result of their collaboration was Hairspray, a charming and effortlessly sunny musical based on the 1988 film by John Waters, about an overweight teenager named Tracy Turnblad who, in 1960s Baltimore, dreams of performing on a popular TV dance show. Huge acclaim and several Tony Awards later, and things have come full-circle with the movie version of Shaiman’s musical, with Shaiman adapting his own music for the screen. With a stellar cast that includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, James Marsden, Queen Latifah, John Travolta in drag, and newcomer Nikki Blonsky as Tracy, the movie version of Hairspray is a camp, nostalgic delight. The whole thing is steeped in late-50s and early-60s rock and roll, a sort of cross between American Bandstand and Grease, and is chock-full of toe-tapping tunes, clever lyrics, great vocal performances, catchy orchestral arrangements, and an overall sense of fun and vitality that just makes it a delight from start to finish. Read more…
SUNSHINE – John Murphy, Underworld
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A daring and somewhat cerebral sci-fi action movie from director Danny Boyle, based on the novel by Alex Garland, Sunshine stars Cliff Curtis, Cillian Murphy and Michelle Yeoh as part of a team of astronauts who, fifty years in the future, embark on a dangerous and potentially suicidal mission: to attempt to re-ignite the Sun, whose internal energy has been slowly dying, and as a result is also a threat to all life on Earth. It’s a fascinating premise – sort of like the flip side to Armageddon – but which was not entirely successful, with some critics citing its pseudo-religious overtones and slightly mis-handled action scenes as stumbling blocks on the way to success. Read more…
CAPTIVITY – Marco Beltrami
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Despite being reviled by pretty much every film critic who saw the film, Captivity nevertheless managed to become a popular and successful underground hit, and a memorable entry in the ‘torture porn’ sub-genre of horror films. Somewhat unexpectedly, the film is directed by Roland Joffé, the Oscar-winning filmmaker of The Mission and The Killing Fields, and stars Elisha Cuthbert as Jennifer Tree, a popular tabloid Hollywood starlet who awakens to find herself a prisoner in a grubby cellar, being systematically tortured by an attacker whose motives are unclear. And, basically, that’s it. Young Miss Cuthbert spends the movie enduring one sickening physical and psychological attack after another, until the movie ends. And this is what passes for entertainment these days? Read more…
HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX – Nicholas Hooper
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s always enormously gratifying when a new, untested composer gets a chance to score a major, high-profile studio film for the first time in their career. While others may have wrung their hands in anguish about Nick Hooper’s appointment to score the fifth Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I always tend to see these things as a mouth-watering prospect, full of potential. Remember, Howard Shore was the creepy thriller composer before Lord of the Rings came along. Even John Williams was typecast as a silly comedy/disaster movie composer before two unknown directors called Steven Spielberg and George Lucas came along and got him to score their little movies. On Order of the Phoenix, it’s the daunting shoes of Williams that Hooper has to fill, which is no mean feat in itself, and his career may fly or flounder purely on the response to his score for, and the box-office performance of, this film. Read more…
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