Archive
DER UNTERGANG/DOWNFALL – Stephan Zacharias
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most critically acclaimed – and controversial – films to come out of Germany in recent years is Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Der Untergang (Downfall). The first German production to feature Adolf Hitler as a central figure, Der Untergang is based on the memoirs of Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge (played by Alexandra Maria Lara), and tells of the final days of the life of the Führer, deep within his bunker beneath Berlin, as the Russian troops close in. Not afraid to exploit the long-standing fascination with one of the most hated men of the 20th century, Hirschbiegel has nevertheless been criticized in some circles for presenting a portrait of Hitler that is “too sympathetic” – a claim which he vehemently denies. The film is blessed with a powerhouse performance by Bruno Ganz as Hitler, and features sterling support from Corinna Harfouch and Ulrich Matthes as the doomed Goebbels family, and Julianne Köhler as Hitler’s mistress Eva Braun. The film played at the Toronto Film Festival in 2004, and is scheduled for release in major cities world-wide in 2005. Read more…
CONSTANTINE – Brian Tyler, Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The latest in a long line of comic book adaptations to hit the silver screen, director Francis Lawrence’s film Constantine is based on the classic Hellblazer story by Jamie Delano and Garth Ellis, transposed from Liverpool to contemporary Los Angeles. Keanu Reeves stars as John Constantine, a man cursed with the awareness that a war between angels and demons is taking place on Earth. Having been driven insane by his visions, he committed suicide as a youth, but was sent back by the angel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) and charged with destroying as many demons as possible, in order to atone for his sins and be able to enter Heaven again when he finally dies for the second time. However, as the story begins, Constantine finds himself facing his biggest challenge yet: with the help of a similarly gifted Los Angeles cop (Rachel Weisz), Constantine must thwart the plans of Satan’s son, who is planning to be re-born on Earth himself. Read more…
ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 – Graeme Revell
Original Review by Peter Simons
A remake of John Carpenter’s 1976 classic western-meets-urban ghetto thriller, Assault on Precinct 13 stars Ethan Hawke as police officer Roenick, whose precinct is used to shelter a group of policemen and criminals, including crime lord Bishop (Lawrence Fishburne), when their convoy is forced to stop overnight at the precinct due to bad weather, despite the fact that the building has just been closed down for good, and has been cut off from power and communications. Things take an even nastier turn when the precinct is surrounded by an unknown, but heavily armed group ready to kill everybody inside – thereby forcing the cops and the prisoners into an uneasy alliance as they fight off a common enemy. Heralded by most critics as a surprisingly good remake of the 1976 version, other reviewers have slammed director Jean-François Richet’s film for lacking the eerie tension that made Carpenter’s movie a classic. Read more…
LES CHORISTES/THE CHORUS – Bruno Coulais
Original Review by Peter Simons
France’s submission for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, The Chorus (Les Choristes) tells the somber story of music teacher Clement Mathieu (Gerard Jugnot) accepting a position at a remote school for difficult students. While the school’s headmaster believes in strict discipline and runs the place like a prison, the new teacher believes that a little love and goodwill can go a long way. As Mathieu succeeds in bringing his deviant pupils together in a choir, they discover a hidden talent within themselves. Read more…
ELEKTRA – Christophe Beck
Original Review by Peter Simons
A spin-off of Daredevil, Elektra is the latest entry in a long series of comic book adaptations. Starring Jennifer Garner of Alias-fame as the titular character, the movie tells the story of a warrior assassin with a heart who leads a secluded life only to spring into action when a secret order calls upon her to execute a widowing Mark Miller (Goran Visnjic) and his teen aged daughter Abby (Kirsten Prout). When she actually befriends them and refuses to kill them, she ends up protecting them from other assassins and ninjas. The movie is directed by Rob Bowman who previously directed episodes of The X-Files and its spin-off series The Lone Gunman as well as the motion picture Reign of Fire. Read more…
RACING STRIPES – Mark Isham
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Considering that 2005 is just a few weeks old, it has already seen a film music landmark: the best score of Mark Isham’s career to date. Despite being best known for his jazz-inspired trumpet performances and beautiful orchestral works such as the Oscar-nominated A River Runs Through It and Fly Away Home, he had often in the past professed a desire to write a big, thematic, heroic orchestral score: his “Star Wars”, as he puts it. Obviously, Racing Stripes is in a totally different genre, but this could well be the very score he was describing. Read more…
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA – Andrew Lloyd-Webber
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most beloved musicals in modern history, The Phantom of the Opera was written by British composer Andrew Lloyd-Webber in collaboration with lyricists Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe. It premiered on the London stage with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman in the lead roles, and was an immediate smash hit, with its combination of lush romance, Gothic horror and classic themes of love and loss. Fifteen years later, director Joel Schumacher has finally brought this well-loved musical to the cinema screen as a lavish, large-scale costume-drama which looks set to be successful both at the box-office and at awards ceremonies in 2005. Read more…
THE AVIATOR – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The latest movie from acclaimed film-maker Martin Scorsese, The Aviator is an in-depth bio-pic examining the life of movie mogul, businessman and industrialist Howard Hughes who, during the 1930s and 40s was one of the richest men on the planet. Born in Texas in 1905, Hughes (played as an adult by Leonardo DiCaprio) claimed as a teenager that his ambitions in life were to “the world’s best golfer, the world’s best pilot, and the world’s best movie producer”. By the time he died in 1975 he was a recluse, having been reduced to a shadow of a man by his various mental problems, and the increasing severity of his obsessive compulsive disorder. But his life in between was nothing if not eventful: he inherited his father’s drill bit company and was a multi-millionaire by the time he was 19; he produced and directed a number of movies in Hollywood, including the famous “Hell’s Angels” (1930) and “The Outlaw” (1943); he dated many famous actresses of the day, including Jean Harlow (played in the film by Gwen Stefani), Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale); and most importantly (according to this film) he had a life-long fascination with aeroplanes, becoming the owner of TWA, effectively inventing Trans-Atlantic passenger air travel, and breaking numerous air-speed records before a horrific crash in 1946 put an end to it all. Read more…
FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX – Marco Beltrami
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Marco Beltrami, by popular consensus, has enjoyed the most fruitful year of his career in 2004. Having already written excellent sci-fi scores for Hellboy and I Robot, he finishes the year with a score for director John Moore’s re-make of the classic 1965 disaster thriller Flight of the Phoenix. The original was directed by Robert Aldrich, starred Jimmy Stewart and Richard Attenborough, and featured a good score by Frank De Vol. The new version stars Dennis Quaid, Giovanni Ribisi and Miranda Otto, but the basic stories are the same: a group of contractors from an oil company are forced to make a crash landing in the Mongolian Gobi desert after the plane taking them home runs into a huge sandstorm. Hundreds of miles from civilization, and with virtually no hope of rescue, the disparate group of survivors are forced to put their trust in the least trustworthy member of the group – a mysterious and insecure man who claims to be an engineer, and who says he can rebuild their wrecked plane and return them safely home. Read more…
SPANGLISH – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Peter Simons
A comedy about the barrier of language, Spanglish is not exactly the most original movie out there. Newcomer Paz Vega stars a Flor, a Mexican immigrant who moves to America hoping to find a better future for herself and her daughter Christina (Victoria Luna). She finds a job as the personal housekeeper of the Clasky family (Tea Leoni and Adam Sandler). Of course, the fact that she doesn’t speak a word of English does complicate things a little. Directed by James L. Brooks who previously made As Good As It Gets and I’ll Do Anything among others, Spanglish was reasonably successful and showed the world that Adam Sandler is not that bad an actor if given half a chance. Read more…
LEMONY SNICKET’S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS – Thomas Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In what can almost be seen as an extension of the playfulness he showed in writing Finding Nemo in 2003, Thomas Newman has written the score for Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, the first big-screen adaptation of the popular children’s stores by author Daniel Handler. Essentially a distillation of three of the Lemony Snicket books – The Bad Beginning”, “The Reptile Room”, and “The Wide Window” – director Brad Silberling’s film stars child actors Emily Browning and Liam Aiken as the Baudelaire children, made orphans in a mysterious fire and sent to live with their thespian uncle, Count Olaf (Jim Carrey). What results are – as the title suggests – a series of unfortunate events as Olaf hatches plot after plot to bump off the children and get his hands on their inheritance. With a supporting cast that includes Meryl Streep, Billy Connolly and Timothy Spall, Lemony Snicket looks set to rival Harry Potter in the coming years as the “literary franchise for children” – especially with another ten stories from which to choose future film storylines. Read more…
HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS – Shigeru Umebayashi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In the wake of the success of the Oscar-winning 2000 film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hollywood seems to be in love with Chinese martial arts films. It’s not difficult to see why: with their simple tales of love, honor and revenge, exotic locales and breathtaking scenery, and highly stylized action sequences (which, more often than not, feature characters performing gravity-defying stunts on wires), the genre is inherently cinematic. In 2002, revered director Zhang Yimou made the critically acclaimed Hero starring Jet Li. Having loved the experience so much, he immediately followed it with another film of a similar nature: House of Flying Daggers. Read more…
UN LONG DIMANCHE DE FIANÇAILLES/A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT – Angelo Badalamenti
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
With the exception of the cult TV series Twin Peaks and the Golden Globe-nominated score for David Lynch’s poetic drama The Straight Story, the vast majority of Angelo Badalamenti’s work has been written for projects on the fringes of the mainstream. He works with offbeat, independent directors like Paul Schrader, and often writes music for films with little or no commercial potential, and often in languages other than English. I’ve been telling myself that I’m a fan of his for quite some time but, when I actually sit down and think about the numbers involved, there are really only four or five titles I actually like: Cousins, The Straight Story, The Beach and Secretary are among them. For this reason I approached his score A Very Long Engagement with a combination of anticipation and unease; on too many occasions, Badalamenti has slightly disappointed me with his final product, despite each film having great potential for excellent music. Fortunately, this is not the case here. Read more…
ALEXANDER – Vangelis
Original Review by Peter Simons
Since the unexpected success of Ridley Scott’s 2000 sword-and-sandals hit Gladiator, historical biopics are in fashion again; showing us glimpses of the lives of Attila, Helen of Troy, Hannibal and, in this instance, Alexander the Great. Oliver Stone’s film primarily focuses on the eight years of the Macedonian king’s life during which he conquered the vast majority of the then known world. By the age of 25, Alexander (played here by Colin Farrell) had led his armies from Macedonia to India and paved the way for Greek culture to spread its influence. Somewhat controversially, the film also emphasizes Alexander’s bisexual nature and his relationship with boyhood friend Hephaestion (Jared Leto). The spectacular supporting cast Stone gathered together includes Angelina Jolie as Alexander’s mother Olympas and Anthony Hopkins as Old Ptolemy, as well as Val Kilmer, Christopher Plummer and Rosario Dawson. Read more…
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