Archive
MEN IN BLACK II – Danny Elfman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s nice to see Danny Elfman being silly again. I don’t mean Pee-Wee Herman silly; God forbid, the music was great but if he ever scores another movie like that something very wrong will have happened to the world. It’s just that, for the last few years, Elfman seems to have become a very serious man, scoring dark and weighty films such as Proof of Life and Sleepy Hollow and Planet of the Apes. Returning to the sci-fi chaos of the Men in Black universe has allowed Elfman to metaphorically let his hair down and go a bit wacky. He’s probably at his best when he does. Read more…
MINORITY REPORT – John Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Is it sacrilege to say that a new John Williams score is a slight disappointment? The 70-year old composer has been at the top of his game for over 25 years now, and the list of near-legendary scores he has written is almost incomprehensible. His collaboration with director Steven Spielberg is also the stuff of fable – how can two men come up with so much brilliance and genius between them? Minority Report, as a movie, is a marvelous amalgam of science fiction and morality gone wrong. But whereas Spielberg seems to still be at the height of creative talents, Williams seems to be flagging just a tad. A.I., his last Spielberg film, was enjoyable but failed to tread any new ground. Minority Report, which covers similar thematic ground by tackling deep intellectual issues in a science fiction setting, seems to have had the a similar effect on Williams – without wanting to sound unkind, its almost as though “thinking” films don’t provide him with the same seeds of musical inspirational as the popcorn adventure flicks that seem to be more and more his forte. Read more…
WINDTALKERS – James Horner
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s getting more and more difficult to review James Horner scores objectively these days – and everyone knows why. Listening to and writing about Horner’s music is a bit like having an itch you’re not supposed to scratch – you know it’ll do you no good in the long run but, by God, it irritates you so much, you just can’t help yourself – and the short term relief is worth it. I am almost at pains to say so, but on the whole Windtalkers bored me. Horner rarely does this; if nothing else, Horner’s music is usually interesting and worth taking the time to listen to. But, here, its as though he intentionally drew the majority the heart and color from his score, leaving instead a soulless musical shell that is technically sound but bereft of anything remotely resembling emotion. Read more…
THE BOURNE IDENTITY – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Film music is a funny thing. Sitting down to listen to The Bourne Identity, the latest score from British composer John Powell, I fully expected to hate it. Electronics, synthesizers, drum loops, very little in the way of an orchestral palette – all the things I generally dislike about certain types of score are in place here. But, much to my own surprise, I didn’t hate it at all – it actually entertained me for much of its running length, and left me marveling at the deftness of Powell’s MIDI programming and electronic inventiveness. Read more…
STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES – John Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Talk about pressure. Could any composer other than John Williams ever write a Star Wars score successfully? After the mixed critical reception of The Phantom Menace, it would be difficult for Attack of the Clones NOT to be a better movie; but Williams’ score was roundly praised, and to improve upon the incredible choral power of Duel of the Fates would be a task indeed. As the second installment in the trilogy, speculation was rife about how the middle Star Wars movie is always the best, dramatically and musically, adding further expectation upon Williams’s talents. Fortunately, all the doubts and worries are groundless. Attack of the Clones is a monster, surpassing The Phantom Menace on almost all counts. Read more…
UNFAITHFUL – Jan A. P. Kaczmarek
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, the least-known of the triumvirate of Polish film composers that includes Wojciech Kilar and Zbigniew Preisner, continues to make in-roads into Hollywood with his score for Unfaithful, the latest film by maverick director Adrian Lyne. Kaczmarek has had an interesting career to date, scoring mainly art house fare such as Total Eclipse and Bliss, but dabbling in the mainstream with things like Lost Souls and Washington Square without being widely recognized. I have a feeling that Unfaithful could change all that. Basically a three-way character study about the emotional effects of infidelity, Unfaithful stars Richard Gere and Diane Lane as Edward and Connie Sumner, a happily married couple living in the New York suburbs with their precocious young son Charlie (Erik Per Sullivan). One stormy autumn day, Connie makes a trip to the city, and literally bumps into handsome French book dealer Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez). Cleaning her grazed knee in his apartment, Connie obviously feels an attraction to Paul, but ignores her instincts, dismissing them as mere juvenile lust. However, Connie and Paul’s feelings for each other gradually grow too strong to ignore, and eventually they embark on a stormy, passionate affair. Meanwhile, the dependable Edward begins to notice subtle changes in his wife’s behavior, and hires a detective to find out about her illicit daytime liaisons. What transpires thereafter begins to tear at the fabric of the Sumner family, culminating in anger, betrayal and murder. Read more…
ENIGMA – John Barry
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A new John Barry score is a rare thing indeed in this day and age. As one of the all-time greats of film music, with a career that stretches back to the 1950s, the quality of Barry’s work and his influence on the genre as a whole cannot be understated. However, in recent years, Barry’s musical oeuvre has become so familiar and – dare I say it – predictable, that every score sounds like the last. Playing By Heart, his last score, broke the mould somewhat by embracing a distinctive type of moody jazz, but everything else has been much of the same. Enigma is no different. Read more…
MONSOON WEDDING – Mychael Danna
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Bollywood. Even today, in this enlightened age, the term conjures up hackneyed images of bad acting, bad dubbing, cheesy dance routines, and actors and actresses bursting into song at inappropriate moments, accompanied by a cast of thousands in tracksuits. In reality, the Indian film industry is the strongest and most successful on the planet, with the city of Bombay releasing more motion pictures in a year than anything from a Hollywood studio. But as well as the singing and dancing, India has real pedigree in “proper” drama, with films like Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen and Santosh Sivan’s recent Asoka proof of the sub-continent’s increasing aptitude for epics on a grand scale. Director Mira Nair, while not exactly a household name, has nevertheless become India’s top female director, with Salaam Bombay, Mississippi Masala, The Perez Family and Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love to her name. Her current film, Monsoon Wedding, is possibly her crowning glory to date. Read more…
DRAGONFLY – John Debney
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’m going let you into a personal anecdote about the score for Dragonfly. The first time I ever listened to this CD was in May 2002, while I was on holiday in Los Angeles. I was heading back from John Debney’s studio in Burbank to the hotel where I was staying in Culver City, having just been for lunch with him. John kindly gave me a copy of the score, and I eagerly played it as soon as I got back to the car. I took the scenic route home, driving over Mulholland Drive and down Laurel Canyon Boulevard to where it intersects with Sunset near the Bel Air gates. Half way down the hill on Laurel Canyon, the final track of the CD, ‘Emily’s Message Revealed’, kicked in. Seven minutes later, I almost had to stop the car because I couldn’t see for the tears. I had just heard one of the most beautiful and majestic cues in years. I realize that this story may not really mean very much to people, but for a cue to make me cry like that upon a first listen is rare indeed, and gives you an idea of the power inherent in this gorgeous score. Read more…
CHARLOTTE GRAY – Stephen Warbeck
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In the four years since he won the Oscar for his score for Shakespeare In Love, British composer Stephen Warbeck’s stock has risen considerably. At first, I was guilty of dismissing him as a flash in the pan: after all, prior to that film, his only work of note was for the popular UK crime series Prime Suspect and the critically acclaimed Mrs. Brown, at that time his only internationally released score. Since then, however, Warbeck has continually surprised and delighted me with score after score of exquisite music. First came Billy Elliott, then Quills, and then Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, easily one of my favorite scores of 2001. The new level of expectation on Warbeck is such that now I look forward to each new work by him, hoping that he can surpass his last effort each time – and it comes as something of a shock to learn that, with Charlotte Gray, he has not. Read more…
THE SHIPPING NEWS – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Films set in Newfoundland are few and far between, and scores based upon the musical heritage of that uniquely isolated part of Canada are rarer still. The Shipping News, Miramax’s big Oscar movie of 2001, is not a film about the indigenous people of Newfoundland, but the white European settlers who moved there centuries ago, and as such embraces their culture wholeheartedly, allowing composer Christopher Young to explore a musical style he had never before attempted: Celtic music. Adapted from the novel by E. Annie Proulx and directed by Lasse Hallström (The Cider House Rules, Chocolat), The Shipping News stars Kevin Spacey stars as Guy Quoyle, a lonely New Yorker who returns to his childhood home in Newfoundland with his daughter after emerging from a tragic, loveless marriage to Petal (Cate Blanchett). Moving in with his long lost aunt (Judi Dench) and taking a job writing the shipping news column in the local newspaper, “The Gammy Bird”, Quoyle finds his world-vision slowly changing his life… that is, until he meets widow Wavey (Julianne Moore), an emotionally damaged woman with whom Quoyle begins to come to terms with his own life, heal the rift with his daughter, and put his past behind him. Read more…
A BEAUTIFUL MIND – James Horner
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A Beautiful Mind, directed by Ron Howard, has become one of the most critically successful movies of 2001. Telling the true-life story of Nobel Prize winning genius John Forbes Nash Jr. and his battle with schizophrenia, A Beautiful Mind has been nominated for multiple Academy Awards in 2002 and looks set to go-head with The Lord of the Rings for top honors on Oscar night. Russell Crowe stars as Nash, a brilliant mathematician and innovative thinker, whose groundbreaking work at Princeton and MIT in the 1940s and 1950s made him the cause celebre of the academic world. Before long, Nash is approached by the military to work on a top secret code-breaking operation run by the mysterious and sinister William Parcher (Ed Harris), and his success in the field indirectly leads to him meeting and marrying the love of his life, the beautiful and equally talented Alicia Larde (Jennifer Connelly). However, as time passes, Nash’s behavior becomes more and more erratic, it becomes apparent that Nash is suffering from increased paranoia and a persecution complex than can mean only one thing – that his beautiful mind is being attacked by schizophrenia. Read more…
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
To say that Peter Jackson took on a mammoth task in undertaking a 9-hour, three-film cinematic version of The Lord of the Rings is an understatement indeed. Adapting J.R.R. Tolkien’s mammoth literary work for the screen took three years of the affable New Zealander’s life, and as the first part of the trilogy hits the world’s multiplexes, his vision and talent are for all to see. The Fellowship of the Ring is quite possibly the best fantasy film ever made, putting to shame Ralph Bakshi’s lamentable 1978 attempt to tell the same story through animation. Read more…
IRIS – James Horner
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In collaborating with the virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell on his latest score, Iris, it would seem that James Horner is developing a reputation akin to that of John Williams in the way that he is attracting top-quality classical talent with whom to work. With Charlotte Church also working with him on A Beautiful Mind, these two latest scores could be taken as an indication that Horner’s standing in the crossover classical music world is growing at a steady rate, after the commercial successes and album sales his scores have enjoyed of late. It is perhaps worth noting that Horner, Bell and Church are all contracted Sony Classical artists, and it is no coincidence that Sony are marketing both scores by heavily publicizing the soloists, but the optimist in me would like to think that it is Horner’s creativity rather than a marketing strategy who have brought them together. Nevertheless, an artist as talented as Bell brings a definite sense of class to the project – and it doesn’t hurt that Horner’s music is superb in its own right. Read more…
LE FABULEUX DESTIN D’AMÉLIE POULAIN/AMÉLIE – Yann Tiersen
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Every year, it seems at least one foreign language film takes the international box office by storm, becoming the art-house crossover darling of its time. In 2000, it was Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Before that, we had Life is Beautiful, Run Lola Run and Il Postino. This year we have Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain – or Amélie, as it has become known across the world. Already a massive success in its native France, Amélie subsequently raced to the top of the North American charts, has been nominated for multiple major awards, looks to be a shoo-in for the Foreign Language Film Oscar, and has increased further the reputations of its director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, leading actress Audrey Tautou, and composer Yann Tiersen. Read more…
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