Archive
HAMLET – Carter Burwell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the worst things about being a soundtrack reviewer is that, sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t think of anything to write about a particular score. I’ve struggled with Carter Burwell’s Hamlet for months, never being able to properly put into words my feelings about the music. I’ve listened to it a dozen times, and never been able to form any kind of opinion about the score, either positive or negative. And then it dawned on me that my basis for review should be precisely that: when I listen to Hamlet, I feel absolutely nothing. It provokes absolutely no reaction in me whatsoever. And, for a film score, that is probably the most damning criticism of all. Read more…
BATTLEFIELD EARTH – Elia Cmiral
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The definition of a “turkey” in cinematic terms is, in my own words, a film which fails to impress on ever conceivable level, from acting to direction to writing, up to and including any and all of the technical departments. Battlefield Earth, a big-budget science fiction epic wannabe adapted from the best-selling pulp novel by L. Ron Hubbard, is a turkey. A great, big, bloated, clucking turkey complete with giblets a wattle and a parson’s nose and everything. It’s a rare occurrence for such a high-profile movie to be this bad – there are normally at least one or two redeeming features, even it’s only a high quotient of campness a la Showgirls – but Battlefield Earth fails on every conceivable level, with the possible exception of its music. Read more…
UP AT THE VILLA – Pino Donaggio
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In what is his most high-profile international outing since Never Talk To Strangers back in 1997, Italian composer Pino Donaggio has written a beautifully romantic score for the new film version of W. Somerset Maugham’s Up at the Villa. Starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Sean Penn and Anne Bancroft, the movie is an old-fashioned love story between a soon-to-be betrothed English rose and a brash, charming American set against the backdrop of a pre-War Italy that is beginning to embrace fascism with an alarmingly rapid pace. While the two lovers anguish over whether or not their illicit liaisons should continue, Maugham’s social and political commentary seeps through the rest of film, resulting in a motion picture which is emotionally engaging and intellectually stimulating. You know, from history, that their affair is ultimately doomed, but such is the strength of the performances you still care. There is also a twist in the story that I won’t reveal – suffice to say that it concerns the fate a young Austrian refugee played by Jeremy Davies. Read more…
THE BASKET – Don Caron
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’d happily wager that 99% of the people reading this have never heard of Don Caron, and have never heard of The Basket, let alone seen it. The film was never released widely in cinemas, you cannot buy the soundtrack in stores, and it premiered on TV in the UK as late as June 2001, well over two years after it was made. Contrary to all of the above, however, both film and score are absolutely superb, proving once again that you cannot judge a film’s quality by its success, or a composer’s talent by the size of his “name”. Read more…
GLADIATOR – Hans Zimmer, Lisa Gerrard
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When I’m not actually sitting down and listening to a Hans Zimmer score, I like to tell myself (and anyone else within earshot) that I’m not a great fan of his work. He’s too simplistic, I say. He relies far too much on synthesisers and banks of programmers, and he has a style that virtually never differs from score to score. Every other score he writes is just another variation on the patented Crimson Tide heroic anthem. And, to some extent, each element of the above arguments have some shred of truth within them. But, when I do actually sit down and listen to a Hans Zimmer score, I usually thoroughly enjoy doing so. It’s a painful contradiction, but it proves one thing: as a composer, he has a rather limited range, but as a dramatist and as a manipulator of emotions, he has few peers. Read more…
THE BIG KAHUNA – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
How does one write music for a film, 99% of which takes place in an anonymous hotel room, and which features a cast of characters that barely exceeds the three leads – in this case Kevin Spacey, Danny De Vito and newcomer Peter Facinelli? If your name is Christopher Young, you write a brilliant contemporary jazz score for a selected group of sixteen instrumentalists and invest it with more life, energy and pizzazz than any music for this kind of film has a right to contain. Read more…
U-571 – Richard Marvin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There’s a joke going round the Internet at the moment about how Richard Marvin’s score for U-571 should really be called “Air Force Two”. It’s true that there are many similarities between this, Marvin’s first major work, and the flag-waving Jerry Goldsmith score of 1997, but to cast these aspersions and mean them would be doing a great disservice to the composer. It’s blatantly obvious that director Jonathan Mostow suffered from an almost terminal case of temp-track love while in post-production for this film, but it surely still took a great deal of effort on Marvin’s part to write music that captures the same power, patriotism and intensity as Goldsmith’s earlier effort. Read more…
EST-OUEST/EAST-WEST – Patrick Doyle
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A truly international collaboration, East West – or, to give it its correct French language title Est Ouest – is the third film in which Patrick Doyle has written music for director Régis Wargnier, following Indochine and Une Femme Française. Set in the heart of Europe during the years immediately following the cessation of World War II, the film stars Sandrine Bonnaire as Marie, a French woman who, at the behest of her husband Sascha (Sergei Bodrov), follows him back to his homeland – Russia – in the hope that they will find a new and better life for themselves there now that the war has ended. Their dreams are quickly shattered, however, when it becomes apparent that all is not well, and that one powerful and corrupt regime has simply been replaced by another one. Realising their mistake, Maria and Sascha try to return to Paris, but find themselves blocked at every turn by the new Soviet power. Things change, however, after Maria meets and falls in love with a handsome swimmer named Alexei (Grigori Manoukov), who may be able to offer then a way out. Read more…
DETERRENCE – Larry Groupé
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Despite being better known as a regular collaborator on John Ottman’s scores (he conducted and/or orchestrated Apt Pupil, The Cable Guy, Incognito, Snow White: A Tale Of Terror and The Usual Suspects), Larry Groupé is also a composer in his own right, and of considerable talent. Through his website, Larry is making several of his recent scores available for on-line purchase by collectors, one of the few composers who actively promote their own work in this way. Deterrence, a political thriller starring Timothy Hutton and directed by Rod Lurie, is one of these new scores, and is certainly one which deserves to be heard by a wider audience. Read more…
THE NINTH GATE – Wojciech Kilar
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It has been over five years since Roman Polanski’s last movie, the dark and disturbing political thriller Death and the Maiden. Polanski, the creative force behind such classics as Rosemary’s Baby, Tess and Frantic, makes fewer and fewer movies these days but, despite their scarcity, the importance of his films can never be ignored or overlooked. I admit that I know very little about his latest effort, The Ninth Gate (or, to give its proper title, La Neuvième Porte), other than that it stars Johnny Depp, Lena Olin, Frank Langella and Emmanuelle Seigner, is to do with demons and devils and the occult, and has a superb, brooding score by Polish composer Wojciech Kilar. Read more…
MISSION TO MARS – Ennio Morricone
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Mission To Mars has been one of the most critically despised movies of the year – a plotless, senseless would-be space epic that, according to the majority of the reviewers, took a great idea about the first, faltering steps of interplanetary travel and ruined it with bad acting, a terrible screenplay, and hopeless direction by the former wunderkind Brian De Palma. In fact, the only elements of the film to receive generally positive notice have been the special effects and Ennio Morricone’s elegiac score. And while I find myself disagreeing with the movie’s bad press, I couldn’t agree more with the appraisal of Ennio’s efforts. As film music, Mission To Mars is a blockbuster in every respect. Read more…
AGNES BROWNE – Paddy Moloney
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The second film directed by Anjelica Huston (following the acclaimed 1996 TV movie Bastard Out Of Carolina), Agnes Browne is a comedy-drama based on the novel “The Mammy” by Brendan O’Carroll about a working class mother of many from Dublin (Huston) who, upon becoming a widow, finds her life becoming increasingly difficult. Faced with the possibility of poverty, she makes a wrong move by turning to a ruthless local money-lender (Ray Winstone) for help. With the bailiffs closing in on Agnes and her family, a single dreams keeps her on an even keel: the possibility of attending an upcoming Tom Jones concert. Then, when a French baker (Arno Chevrier) arrives on the scene, Agnes’ life finally seems to take an upward turn. Read more…
THE 10TH KINGDOM – Anne Dudley
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
At the risk of repeating myself, it seems like the Hallmark Hall of Fame series of TV movies has struck gold again. With eight popular scores (including the critically acclaimed Animal Farm, Merlin, Durango and the Emmy-winning Alice In Wonderland) already under their belt and several more projects in the pipeline, it could be that the collaboration between Hallmark and Varèse Sarabande becomes one of the most fruitful partnerships to grace the film music world for many years. Without a doubt, the standard of this kind of TV scoring has increased tremendously over the last couple of years, with composers as eminent as Trevor Jones, Richard Hartley and Stephen Warbeck lending their not inconsiderable talents to the series. The latest to join the list is fellow Oscar-winner Anne Dudley, writing music for the latest entry into the series, The 10th Kingdom. Read more…
THE WHOLE NINE YARDS – Randy Edelman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Just what the world has been waiting for – a new Randy Edelman score. After spending 1999 as a virtual bystander, the synthmeister has burst back onto the film scoring scene with an incredible five scores in just over than twelve weeks, the first of which is this one: the gangster comedy The Whole Nine Yards. A smash hit in America, the film stars Bruce Willis as good-natured hitman Jimmy the Tulip who, in an attempt to get away from the gaze of the authorities, moves into a new house in suburban Montreal. However, dentist Matthew Perry does not take kindly to his new neighbour, and hi-jinks ensue – especially when the men in dark glasses start appearing at his front door! The film is directed by Jonathan Lynn, who previously made My Cousin Vinny and The Distinguished Gentleman, and co-stars Rosanna Arquette, Natasha Henstridge, Kevin Pollak and Oscar-nominee Michael Clarke Duncan. Read more…
HANGING UP – David Hirschfelder
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Following the world-wide praise (and Oscar nominations) he received for his original scores for Shine and Elizabeth, it was surely only a matter of time before Australian composer David Hirschfelder got the call from Hollywood. In the end, the call came from Diane Keaton, wanting him to write the score for her new movie Hanging Up, a modern comedy about three sisters (Keaton, Meg Ryan and Lisa Kudrow) who have to deal with an incorrigible, obnoxious father (Walter Matthau), and who seemingly spend 99% of their lives on the phone with each other. As I write this, Hanging Up has been receiving atrocious reviews from the American press, and causing me to wonder whether attaching himself to this film will ultimately prove to be a good move or a bad move for Hirschfelder. Read more…
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