Archive
ENTRAPMENT – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Entrapment is Chris Young’s second big-budget action score in as many years and is an ideal comparison to the work he undertook for Hard Rain because, if nothing else, it effectively demonstrates Young’s ability to tackle similarly-themed movies in vastly different ways. Whereas Hard Rain was firmly rooted firmly in the musical traditions of the American midwest, Entrapment is a fluid, hi-tec action score which combines efficient, modern orchestral grooves with the some unexpected textures and styles. The film itself is a flawed, but audience-friendly thriller about a beautiful insurance investigator who teams up with an aging breaking-and-entering expert with the express intent of fingering him for the high-profile robbery she thinks he has committed. Things become a little more complicated, though, when he persuades her to join him in undertaking a final, ambitious break-in, and then get even worse when she inexplicably finds herself falling for him in a big way. Disregarding the unlikely love interest between sixty-something Sean Connery and twenty-something Catherine Zeta-Jones, Entrapment works well as an “event picture”, providing the right combination of thrills, spills and technobabble to keep increasingly touchy viewers happy. Most of all, though, it is highly satisfying to finally see Young getting a much-deserved and long overdue shot at the Hollywood big time. Read more…
EXISTENZ – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
David Cronenberg inspires Howard Shore to compose some of his best and most memorable movie music. Through such notable works as The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, M. Butterfly and Crash, Cronenberg had always allowed Shore plenty of room to manoeuvre and stretch his musical muscles. eXistenZ is probably the most approachable and, from a soundtrack fan’s perspective, enjoyable work that has resulted from their collaboration to date. An original science fiction tale, eXistenZ is a film which again merges humanity and technology and blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. It stars Jennifer Jason Leigh as the designer of a virtual reality video game played through a genetically modified organism known as a “Game Pod”, which inserts an umbilical cord into a special socket inserted into the base of the player’s spinal column and taps into the player’s mind. When the game’s first demonstration goes wrong, Leigh and her bodyguard Jude Law are forced to run for their from various violent factions, all of whom want to stop eXistenZ from becoming a reality. Read more…
THE RED VIOLIN – John Corigliano
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It is very rare for a soundtrack to be embraced wholeheartedly and celebrated loudly by aficionados of both classical music and film music, but this is what has happened to John Corigliano’s The Red Violin. Despite being arguably one of the most brilliant and talented American composers of his generation, this is only John Corigliano’s third film score – his others being the wildly impressionistic, abstract, Oscar-nominated Altered States (1980) and the largely unknown Revolution (1985). Instead, Corigliano became an established member of the New York musical circle, writing original pieces, ballets, operas and suchlike, and it has taken fourteen years to tempt Corigliano back to the podium. It has been worth the wait for, as well as his own musical genius, he has brought with him some of the best and brightest talents of the classical world, including the brilliant Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the incredibly talented virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell. Read more…
AMERICAN HISTORY X – Anne Dudley
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Tony Kaye, the director of American History X, was so incensed when New Line Pictures re-edited his film against his wishes, he threatened to remove his name from the final cut and replace it with Humpty Dumpty. He believed that the core of the film, its very essence, had been stripped away by the barbarous production company, and that the finished product was now only half the movie it used to be. Having seen New Line’s end result, I can only wonder just what Kaye’s original cut was like, because as it stands American History X is still one of the most emotionally shattering, intellectually stimulating, totally amazing movies I have seen in years. Read more…
ARMAGEDDON – Trevor Rabin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In the all-spectacle, no-brains world of the Hollywood summer blockbuster, Armageddon became the antithesis of everything that people find wrong with commercial film making. Even the title – “commercial” film making – smacks of financial return being held in higher esteem than artistic merit. Everyone hated it, from the critics at Cannes who laughed during the premiere, to the newspaper hacks who decried the banal dialogue, Bruce Willis’ wooden lead performance, and the glaring implausibilities in the plotline. Despite this, audiences loved it. For all its shortcomings, Armageddon was an out-and-out crowdpleaser, with genuinely spectacular special effects, plenty of action and romance and, in the shape of Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler, two cover-story attractive protagonists. Read more…
BATMAN – Danny Elfman
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In 1989 Danny Elfman was a 36-year old newcomer to the world of film music, still better known for his days as the lead singer of the alternative rock band Oingo Boingo than his scoring exploits, which by then had included titles such as hit films like Back to School, Beetlejuice, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Scrooged, but gave no indication of the composer he would become. Then came Batman, director Tim Burton’s gothic re-imagining of the old camp Batman story that, prior to this movie, was something of a joke, known for Adam West and his day-glo costume and Neal Hefti’s kitsch theme music. To say that Burton took the Batman story in a different direction was an understatement in the extreme: instead of being a wisecracking comic figure with a Bat-gadget for every occasion, he became a tortured, tragic anti-hero clad in black leather, struggling with his own inner demons while simultaneously dealing with master criminals in a dirty, dangerous Gotham City. Read more…
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