Archive
LAST NIGHT IN SOHO – Steven Price
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
London in the 1960s was arguably the coolest place in the world at that time. Michael Caine and Sean Connery on the silver screen. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Dusty Springfield, and Petula Clark on the radio. Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton sashaying down Carnaby Street wearing fashions by Mary Quant. At least that’s how it seems to Eloise, the protagonist of Edgar Wright’s new psychological horror/thriller Last Night in Soho. Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is an aspiring fashion designer obsessed with the Swinging Sixties who moves from her country home to London to attend college. After a rocky start, she eventually settles into a bedsit flat owned by Miss Collins (Diana Rigg), but before long strange things start happening. Eloise had always had a connection to the supernatural – she has visions of her deceased mother – but now she is having vivid dreams where she travels back in time to Soho in the 60s, and observes a beautiful young nightclub singer named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) and her roguish boyfriend/manager Jack (Matt Smith). Although she is initially charmed and excited to be “living” in the time period she adores, things quickly turn sour as Eloise experiences the seedy underbelly of London through Sandie’s eyes, and her dreams quickly turn into nightmares. Read more…
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: A LIFE ON OUR PLANET – Steven Price
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Climate change is real, and it is mostly driven by the activities of human beings. The fact that this remains a political and controversial statement in some parts of the world – mostly the United States – is utterly shameful, but that’s a conversation for another place and another time. From my point of view, all the scientific evidence points to the fact that human activity since the peak of the industrial revolution has harmed the Earth: it has poisoned the water and the air through the use of unsustainable fossil fuels, and raised temperatures in some places while lowering them in others, almost to the point where some places will be virtually uninhabitable before long. Innumerable animal species have been driven to the brink of extinction, and too much essential plant life in the jungles and forests of the world have been cleared to feel the endless appetites of the population – both for food, via agriculture, and for money, via greed. All this is brought into sharp focus in this new Netflix documentary, David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. In it, the venerable British broadcaster and naturalist takes a look back on his 93 years of life, his career making nature documentaries for the BBC, and the things he has learned about the world as a result. He calls the film his ‘witness statement,’ and it is a vital and compelling story told by a man who is perhaps the most respected voice on Earth when it comes to issues concerning the natural world. It may be the most important documentary I, or anyone, will ever watch. Read more…
SUICIDE SQUAD – Steven Price
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s looking increasingly likely that, in future years, we will be able to pinpoint the summer of 2016 as the moment the super hero genre reached its tipping point. After years of success and box office gold, especially from Marvel’s stable of characters, this year’s entries have been almost unanimously slammed from a critical point of view. Although they continued to resonate financially, and although Deadpool was fun, films like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Captain America: Civil War, and X-Men Apocalypse bore the brunt of the jabs and barbs from professionals, who criticized each film’s poor writing, over-reliance on CGI fight sequences, and over-stuffed casts. Suicide Squad, the latest in the Warner Brothers/DC series of movies is, from my point of view, the nadir: a boring, badly-written, clichéd mess of a film that suffered from so much post-production tinkering that it rendered the final cut virtually incomprehensible. Written and directed by David Ayer, and set in the same universe as Zack Snyder’s new Batman and Superman films, it follows the fortunes of a group of incarcerated super-villains who are brought out of imprisonment by a shadowy government agency and forced to work together to battle an existential threat to humanity. The film stars Will Smith as crack assassin Deadshot, Jared Leto as the psychotic Joker, and Margot Robbie as his equally deranged paramour Harley Quinn, plus Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courteney, Jay Rodriguez, Cara Delevingne, and Viola Davis in supporting roles. Read more…
Best Scores of 2015 – United Kingdom
The fourth installment in my series of articles looking at the best “under the radar” scores from around the world concentrates on music from films and TV shows from the United Kingdom. The British Isles have always been a major center for excellent film music, and this year is no exception: as well as scores for projects like Peter and Wendy, Wolf Hall, Poldark, Suffragette, Spectre, Mr. Holmes, and Far From the Madding Crowd, which I have already reviewed, the rest of this year’s bumper crop includes the scores for a low-budget thriller, two wonderful TV documentaries, a witty comedy, and a swashbuckling TV adventure series! Read more…
FURY – Steven Price
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Fury is a World War II action-drama written and directed by David Ayer, about the crew of an armored Sherman tank during the final days of the European Theatre. As the Allies make their final push toward Berlin, a battle-hardened army sergeant named Wardaddy (Brad Pitt) commands the tank and her experienced crew (Shia LaBeouf, Jon Bernthal, Michael Peña), but are forced to replace their gunner, previously killed in action, with a recently enlisted Army typist, Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) who, it transpires, has never even seen the inside of a tank before, let alone experienced the ravages of war. As Wardaddy and the crew of Fury are tasked with carrying out a deadly mission behind enemy lines, outnumbered and outgunned, we experience the horrors of conflict through Norman’s eyes. Read more…
GRAVITY – Steven Price
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There has never quite been a film like Gravity. In terms of plot, it’s fairly thin – two astronauts, played by George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, suffer a disaster while repairing the Hubble space telescope, and are left floating stranded in space, desperately trying to find a way to safety, and to home. Instead, it is the scope and majesty of Alfonso Cuarón’s film that takes audiences to a completely new sensory place. Space has never seemed so vast, so vivid, so beautiful, so terrifying. The cinematography and design of the film makes the viewer feel like it was genuinely shot in space, such is the sense of realism. Much more will be written about the film to convey how stellar it is, but I’m here to talk about the music, which also plays an enormous part in the success of the entire project. Read more…
Shop at the Movie Music UK Store
Member of the
MOVIE MUSIC UK 