Archive
THE MUMMY – Brian Tyler
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Mummy is the first film in Universal Pictures’s series of new interlocking ‘Dark Universe’ films based on their roster of classic monsters. Tom Cruise stars as Nick Morton, an officer in the United States Army who moonlights as a treasure hunter. While on assignment in Iraq with his partner, Chris Vail, Nick accidentally unearths an ancient tomb containing a sarcophagus, inside of which are the mummified remains of an Egyptian princess. With the help of archeologist Jennifer Halsey, Nick determines that the princess in question is Ahmanet, who murdered her father, the Pharaoh, as part of a ritual intended to give the Egyptian god of death human form, and was buried alive as punishment. Finally freed from her prison after two thousand years, Ahmanet returns to life and unleashes her revenge upon the world; the only things standing in her way are Nick and his allies, and a mysterious organization called the Prodigium, a secret society dedicated to hunting supernatural threats, whose leader is the equally mysterious Dr. Henry Jekyll. Read more…
THE MUMMY – Jerry Goldsmith
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Jerry Goldsmith’s first effort of 1999 is a barnstorming action score of epic proportions. The density of the orchestrations and the complexity of the melodic lines put you in mind of vibrant works such as First Knight, Deep Rising, and especially The Wind and the Lion with its intoxicating ethnic percussion and pervading sense of Arabic mystique. A loose remake of Boris Karloff’s 1932 horror classic, The Mummy is an old-fashioned, tongue-in-cheek Saturday matinee flick with more than a few passing resemblances to Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Universal Pictures and director Stephen Sommers hope it will be the first big action movie to smash the box office in a summer market already dominated by the imminent release of The Phantom Menace. It stars Brendan Fraser as a treasure-seeker who travels to 1930s Egypt searching for lost artefacts. What he finds, though, is far worse – the mummified body of the ancient Egyptian priest Imhotep, who was buried alive in disgrace by the then Pharaoh, and who unleashes a terrible vengeful power on those who disturbed him from his slumber. Read more…