Archive
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST – Alan Menken, Howard Ashman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When looking back at the period now, considering their enormous success and influence, it’s easy to forget that Disney was a film studio in trouble in the 1980s. Their first four animated films during the decade – The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, and Oliver & Company – had not been particularly well-received, while the success of the fifth, The Little Mermaid in 1989, was certainly not seen as a guarantor of future achievement. Everything changed with the 1991 release of Beauty and the Beast, which became the first animated film ever to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, and subsequently set in motion a decade of almost unparalleled cinematic dominance for the house that Walt built. Read more…
DYING YOUNG – James Newton Howard
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Dying Young is a romantic drama directed by Joel Schumacher, based on the novel by Marti Leimbach, starring Julia Roberts and Campbell Scott. Roberts stars as Hilary, a young woman who is hired to be a live-in nurse for Victor (Scott), a wealthy and well educated young man who is dying of leukemia. Of the course of a summer Hilary and Victor slowly fall in love – much to the disapproval of her mother (Ellen Burstyn) and his father (David Selby), neither of whom want to see their children get hurt – and decide to make the best out of life in whatever short period they may have together. The whole thing was designed to be a three-hanky weepie for incurable romantics who revel in tragic love stories, and it helped push Julia Roberts’s star even further into the stratosphere, considering that this was her fourth starring role in two years after Pretty Woman, Flatliners, and Sleeping With the Enemy, but it was not a hit with the critics – Roger Ebert said it was “a long, slow slog of a movie, up to its knees in drippy self-pity as it marches wearily toward its inevitable ending,” while Janet Maslin in Variety wrote simply said “Julia’s hot; Dying Young is lukewarm”. Read more…
CURLY SUE – Georges Delerue
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Curly Sue is a warm-hearted family comedy written and directed by John Hughes – the last film Hughes directed prior to his death in 2009, although he did write and produce others. The film stars James Belushi as Bill, a drifter and scammer who swindles strangers out of money to support himself and his partner in crime, a cute moppet orphan girl he calls Curly Sue (Alisan Porter). After moving from Detroit to Chicago, Bill and Curly Sue find their next target in Grey Ellison (Kelly Lynch), a yuppie lawyer. However, things take an unexpected turn when Grey learns about the con, but falls in love with Bill anyway when she learns the truth about their past, and how much he genuinely cares for Curly Sue. Grey asks Bill and Curly Sue to move in with her – a decision which sparks the ire of Grey’s jealous, vindictive ex-boyfriend Walker (John Getz), who plots revenge against the man who he believes broke up his relationship. Read more…
SHATTERED – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Shattered is a twisty-turny psychological thriller written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, based on the popular novel ‘The Plastic Nightmare’ by Richard Neely. The film stars Tom Berenger as Dan Merrick, a successful architect who is involved in a major car accident with his wife Judith (Greta Scacchi). Judith survives relatively unharmed, but Dan suffers major injuries and brain trauma, including amnesia, and needs plastic surgery. As he recuperates at home afterwards, with the help of his friend Jeb (Corbin Bernsen) and Jeb’s wife Jenny (Joanne Whalley), Dan slowly starts to feel that things are not quite what they appear to be, and begins to make some inquiries into his own past. These inquiries eventually lead Dan to private detective Gus Klein (Bob Hoskins), whose explosive revelations change Dan’s life forever. Read more…
RICOCHET – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Ricochet is an action-thriller directed by Russell Mulcahy, starring Denzel Washington, John Lithgow, Ice-T, Kevin Pollak, and Lindsay Wagner. Washington plays Nick Styles, an LAPD cop, who becomes a hero when he subdues and arrests a violent hitman named Earl Blake Talbot (Lithgow) during a hostage standoff. Years later, Styles is now a successful Los Angeles district attorney, but everything changes when Blake – who has now aligned himself with a group of neo-Nazis in the Aryan Brotherhood – escapes from prison and embarks on a violent and destructive revenge plot against the man who he claims destroyed his life. Ice-T plays Odessa, Styles’s former childhood friend who is now a drug dealer, and the whole thing culminates in a fight to the death atop Los Angeles’s iconic Watts Towers. The original screenplay, as written by Fred Dekker, was pitched as a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry sequel, but it was rejected for being ‘too grim,’ and was eventually re-worked by Steven E. de Souza and Menno Meyjes as a vehicle for Washington. Read more…
RAMBLING ROSE – Elmer Bernstein
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Rambling Rose is a romantic drama period film directed by Martha Coolidge, based on the 1972 novel of the same name by Calder Willingham. The film is told in flashback by Buddy Hillyer (John Heard), who returns to his childhood home in Georgia and remembers his life growing up there during the Great Depression. Young Buddy (Lukas Haas) lives comfortably in a big house with his parents (Robert Duvall and Diane Ladd); however, everything is thrown into turmoil following the arrival of Rose (Laura Dern), an orphaned young woman who comes to work for the family. Rose is happy and free-spirited, but exceptionally promiscuous, and her sexual dalliances with several members of the family, as well as other people in town, brings all manner of troubles to the Hillyer family door. The film was a critical success that year, culminating in both Dern and Ladd – daughter and mother in real life – being nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, the first ever mother-daughter duo to be nominated for Oscars for the same film. Read more…
THE MAN IN THE MOON – James Newton Howard
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Man in the Moon is an emotional coming-of-age drama, written by Jenny Wingfield, and directed by Robert Mulligan – the final film of the man behind such classics as To Kill a Mockingbird and Summer of ‘42. The film stars Reese Witherspoon in her big-screen debut as Dani Trant, a teenage girl growing up in rural Louisiana in the 1950s. The film plots her life over the course of a summer, as she deals with her relationship with her parents and her siblings, her emerging sexuality, family tragedies, and especially her feelings for an older boy named Court who moves into the farm next door. The film co-stars Sam Waterston, Tess Harper, Gail Strickland, and Jason London, and was one of the most acclaimed films of its type in 1991; Roger Ebert called it “a wonderful movie … a victory of tone and mood, like a poem,” and praised Witherspoon’s breakout performance. Read more…
BLACK ROBE – Georges Delerue
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Black Robe is a historical drama-adventure directed by Bruce Beresford, adapted from the novel of the same name by Brian Moore. The film is set in Canada in the mid-1600s and stars Lothaire Bluteau as Father Paul LaForgue, a Jesuit priest tasked with founding a mission in New France – the precursor to modern-day Quebec. Faced with traversing a harsh wilderness, dealing with warring local tribes, the weather, and the wildlife, LaForgue enlists the help of a group of Algonquin natives, and together they set off across the vast Canadian interior, where all manner of adventures await them. The film co-stars Sandrine Holt, August Schellenberg, and Tantoo Cardinal, and was one of the most popular and successful Canadian films of the early 1990s. It went in to win six Genie Awards, including one for its spectacular cinematography, and drew favorable comparisons with similarly-themed films like Dances With Wolves and The Mission. Read more…
THE FISHER KING – George Fenton
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Fisher King is a redemption drama with a fantasy edge, written by Richard La Gravenese and directed by Terry Gilliam. Jeff Bridges stars as Jack Lucas, a New York radio shock jock who inadvertently provokes a listener to commit a mass murder in a restaurant. Years later, his career in tatters, Jack is about to commit suicide by jumping into the Hudson River when he is saved by Parry (Robin Williams), a mentally ill homeless man whose life was destroyed when his wife was killed in that very murder spree years previously. Parry is obsessed with the the Arthurian legend of the Fisher King, and he convinces Jack to help him find ‘the holy grail’; Jack sees this as a chance for personal redemption, and hopes that – by helping Parry get his life back – he will be able to bury his own demons, just as the fisher king of legend was able to have his injuries healed by helping others. The film co-stars Amanda Plummer, Mercedes Ruehl, and Michael Jeter, and was a critical success, ultimately receiving five Oscar nominations, with Ruehl winning for Best Supporting Actress. Read more…
BEASTMASTER 2: THROUGH THE PORTAL OF TIME – Robert Folk
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A belated sequel to the 1982 original, Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time sees Marc Singer returning to the role of Dar, a barbarian warrior who can communicate with and control animals, and who in the first film uses this power to defeat an evil wizard. In the sequel, Dar learns that his previously-unknown half-brother Arklon (Wings Hauser) plans to conquer the world with the help of a sorceress named Lyranna (Sarah Douglas). Arklon and Lyranna use a trans-dimensional portal – the eponymous portal of time – to travel to contemporary Los Angeles, where they intend to steal a nuclear bomb and bring it back to their world with them; Dar and his animal companions also travel through the portal to stop them, teaming up with a local woman named Jackie (Kari Wührer) along the way. The film was not well-received by critics at the time, but there is a fun and campy time to be had with it, and although allegedly director Sylvio Tabet stole the film out from underneath the original director Jim Wynorski, resulting in lawsuits and acrimony, he nevertheless keeps the action moving at a decent clip in what would prove to be his only effort behind the camera. Read more…
DEAD AGAIN – Patrick Doyle
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
After director Kenneth Branagh wowed Hollywood with his brash, compelling take on Shakespeare’s Henry V in 1989, many people expected that he would continue to drink deeply from the well of the Bard for his follow-up effort. Surprisingly, his sophomore effort was not a classic adaptation but was this film: Dead Again, a neo-noir thriller set in contemporary Los Angeles. Branagh plays private detective Mike Church, who is drawn into a mysterious case involving Grace, a woman with amnesia, played by Emma Thompson. In an attempt to discover her identity, he turns to antiques dealer and hypnotist Franklyn Madson (Derek Jacobi), who he believes can help her. While under hypnosis, Grace comes to believe that she is the reincarnation of Margaret, a socialite who was murdered by her composer husband Roman Strauss in 1949. Roman – who also bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Mike – took the secret of Margaret’s murder to his grave, and the more Mike digs into the events of the past, the more he and Grace find their lives in peril in the present. The movie is a fun, melodramatic romp filled with intentional homages to Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, and features a terrific, bold score by Patrick Doyle. Read more…
BARTON FINK – Carter Burwell
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Perhaps the best film ever made about writer’s block, Barton Fink is a nearly unclassifiable combination of drama, comedy, horror, romance, and existential philosophy, written and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. John Turturro plays the eponymous Fink, a New York playwright who moves to Los Angeles in the early 1940s, having been offered a job writing for the movies. Unable to find inspiration for his screenplay, he bonds with Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), an amiable salesman who lives next door to him in his rundown apartment building, and then tries to solicit advice from various writers and directors around Hollywood. However, an unexpected and shocking murder sends Fink into a spiral of surrealism, chaos, and death, as he tries to finish his debut script despite his world collapsing around him. The film co-stars Michael Lerner, Judy Davis, and John Mahoney among others, and was the darling of the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, eventually winning the coveted Palme d’Or; unfortunately, it was a box office disaster, its unusual genre and offbeat characters failing to connect with mainstream audiences in any meaningful way. Read more…
DOC HOLLYWOOD – Carter Burwell
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A fun romantic comedy intended to cash in on Michael J. Fox’s post-Back to the Future popularity, Doc Hollywood sees Fox playing Ben Stone, an aspiring surgeon on his way from Washington DC to Beverly Hills for a job interview with a prestigious clinic. While driving through a small town in rural South Carolina, Ben accidentally crashes his Porsche; the local judge sentences Ben to perform community service at the town’s medical clinic, which he does while waiting for his car to be repaired. Almost against his will, Ben begins to integrate into small-town life, successfully helping several of the locals with medical problems, and beginning a hesitant relationship with Lou (Julie Warner), a pretty ambulance driver. When the community service is up and Ben is free to head off to California, he finds himself torn between the lucrative career he always wanted, and the unexpected affection he develops for the small town he never intended to visit. The film is directed by Scottish filmmaker Michael Caton-Jones, has a fun supporting cast that includes Barnard Hughes, Woody Harrelson, David Ogden Stiers, and Bridget Fonda, and has a score from an unexpected composer – Carter Burwell. Read more…
POINT BREAK – Mark Isham
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most iconic action films of the 1990s, Point Break was a groundbreaking film in that it was one of the first major Hollywood movies to be directed by a woman, Kathryn Bigelow. The film stars Keanu Reeves as FBI agent Johnny Utah, who is tasked with investigating a gang of bank robbers who wear rubber masks of former US presidents while committing their crimes. Utah’s investigations eventually lead him to Bohdi (Patrick Swayze), a charismatic surfer, and Utah goes undercover to infiltrate the surf gang and find evidence that they are the robbers. However, Utah quickly develops a complex friendship with Bohdi, and begins a romantic relationship with Tyler (Lori Petty), another member of Bohdi’s surfing community, all of which threatens to derail the investigation. The film co-stars Gary Busey and John C. McGinley, and in the years following its release has become a cult favorite. Read more…
REGARDING HENRY – Hans Zimmer
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Regarding Henry is an emotional drama film written by the then-25-year-old J.J. Abrams, and directed by Mike Nichols. Harrison Ford stars as Henry Turner, a wildly successful but callous and unethical New York lawyer, whose work often means he neglects his wife, Sarah (Annette Bening), and their children. One night Henry is shot in the head when he accidentally interrupts a robbery in a convenience store; he survives, but is left with brain damage, amnesia, and physical handicaps, to the extent that he barely remembers his former life. Henry also undergoes a significant personality change, becoming almost child-like with friendliness, curiosity, and a new-found sense of ethics. The film goes on to explore how this sudden change, and slow recovery, affects Henry’s life, his career, and his relationship with his family. I have always liked the film a great deal, and consider it to be one of Harrison Ford’s career best straight dramatic performances. Read more…
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