Archive
THE PRINCE OF TIDES – James Newton Howard
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Prince of Tides is a serious romantic drama, directed by Barbra Streisand, and adapted from the acclaimed novel by Pat Conroy. The film stars Nick Nolte as Tom Wingo, a football coach from South Carolina, who is asked to travel to New York to help his sister, Savannah, who has recently attempted suicide. In New York Tom meets with Savannah’s psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein (Streisand), and the two have an immediate attraction to each other, despite them both being married. As time goes on Tom and Susan grow closer, and Tom begins to reveal long-suppressed details about his past and his private life, some of which relates directly to the issues plaguing Savannah, However, their deepening romantic relationship also threatens to break up their respective marriages, which could have devastating consequences for both families. The film co-stars Blythe Danner, Jeroen Krabbé, and Melinda Dillon, and was both a critical and commercial success, grossing more than $135 million at the box office, and picking up seven Academy Award nominations. Read more…
FATHER OF THE BRIDE – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Father of the Bride is charming remake of the classic 1950 Spencer Tracy-Elizabeth Taylor comedy, written by Nancy Meyers and directed by Charles Shyer. Steve Martin takes over the Tracy role as George Banks, a middle-aged father who finds himself suffering both a midlife crisis and a nervous breakdown when his only daughter Anne (Kimberly Williams) announces she is getting married. What follows is a comedy of errors as George – who is reluctant to see his daughter as a grown-up woman – suffers all manner of mishaps, mixed messages, and physical pratfalls as he supervises the organization of the wedding he does not want to happen. The film co-stars Diane Keaton and George Newbern, and features a hilarious cameo from Martin Short as Franck the wedding planner, and is one of those feelgood movies that is funny and heartwarming all at the same time. Read more…
BUGSY – Ennio Morricone
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Looking at the city of Las Vegas today, it’s difficult to see past its opulent hotels, gourmet restaurants, popular shows, beautiful weather, and frivolous excess, and remember that this world center of entertainment has its origins in organized crime. Director Barry Levinson’s film Bugsy explores these origins, specifically looking at the life and death of New York gangster Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, who travels to Los Angeles in the early 1940s, gets involved with tough-talking Hollywood actress Virginia Hill, and makes a lot of friends and a lot of enemies in California’s criminal underworld, before he has the world-changing idea of building a luxury casino – the Flamingo – in the sun-baked Nevada town of Las Vegas as a way to launder money. The film is a fascinating look at the birth of one of the world’s most popular vacation spots; it stars Warren Beatty as Bugsy, Annette Bening as Hill, and features a supporting cast including Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley, and Elliott Gould. The film was also a critical success, picking up ten Academy Award nominations – including Best Picture – and eventually winning for Art Direction and Costume Design. Read more…
HOOK – John Williams
THROWBACK THIRTY
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There have been dozens of theatrical and cinematic adaptations of J. M. Barrie’s classic fairy tale Peter Pan in the years since it was first published in the early 1900s, but it wasn’t until Steven Spielberg came along that there was a sequel. Hook was written by Jim Hart, Nick Castle, and Malia Scotch Marmo, and is set many years after the original story. Peter Pan has grown up and forgotten all about his adventurous childhood; he is now Peter Banning, and a successful lawyer in San Francisco, but he neglects his wife Moira and his children Jack and Maggie. In a last ditch attempt to save his marriage he agrees to a family vacation in London with Moira’s grandmother Wendy – the same Wendy who loved Peter when she was a girl, and who is now an old woman. However, everything changes when Peter’s old nemesis Captain Hook kidnaps his children, and Peter is forced to return to Neverland, reunite with Tinker Bell and the Lost Boys, and remember his birthright, in order to save them. Read more…
JFK – John Williams
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The assassination of US president John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963 was one of the defining moments of twentieth century American history. History books state that he was killed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was himself murdered by local Dallas businessman Jack Ruby while in custody just a day or so later. Oswald’s true motive has never been categorically established, and in the years since the event a series of conspiracy theories have emerged – that Oswald was a ‘patsy’ working for the Russians, that there were additional shooters who have never been identified located on a nearby ‘grassy knoll,’ and even that Kennedy’s vice president Lyndon Johnson was somehow involved as part of a coup for him to seize power. Many of these theories are examined in great detail in director Oliver Stone’s film JFK, which looks at the events leading up to, during, and after the assassination, and then focuses deeply on the subsequent investigation by former district attorney Jim Garrison, as well as the official congressional commission led by chief justice Earl Warren. The film is a dense, complicated, intricate film that offers plenty of theories, conjecture, and opinion, but never really settles on a decision as to what really happened, although Stone heavily implies that he believes that the conspiracy goes much deeper than the official investigation concluded. Read more…
AN AMERICAN TAIL: FIEVEL GOES WEST – James Horner, Will Jennings
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A fun, undemanding sequel to the 1986 original, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West continues the animated adventures of the immigrant mouse Fievel Mousekewitz and his family. Having successfully reunited at the end of the first film and settled in New York, this new film sees the Mousekewitzes making the decision to head west to start a new life, prompted by the fact that their neighborhood is being terrorized by a new gang of felines led by a British aristocratic cat named Cat R. Waul. Desperate for safety and security the family boards a train bound for Utah; Fievel has aspirations of meeting the famed lawman Wylie Burp, while his sister Tanya wants to be a singer in a burlesque show. However, the Mousekewitzes are unaware that they are falling into a trap set by the unscrupulous Waul, and must find a way to defeat him before his nefarious plan comes to fruition. The film is directed by Phil Nibbelink and Simon Wells, taking over from Don Bluth; it features the voices of Philip Glasser, Cathy Cavadini, Dom DeLuise, John Cleese, and James Stewart in his final film role, and has a score by James Horner. Read more…
THE ADDAMS FAMILY – Marc Shaiman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
They’re creepy and their kooky, mysterious and spooky, they’re all together ooky, the Addams family.
A big-screen reboot of the classic 1960s TV sitcom, which itself was based on a popular newspaper cartoon by Charles Addams, The Addams Family is a comedy with a twist. Led by patriarch Gomez Addams and his aristocratic wife Morticia, the Addamses are a macabre group who demonstrate some supernatural abilities, but nevertheless live a comparatively normal life in suburban America with their children Wednesday and Pugsley, their manservant Lurch, and a disembodied hand named Thing which acts as the family pet. The film picks up the story many years after the TV show ended, and follows the family as it tries to re-connect with Gomez’s long-lost brother Fester, who has unexpectedly reappeared in their lives after being missing for a long time. However, unbeknownst to the Addamses, ‘Fester’ is actually a conman working with a loan shark, who wants the family fortune. The plot is really just an excuse for the cast to engage in a series of deliciously dark and ghoulishly comedic set-pieces, near-the-knuckle jokes, and verbal witticisms. The cast is led wonderfully by the late Raul Julia as the flamboyant Gomez, Anjelica Huston as the sultry Morticia, and Christopher Lloyd as Fester, and features a breakthrough performance from the then 11-year-old Christina Ricci as the proto-goth kid Wednesday. It was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and was mostly a critical and commercial success, eventually receiving an Oscar nomination for costume design. Read more…
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…
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