Archive
84 CHARING CROSS ROAD – George Fenton
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
84 Charing Cross Road is a genteel British period drama directed by David Hugh Jones, based on the semi-autobiographical novel by American author Helene Hanff. The film stars Anne Bancroft as Hanff, and tells the story of the long-distance friendship that develops between her and antiquarian bookseller Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins), who manages a shop at the titular address in London in 1949. The film is little more than a quiet character study, a snapshot of life on opposite sides of the Atlantic in the period immediately after World War II, but the story has proved to be immensely popular: the original novel was a best seller, the subsequent Broadway stage play was a smash hit, and this screen adaptation was a critical darling in the UK; Anne Bancroft won a BAFTA for her leading role, and the film was BAFTA-nominated for its screenplay, and for Judi Dench’s supporting role as Frank’s wife, Nora. Read more…
CRIMES OF THE HEART – Georges Delerue
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Crimes of the Heart is a ‘southern gothic’ family comedy-drama based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Beth Hanley. Directed by Bruce Beresford, it stars Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, and Sissy Spacek as Lenny, Meg, and Babe, three adult sisters who move back into their childhood home in Mississippi after they suffer various personal tragedies and indiscretions, ranging from Lenny’s failed relationships to Meg’s stalled career. Back under the same roof after many years apart, it is not long before long-dormant resentments bubble to the surface once more, as the sisters are forced to deal not only with assorted relatives and past relationships, but also the aftermath of Babe’s latest incident in which she shot her abusive husband. The film co-stars Sam Shepard, Tess Harper, and old Hollywood character actor Hurd Hatfield as their Old Grandaddy, and was a critical success, receiving three Oscar nominations and two Golden Globe nominations, most notably for Spacek’s performance as the fiery Babe. Read more…
AN AMERICAN TAIL – James Horner, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In the wake of the success of The Secret of NIMH in 1982, master animator Don Bluth began a collaboration with Steven Spielberg and Universal Pictures, who wanted to capitalize on NIMH’s popularity and produce their own animated film, the studio’s first since 1965. The result was An American Tail, the story of a family of Russian-Jewish mice who emigrate to the United States in the late 1800s, having been lured there on the promise of there being ‘no cats in America’. During their ocean crossing the family’s youngest son, Fievel Mousekewitz, is swept overboard and feared drowned; upon their arrival in New York, the remaining Mousekewitzes resign themselves to having lost their son, and sadly begin their new lives. However, Fievel has miraculously survived and makes his way to New York on his own, and the plucky young rodent embarks on a quest to reunite with his family, engaging in numerous adventures on the way. The film features the voices of Nehemiah Persoff, Erica Yohn, Dom DeLuise, Christopher Plummer, and the then-8-year-old Phillip Glasser as Fievel; it was a huge success at the box office, especially with children, who loved the film despite its dark tone. Read more…
HOOSIERS – Jerry Goldsmith
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Hoosiers is generally considered one of the best sports films ever made. Directed by David Anspaugh and written by Angelo Pizzo (who would later collaborate again on Rudy in 1993), the film stars Gene Hackman as Norman Dale, a former elite basketball coach who, after suffering a personal humiliation, is forced to take a job as a teacher and basketball coach at a tiny high school in Indiana in 1951. Despite overwhelming odds – including a small student population to select a team from, opposition from parents, opposition from faculty members such as English teacher Myra Fleener (Barbara Hershey), and a hopelessly drunk assistant coach (Dennis Hopper) – Dale leads his team to the state championship game. Looking back on the film today, Hoosiers seems to be very clichéd, but the truth of the matter is that this film is the one that invented, or at least popularized, many of the sports movie clichés we take for granted today: the gruff coach with a heart of gold, the group of misfits who come together to form a winning team, the old-fashioned old-timers who don’t understand what the newcomer is doing, the last-second winning shot to clinch the championship. Hoosiers was a massively popular and successful film, and received two Oscar nominations: one for Hopper as Best Supporting Actor, and one for Jerry Goldsmith’s score. Read more…
THE MISSION – Ennio Morricone
THROWBACK THIRTY
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There are moments in film music history where you can listen to a score, and upon its conclusion sit back and be content in the knowledge that you have just experienced a genuine masterpiece. It doesn’t happen very often, because it has to be a perfect combination of everything that can possibly make a film score great. It has to fit the film, of course, carrying the story and enhancing the drama and elevating it to a point where the two seem inseparable, and where the film would be immeasurably diminished by it not being there. But then it also has to have all those things that make it excellent as pure music – everything from recurring themes that develop through the score, to orchestration, technique, and those intangibles of “beauty” and “memorability,” which of course are purely subjective, but nevertheless often affect a wide range of people in similar emotional ways. Ennio Morricone’s 1986 score for The Mission is, undoubtedly, one of those scores which ticks every box, a masterpiece on every conceivable level. Read more…
PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED – John Barry
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Although he is best known for his epic gangster Godfather trilogy, and for the classic war movie Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola has made many other movies in his career, and some of them are much less dramatic and shocking. One of those is the 1986 film Peggy Sue Got Married, a romantic comedy-drama wish fulfillment-fantasy written by husband and wife team Jerry Leichtling and Arlene Sarner. Kathleen Turner stars as Peggy Sue Bodell, who attends her 25-year high school reunion shortly after separating from her unfaithful husband Charlie (Nicolas Cage), her former high school sweetheart. Peggy Sue regrets many of the decisions she made in her life, such as getting pregnant by Charlie in high school, and feels that her circumstances would be different if she had the chance to do it over again. Peggy Sue faints at the reunion, and when she wakes up she magically finds herself in 1960, back in high school, and with the chance to right the wrongs of the past. The film, which co-starred Barry Miller, Catherine Hicks, Joan Allen, and a 24-year-old Jim Carrey, was both a commercial and a critical success, and was nominated for three Academy Awards, including one for Turner as Best Actress. The film also features an original score by the legendary John Barry, the second and last of his collaborations with Coppola after The Cotton Club in 1984. Read more…
ROUND MIDNIGHT – Herbie Hancock
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
During the 1980s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made some truly baffling decisions with regard to the Oscar for Best Original Score. In 1980 Michael Gore’s light pop score for Fame beat out The Empire Strikes Back. In 1981 Vangelis’s one-theme electronic noodling on Chariots of Fire somehow defeated Raiders of the Lost Ark. In 1988 Dave Grusin won for The Milagro Beanfield War – a film and score which, at least amongst my casual acquaintances, virtually no-one has seen or heard. Perhaps the strangest decision, however, came in 1986 when jazz composer and musician Herbie Hancock won for his score for Round Midnight, beating composers of such eminence as James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, and Ennio Morricone, whose losing score for The Mission was not only the best score of 1986, but is on the list of the best scores ever written. Read more…
CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD – Michael Convertino
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Children of a Lesser God is a thoughtful, powerful romantic drama directed by Randa Haines, based on the Tony Award–winning stage play of the same name by Mark Medoff, adapted for the screen by Medoff and fellow writer Hesper Anderson. It stars William Hurt as James Leeds, a teacher who starts a new job as an instructor at a New England school for the deaf. One day James meets Sarah Norman (Marlee Matlin), a young deaf woman who works at the school as a member of the janitorial staff. Sarah is a sign language user, and refuses to speak out loud. As James and Sarah slowly develop a romance, it is gradually revealed that her silence is due in part to her difficult relationship with her mother (Piper Laurie), who is domineering and unreasonable, as well as her sexual history – Sarah has been raped before, and is struggling to come to terms with the repercussions of this in her life. The film was a critical success, receiving five Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture, and special praise was reserved for Matlin, who made her acting debut in this film, is deaf in real life, and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actress at the age of just 21. Read more…
FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF – Ira Newborn
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
If you ask anyone who grew up in the 1980s to name the sausage king of Chicago, chances are they will immediately reply Abe Froman, such is the enduring legacy of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. A raucous comedy written and directed by John Hughes – hot off the success of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Weird Science – the film stars Matthew Broderick as the eponymous hero, a smart-mouthed high school slacker who fakes an illness to take a day off school; after convincing his girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara) and his uptight best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) to join him, they take Cameron’s father’s beloved Ferrari into Chicago for a day of mischief. However, high school teacher Mr. Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) is wise to Ferris’s antics, and is determined to put a stop to his delinquency once and for all. The film was an enormous critical and popular success, raking in millions of dollars at the box office over the summer of 1986, and making a star of its charismatic young leading man, while many of the film’s scenes and catchphrases became cultural touchstones for American kids. Personally, however, I have never been a huge fan of the film; I always found Ferris and his antics to be annoyingly egotistical, completely oblivious to the genuine protestations of his friends regarding his behavior, although I do find some of the set-pieces and one liners to be pretty amusing. Read more…
LINK – Jerry Goldsmith
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Despite being generally regarded as one of the most brilliant and groundbreaking composers in the history of cinema, Jerry Goldsmith scored some absolute stinkers when it came to the quality of the actual movies themselves. The 1980s was particularly fertile ground for terrible films; the decade saw him working on such ignominious titles as The Challenge, Baby: The Secret of Lost Legend, King Solomon’s Mines, Rent-a-Cop, and Warlock, but perhaps no film sums up this rather unfortunate aspect to his legacy as Link, a movie about a monkey that embarks on a killing spree. The film was directed by Richard Franklin, for whom Goldsmith scored Psycho II in 1983, and starred Elizabeth Shue as Jane, a young American anthropology student, who travels to England to work with a brilliant but reclusive professor (Terence Stamp) at his remote Victorian mansion/research facility. However, once Jane gets to know the mansion’s simian inhabitants, she begins to notice unusual events occurring, and suspects that an aged orangutan named Link, who is basically the facility’s butler, may be responsible… Read more…
CROCODILE DUNDEE – Peter Best
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Up north in the Never-Never, where the land is harsh and bare, lives a mighty hunter named Mick Dundee, who can dance like Fred Astaire.
In the late summer of 1986 the world went crazy for an Australian comedian and actor named Paul Hogan and his cinematic creation, Michael J. “Crocodile” Dundee. A fish-out-of-water comedy with a healthy dose of unconventional romance, Crocodile Dundee made a bonafide star out of its rough-and-tumble leading man, with his salty catchphrases and easy charm. The film’s plot is a fairly straightforward one: New York magazine reporter Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) travels to the remote Northern Territory in Australia to interview bushman Mick Dundee, the subject of many tall tales regarding his adventures in the outback. After experiencing first hand Mick’s prowess and survival skills, Sue invites Mick to travel back with her to New York to “continue the story”. Upon his arrival in the Big Apple, Dundee finds himself bemused by the local customs, but quickly wins over everyone he meets – the lone exception being Sue’s sarcastic and arrogant fiancé Richard (Mark Blum), who belittles and patronizes Mick at every opportunity. Of course, as is always the way of things in movies like this, Sue and Mick begin to fall for each other… Read more…
THE NAME OF THE ROSE – James Horner
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Name of the Rose is a murder mystery with a difference. Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, and adapted from the enormously popular 1980 novel by Umberto Eco, it stars Sean Connery as William, a 14th century monk who journeys to a Benedictine monastery in northern Italy to attend a religious conference with other scholars. However, the conference is disturbed by several unexplained deaths, and the monastery’s abbot (Michael Lonsdale) assigns William to investigate them. With the help of his young student Adso (Christian Slater), William quickly uncovers a hotbed of secrets, hidden desires, and political and religious skullduggery among the monks, leading to more murders as the perpetrator seeks to maintain hidden. The film, which co-stars F. Murray Abraham, Helmut Qualtinger, Feodor Chaliapin, and Ron Perlman, was unfortunately not a successful one in financial terms, but it has gone on to be something of a cult film in some circles, with critics likening Connery to a medieval Sherlock Holmes who uses ingenuity and intellect to uncover the truth, in stark comparison to Abraham’s fiery and superstitious bishop, who as a member of the Spanish inquisition sees witchcraft and devilishness under around every corner. Read more…
VALHALLA – Ron Goodwin
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Valhalla was a Danish animated film based on a series of popular comic books, which were in turn based on the ancient Norse mythologies. The story focuses on two human children, brother and sister Tjalfe and Røskva, whose farm is visited by the gods Thor and Loki during one of their many visits to Earth. However, when Loki tricks the children into breaking a golden rule, Thor – not knowing that Loki was responsible – decides to punish the children by taking them home with him to Asgård to be his servants. Once in Asgård, the children find their new life among the gods is surprisingly dull and so, with the help of a strange creature named Quark whom Loki has adopted, the children escape from Thor’s home, and begin a series of adventures where they meet giants in a magical forest, and even encounter Odin, the king of the gods himself. The film was directed by Peter Madsen and Jeffrey Farab, and at the time was the most expensive Danish film ever made, having cost around 40 million kroner. It was also popular with audiences across Scandinavia, but the production company failed to regain the cost of production and, as a result, the film became a financial flop at the box office, scuppering the chances of sequels based on other comic books in the series. Read more…
MOUNTBATTEN: THE LAST VICEROY – John Scott
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy was a critically acclaimed 6-part British television series, telling the astonishing life story of Louis Mountbatten, a member of the British aristocracy, and a cousin to Queen Elizabeth II. The series chronicles his life as a British statesman and naval officer; he served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in South-East Asia during World War II, and afterwards was appointed Viceroy of British colonial India, where he successfully negotiated with both Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and oversaw the transition of power from the British Empire to the independent nations of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in 1947. Following his work in India, Mountbatten returned to Britain, and subsequently served in the government as a senior member of the military, until he was assassinated by the Irish Republican Army in 1979. The series was directed by Tom Clegg, starred Nicol Williamson, Janet Suzman, and Ian Richardson, and had a score by the great English film composer John Scott. Read more…
THE BOY WHO COULD FLY – Bruce Broughton
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Boy Who Could Fly was a popular family drama, written and directed by Nick Castle, about a friendship that helps two children overcome deep emotional wounds. Lucy Deakins stars as Millie, a 14-year old girl who makes friends with Eric (Jay Underwood), the similarly-aged boy next door, after the suicide of her terminally ill father. Eric has autism, and lives with his alcoholic uncle (Fred Gwynne), because both his parents were killed in a plane crash when he was much younger. Despite Eric’s verbal inability to communicate, the two teenagers nevertheless seem to help each other deal with their personal issues, but before long a series of unusual events lead Millie to think that, somehow, Eric has the ability to fly. The film was both a critical and popular success at the box office in the late summer of 1986 (it subsequently won the prestigious Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film); it co-starred Bonnie Bedelia, Fred Savage, and Colleen Dewhurst, and had its sense of magic enhanced immeasurably by Bruce Broughton’s gorgeous score. Read more…
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