Archive
SWING KIDS – James Horner
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Swing Kids is an interesting exploration of a sub-culture that existed in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s. These so-called ‘swingjugend’ were groups of 14- to 21-year-old Germans, mostly middle or upper-class students, who admired the “American way of life” and rebelled against the government by gathering in underground nightclubs in Hamburg and Berlin, and listening to and dancing to swing music – an activity that the Hitler Youth of the National Socialist Party hated, and tried to suppress. The film follows the fortunes of one such group of youths, who grow up surrounded by intolerance and violence, and find the ‘swingjugend’ movement to be a welcome distraction, until the ramifications of their action begins to impact their daily lives. The film is directed by Thomas Carter, stars Robert Sean Leonard, Christian Bale, Frank Whaley, and Barbara Hershey, with an uncredited Kenneth Branagh in especially fine as an unexpectedly sympathetic Nazi SS-Sturmbannführer. Read more…
SHADOW OF THE WOLF – Maurice Jarre
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Shadow of the Wolf is a French-Canadian action adventure film directed by Jacques Dorfmann and Pierre Magny, set in the snowy wastes of the Arctic in the 1930s. The film stars Lou Diamond Phillips as Agaguk, an Inuit warrior who has a violent hatred for the white men encroaching on his territory. A series of incidents leads to Agaguk being banished by his shaman father, and he is forced to live in isolation in the most inhospitable parts of northern Quebec with his wife Igiyook. Things get worse for Agaguk when he gets into an altercation with, and accidentally kills, a white fur trader, an incident which brings the might of the Canadian police to bear on his tribal home. The rest of the story intends to be a serious exploration of themes related to the culture clash between white men and the Inuit, dressed up with an action-adventure police manhunt plot, but unfortunately it was hamstrung by terrible dialogue, poor acting performances, and a screenplay that erased all the nuance and subtlety of Yves Theriault’s acclaimed original novel. At the time the film was the most expensive Canadian film ever made, but it sank without a trace at the box office, and is mostly forgotten today. Read more…
ARMY OF DARKNESS – Joseph Lo Duca
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Army of Darkness is the third instalment of director Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series, and is a direct continuation of the story of 1987’s Evil Dead II. The plot of that film saw its protagonist, Ash, inadvertently summon a demon after reading passages from an ancient ‘book of the dead’. His girlfriend Linda is possessed by the demon, and attacks him, and in the ensuing battle he has his hand severed at the wrist with a chainsaw. Eventually Ash is able to defeat the demon, but in doing so he accidentally opens a temporal vortex to the Middle Ages, through which he and his car are transported. Army of Darkness follows the story from that point on, as Ash enlists the help of a medieval lord, falls in love with the lord’s daughter, and has to search for another version of the ‘book of the dead’ that will allow him to return home – all while battling more demonic ‘deadites’. The film starred Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, and Marcus Gilbert, and was a moderate commercial success, but unfortunately was not well-liked by critics, many of whom were disappointed with its campier, less horrific tone. It ultimately ended the Evil Dead franchise for more than 20 years, until it was resurrected and rebooted by director Fede Álvarez in 2013. Read more…
SOMMERSBY – Danny Elfman
THROWBACK THIRTY
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Sommersby is an English-language adaptation of the 1982 French film Le Retour de Martin Guerre, which was itself based on a real-life event that happened in the 16th century. The film was written by Nicholas Meyer, Sarah Kernochan, and Anthony Shaffer, and was directed by Jon Amiel; it transposes the story from medieval France to post-Civil War Tennessee, and stars Richard Gere as Jack Sommersby, a man who returns home from the conflict, six years after he was presumed dead. Jack’s ‘widow’ Laurel (Jodie Foster) has already moved on, and is planning to marry farmer Orin Meacham (Bill Pullman), but Jack’s return home throws her life into turmoil – not least because Jack appears to be a changed man, and is no longer the unpleasant and abusive husband he was when he left. As time goes on, Jack proves to be a hugely positive force for the community, and Laurel begins to fall in love with him again, but something in the back of her mind keeps nagging at her, and she has doubts as to whether the new and improved Jack really is who he says he is – doubts which become stronger when men from Jack’s past appear, and accuse him of murder. Read more…
GROUNDHOG DAY – George Fenton
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the best – and, with the benefit of hindsight, most influential and enduring – comedies of the early 1990s was Groundhog Day. Written by Danny Rubin and directed by Harold Ramis, the film stars Bill Murray as cynical television weatherman Phil Connors. Phil is sent to the small town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to cover the local Groundhog Day festivities, along with his producer Rita Hanson (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman Larry (Chris Elliott); however, after completing a perfunctory report, the crew is stranded in town by an unexpected blizzard, and is forced to spend the night in a local inn. The following morning, when Phil wakes up, he soon realizes that it is Groundhog Day again – he has somehow become trapped in a time loop, and is forced to relive the same day over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over… Read more…
RICH IN LOVE – Georges Delerue
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
On March 18th, 1992, as composer Georges Delerue was packing up and preparing to leave Scoring Stage 1 on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank, California, having just finished recording the final cue for his latest film, Rich in Love, he suffered a stroke. He was rushed to the nearby St. Joseph’s Medical Center but never recovered, and he died there two days later at the age of 67. In the days and weeks after his death his friends and colleagues mourned one of the giants of film music; the director of Rich in Love, Bruce Beresford, summed it up by saying that Delerue’s scores “were never trite. They were so melodic and effortless. It was like turning on a tap. The music just flowed.” Of course, it’s impossible to know whether Delerue had any inkling about what was about to happen to him, but Varese Sarabande producer Robert Townson – who knew Delerue well – mused on this very idea in the liner notes for this soundtrack album, and wondered whether Rich in Love represented him writing a good-bye to each of his friends. Read more…
ALIVE – James Newton Howard
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In October 1972 a plane carrying a rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay, who were on their way to play a game in Santiago, Chile, crashed high in the Andes mountains. 15 of the 45 passengers and crew died on impact but the others – some of whom were badly injured – quickly had to figure out how to survive. During the following 72 days, the survivors suffered extreme hardships, including exposure, starvation, and an avalanche, which led to the deaths of thirteen more passengers; famously, but reluctantly, they were forced to resort to cannibalism to stave off death due to lack of food. Eventually two of the rugby players – Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa – decided to strike out for help. They climbed a 15,000 foot mountain without gear, and then hiked almost 50 miles. It took them almost in 10 days, but they finally stumbled into a remote village, where they could obtain help and call for the Chilean Army to rescue the other survivors. This incredible story was turned into a book, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read, and then eventually into this film, which was directed by Frank Marshall and starred Ethan Hawke, Josh Hamilton, and Vincent Spano. Read more…
CHAPLIN – John Barry
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Considering that he was one of the most important and transformative figures in the history of cinema, it’s somewhat surprising that there wasn’t a biopic of Charlie Chaplin until 1992. The film was a labor of love for director Richard Attenborough; it was written by a trio of literature greats – William Boyd, Bryan Forbes, and William Goldman – and starred the then 27-year old Robert Downey Jr. in the role that marked his transition from youthful movies to serious adult cinema. The film charts Chaplin’s entire life and career, from his impoverished childhood growing up in Victorian London, to his first brushes with showbusiness via Fred Karno’s vaudeville theatre, his move to the United States in 1914, and his gradual rise to fame via his iconic ‘tramp’ character in silent films such as The Kid, The Gold Rush, and City Lights. It also reveals his tempestuous private life – various love affairs and failed marriages – as well as his political conflicts with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, which eventually led to him fleeing America for Europe at the height of his fame amid accusations of communist sympathies. The film climaxes with Chaplin’s glorious return to Hollywood in 1972 after decades in exile, when he received an honorary Oscar for ‘the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century’. Read more…
SCENT OF A WOMAN – Thomas Newman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Scent of a Woman is a critically acclaimed drama film directed by Martin Brest. It’s a remake of the 1974 Italian film Profumo di Donna, directed by Dino Risi, which was itself an adaptation of the 1969 novel ‘Il Buio e il Miele’ by Giovanni Arpino. It stars Al Pacino and Chris O’Donnell, with James Rebhorn, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Gabrielle Anwar in primary supporting roles. Pacino plays Frank Slade, a former lieutenant colonel in the US Army, who has become an irascible alcoholic following an accident that left him blind. Frank’s niece hires Charlie Simms, a young student with dreams of getting into Harvard, to be his temporary caretaker over the Thanksgiving weekend, and initially there is a terrible personality clash, but gradually the two unlikely companions warm to each other – until Frank calmly states that, at the end of the holiday, he intends to kill himself. Meanwhile, Charlie is having issues of his own, relating to an incident he witnessed at this school, the repercussions of which threaten to jeopardize his entire future. The film was roundly praised at the time, especially for the performance by Pacino, who won the Oscar for Best Actor for his work here. Read more…
FOREVER YOUNG – Jerry Goldsmith
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Forever Young was a romantic drama with a fantasy-science fiction twist, written by a young J. J. Abrams (credited as ‘Jeffrey’), and directed by Steve Miner. It was envisaged as a vehicle for Mel Gibson to establish himself as a romantic leading man; he plays Daniel McCormick, a test pilot with the US Army Air Corps in 1939. When his fiancé Helen (Isabel Glasser) falls into a coma after a car accident, and not wanting to watch her die, Daniel volunteers for a top-secret government program where he will be cryogenically frozen and placed into suspended animation for a year. However, when Daniel is finally woken up, he is shocked to discover that it is now 1992; with the help of an inquisitive 10-year old boy named Nat (Elijah Wood) and his charming mother Claire (Jamie Lee Curtis), Daniel resolves to find out what happened – but is soon presented with another problem, as he finds himself ageing rapidly. The film was a modest success at the box office and with critics, who enjoyed its old fashioned charm, unusual time-travel plot, and warm lead performances. Read more…
HOFFA – David Newman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa remains one of the United States’s most intriguing mysteries. Hoffa was a union leader with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Detroit, an important man with political influence, but who was also involved with a number of criminal organizations, including the mafia. Hoffa went missing in 1975 after leaving to have a meeting with two local organized crime kingpins; to this day his body has never been found and, although he was declared legally dead in 1982, speculation about his fate and what exactly happened to him remains rife. This film, directed by Danny DeVito and written by David Mamet, looks back at Hoffa’s life and ends with his mysterious disappearance. Jack Nicholson plays Hoffa, and DeVito plays Robert Ciaro, an amalgamation of several Hoffa associates over the years. The film also features John C. Reilly, Robert Prosky, Kevin Anderson, Armand Assante, and J. T. Walsh in key supporting roles. The film was a modest critical and commercial hit; it earned two Oscar nominations for Cinematography and Makeup, and Nicholson received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor. Read more…
MALCOLM X – Terence Blanchard
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Malcolm X is a biopic of one of the key figures in the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and tells his life story – growing up subjected to Jim Crow racism in Michigan in the 1920s, dealing with his father’s death and his mother’s mental illness, his youth as a juvenile delinquent, becoming a Muslim while in prison, and eventually joining the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist organization that was denounced as a terrorist group by the FBI. Along with leaders like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X was a prominent campaigner for civil rights, until – like King – he too was assassinated, just as he was giving a speech in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom in February 1965. The film was directed by Spike Lee and starred Denzel Washington as Malcolm, alongside a supporting cast that included Angela Bassett, Albert Hall, Al Freeman Jr., and Delroy Lindo. The film was a huge critical success, and earned Washington an Oscar nomination for his powerful lead performance. Read more…
A FEW GOOD MEN – Marc Shaiman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I have always viewed A Few Good Men as one of the best legal drama-thrillers of the 1990s. It’s a richly detailed, wonderfully written, dazzlingly acted exposé of a part of the US military, based on the acclaimed stage play by Aaron Sorkin, directed by Rob Reiner. The film stars Tom Cruise at the height of his movie star fame, playing Daniel Kaffee, a military lawyer in the US Navy, whose reputation for juvenile antics and easy plea bargaining has made him something of a joke among his peers. Things change for Kaffee when he is hired to defend two Marines accused of killing a fellow soldier on the base at Guantanamo Bay. Kaffee’s appointment angers his reluctant co-counsel, Joanne Galloway (Demi Moore), who thinks that there is more to the case than meets the eye, and is concerned that Kaffee’s blasé approach will derail the defense. As they dig more deeply into the circumstances surrounding the marine’s death, they find themselves at loggerheads with Nathan Jessup (a phenomenal Jack Nicholson), the colonel in charge of the Guantanamo unit, a feared and respected career soldier with unorthodox methods of maintaining discipline. Read more…
ALADDIN – Alan Menken, Howard Ashman, Tim Rice
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The enormous success of Beauty and the Beast in 1991 ushered in what is now commonly known as the Disney Renaissance, which brought to an end a period of comparative creative and commercial failure for mouse house, and initiated what was quicky became a decade of constant growth and acclaim. Lyricist Howard Ashman, who had been a major part of Beauty and the Beast’s success alongside his composing partner Alan Menken, had also been working on a draft treatment for a potential Aladdin movie, based on the Arabic folktale of the same name from the One Thousand and One Nights, and the screenplay went through three drafts before then-Disney Studios president Jeffrey Katzenberg agreed to its production. The finished film is now one of the most beloved animated films of all time; it tells the story of street urchin Aladdin, who finds a magical lamp hidden in a cave and inadvertently releases from it a powerful genie who can grant him three wishes. Aladdin wishes to be a rich prince to that he can court the beautiful Princess Jasmine, the daughter of the sultan, but in doing so falls foul of Jafar, the sultan’s vizier advisor, who covets the power of the lamp for himself. Read more…
THE BODYGUARD – Alan Silvestri
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
If you listened to popular music on the radio, or watched TV, at any point in 1992, then you will have found it impossible to escape the pervasive reach of “I Will Always Love You,” singer Whitney Houston’s cover of the classic 1973 Dolly Parton song. “I Will Always Love You” was being used in the soundtrack of Houston’s debut film as a leading actress, The Bodyguard, and it was everywhere that summer. It went on to break numerous chart records for sales and staying power – it won the Grammy for Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance (Female) – while the Bodyguard soundtrack album itself went on to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, ultimately becoming the best-selling soundtrack album of all-time, the best-selling album by a woman in music history, and the best-selling album of the entire 1990s decade. Overlooked in all of this hoopla and success is the film’s score, which was written by Alan Silvestri – something which I intend to correct here. Read more…
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