Archive
ADAM – Christopher Lennertz
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A small scale romantic drama about a man suffering from Asberger’s Syndrome, Adam stars Hugh Dancy as the titular character, an introverted young man with awkward social graces, who develops a relationship with equally shy Beth (Rose Byrne), a young woman who lives in the same apartment building, who is recovering from her own damaged past relationship. Director Max Mayer’s film, which also stars Peter Gallagher and Amy Irving, takes a gentle look at the life of Asberger’s sufferers, proving that all relationships – no matter what the hurdles – can be overcome by love.
The score for Adam is by Christopher Lennertz, who has hitherto been better known for his large-scale action scores for video games and for his work on big-budget comedies such as Alvin and the Chipmunks and Meet the Spartans. Read more…
THE FINAL DESTINATION – Brian Tyler
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
As if they hadn’t squeezed enough life out of this franchise yet, The Final Destination – the fourth film in the horror movie franchise – again follows the fortunes of a set of teenagers who cheat death, but then find that Death doesn’t like being cheated, and sets out to claim them anyway. The film is directed by David R. Ellis and stars Bobby Campo as college student Nick O’Bannon who, while attending a NASCAR race, has a premonition that a car wreck will cause a stand to collapse, killing himself and his friends; he convinces everyone to leave before the disaster occurs, but in the weeks following the event, his friends all die one by one in freak accidents.
The late, great Shirley Walker set the musical tone for the first three Final Destination films prior to her untimely death in 2006, and her mantle has now been picked up by the resourceful Brian Tyler Read more…
HALLOWEEN II – Tyler Bates
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Cult director Rob Zombie’s ultra-violent re-imagining of the classic Halloween legend continues with Halloween II. Picking up immediately from where the last film left off, the film stars Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie Strode, who has been taken to hospital to recover from the wounds inflicted on her by her psychotic, murderous brother Michael Myers (Tyler Mane). However, Laurie’s recuperation is short lived when the supposedly dead Michael returns, very much alive, intent on reuniting with his sister, even if it means murdering everyone in the hospital who stands in his way.
Despite an idiosyncratic cast that includes Malcolm McDowell, Brad Dourif and the director’s wife Sheri Moon-Zombie, Halloween II was called a “brutal, bloody, badly executed mess“, and was a comparative box office failure. The same adjectives could apply to Tyler Bates’ score. Read more…
TAKING WOODSTOCK – Danny Elfman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I missed out on being a part of the Woodstock generation by a good decade or more, having been born six years after it took place, but growing up I was acutely aware on how much the seminal 1969 music festival shaped the musical, social and political mindset of a generation. Calling Woodstock a ‘music festival’ is to underplay its significance: not only did it popularize the music of artists as varied as Jimi Hendrix, Crosby Stills & Nash, the Grateful Dead, Joan Baez and Janis Joplin, it also became a cultural touchstone for the hippie movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement. Ang Lee’s new film Taking Woodstock takes a gently comedic look at the events leading up to the festival; it stars Demetri Martin as Elliot Tiber, the actual organizer of the festival, Eugene Levy as Max Yager, on whose farmland the festival took place, and features Dan Fogler, Imelda Staunton, Henry Goodman, Liev Schreiber and Emile Hirsch in supporting roles. Read more…
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS – Ennio Morricone/Various Artists
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s sixth film, Inglourious Basterds is a World War II movie with attitude. Set in mainland Europe at the height of the conflict, it stars Brad Pitt as Aldo Raine, the leader of a crack platoon of Jewish-American soldiers who have dubbed themselves ‘the Basterds’, and who actively seek out and savagely kill as many German servicemen as possible, with the intent of creating fear and discord amongst the troops. His opposing number is Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a cruel and ruthless SS officer also known as ‘The Jew Hunter’, whose actions in murdering the family of a young Franco-Jewish family comes back to haunt him when the only survivor, a young girl named Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), embarks on a plot to assassinate Hitler at the premiere of a Nazi propaganda film. Read more…
CAPTAIN ABU RAED – Austin Wintory
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The first film made in Jordan for over 50 years, Captain Abu Raed was that country’s first ever Foreign Language Film submission, at the 2008 Academy Awards. Directed by Amin Matalqa, the film stars Nadim Sawalha as the titular character, a cleaner at Amman’s International Airport, who after finding a discarded pilot’s hat in the trash, is mistaken for a pilot by some local children, who he then regales with fantastical stories of his world travels. Eventually, Abu strikes up a friendship with a boy named Murad, who is being abused by his drunken father. After one particularly violent episode, Abu vows to try to help Murad and his mother escape from their domestic hell. Read more…
DISTRICT 9 – Clinton Shorter
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Each cinematic year seems to produce a “sleeper hit”, a little film which comes out of nowhere, captures the public’s imagination, and strikes box office gold, often as a result of creative marketing and positive word of mouth. Sleeper hits over the years have included little films like The Terminator, The Blair Witch Project and The Full Monty; if the early buzz is anything to go by, 2009’s sleeper hit looks likely to be District 9, a South African science fiction allegory written and directed by Neill Blomkamp, and executive produced by Peter Jackson.
The film is a damning indictment of the apartheid regime which blighted South Africa for almost 50 years, dressed up as a science fiction action movie. Read more…
THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE – Mychael Danna
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The belief that true love can conquer the boundaries of time and space is not a new one in the world of romantic cinema. Films like Somewhere in Time and Ghost have all toyed with the notion that a powerful interpersonal connection can survive beyond the realms of reality, beyond the realms of linear time, reveling in the strong emotions that such stories elicit. The latest such film to tackle the subject is The Time Traveler’s Wife, directed by Robert Schwentke and based on the popular novel by Audrey Niffenegger. Eric Bana stars as Henry DeTamble, a Chicago librarian with one unique feature: he involuntarily travels backwards and forwards in time, which obviously causes great problems for himself and his true love, Clare Abshire (Rachel McAdams). Read more…
G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA – Alan Silvestri
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Looking back at my childhood, I now realize that I was probably very unconventional in how I spent my time. I never read comic books. With the exception of the classic Kenner Star Wars ones, I never played with action figures very much. I was never really into guns and army toys and ninjas and whatnot. I played soccer and tennis, watched a lot of movies and sports on TV, read a lot, and wrote a lot. All this probably goes to explain why, when I first heard that they were making a big budget G.I Joe movie (and unlike several of my friends, who were positively giddy with excitement), my response was a disinterested shrug. Read more…
JULIE & JULIA – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There aren’t many mainstream movies about cooking. There are even less movies about the lives celebrity chefs and bloggers who are inspired by them – but that basically sums up the plot of Julie & Julia, the latest comedy/drama from director Nora Ephron. The film tells two parallel stories: firstly that of the life of chef Julia Child (Meryl Streep), who became America’s first celebrity chef in the 1950s when she wrote her groundbreaking French cookbook ’Mastering the Art of French Cooking’; and that of Julie Powell (Amy Adams), whose quest to cook all 524 recipe’s in Child’s cookbook, and her blog about her experiences, made her famous within the modern New York foodie crowd. It’s a quirky little film, but a critically acclaimed one nonetheless, with Streep’s performance as Child receiving notable praise. Read more…
A PERFECT GETAWAY – Boris Elkis
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A honeymoon on an idyllic Pacific island turns deadly in A Perfect Getaway when two pairs of newlyweds – Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich, Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez – discover to their horror that a serial killer is stalking and murdering tourists on their holiday hideaway. Written and directed by David Twohy, the man behind the Chronicles of Riddick, A Perfect Getaway was an unexpected box office success; it also marked the mainstream debut of Russian composer Boris Elkis, a classically trained composer who previously worked as a synth programmer and arranger for Graeme Revell for many years.
The opening cue, “A Perfect Getaway”, introduces the main theme, a slurred, insistent, rattling string motif accompanied by various electronic enhancements Read more…
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