Good Will Hunting
Pompeii
The Legend of Hercules
Winter’s Tale
Secret Sharer
Ransom
Non-Stop
Suspect
Star Trek Nemesis
RoboCop
It was a simpler time. We didn’t have colour-coded “terror warning” indicators from the government. If someone mentioned a credit crunch, you’d think they were talking about a great breakfast cereal or something. Moviegoers actually viewed Ben Affleck with some affection. Ah, 1997.
A love affair blossoms under the slopes of Mount Vesuvius in the city of Pompeii. How sweet! What could go wrong?
Renny Harlin has directed more films since Cutthroat Island than he did before it, but I think it’s fair to say that his career never really recovered from its disastrous showing. His latest is The Legend of Hercules, billed as the “origin story” of the mythical Greek figure, and it’s been another disaster with both critics and audiences.
An exciting new feature here at Movie Wave, it’s time for the Film Music Purée Horoscope. Read on if you want to know what the coming week has in store. Remember – the events depicted here are guaranteed to happen, but if you don’t like what you read, please don’t blame it on me. Neither should you blame it on the sunshine, nor indeed the moonlight. Instead, you should blame it on Keith Harris and Orville. Read on…
Batman and Robin screenwriter Akiva Goldsman has finally realised his lifelong dream of directing William Shakespeare with this classical adaptation of the Bard’s comedy. With a digitally-recreated John Gielgud starring as the King of Sicily, Emma Watson as Hermione and able support provided by Derek Jacobi and Brian Blessed, both in multiple roles, it seems almost certain to dominate the movie awards season in a year’s time, and in fact I would be amazed if it isn’t still packing out the multiplexes long beyond even that.
Composed by Guy Farley Caldera Records / 2014 / 59m A contemporary telling of a 1909 short story by Joseph Conrad, Secret Sharer is a romantic drama set in the South China Sea. A Polish ship captain’s Chinese crew desert him, leaving him alone on the moored vessel, when he discovers a naked Chinese girl […]
Composed by Jerry Goldsmith First Night Records / 2014 / 34m When Britain’s ambassador to the great nation Scandinavia is taken hostage by a group of terrorists, “Head of Security for Scandinavia” Sean Connery thinks his day can’t get any worse, until another group of terrorists turn up in a hijacked plane and attempt to […]
Composed by John Ottman Varèse Sarabande / 2014 / 54m Liam Neeson plays an air marshal in Non-Stop, who finds himself having to prevent the passengers on his transatlantic flight being knocked off one by one unless the mad man’s financial demands are met.
Composed by Michael Kamen Varèse Sarabande CD Club / 2013 / 38m Peter Yates made one of the most iconic and stylish films of the 60s when he directed Bullitt; it’s fair to say that even though his career lasted almost four further decades, he never approached those heights again, though he did work with a […]
Composed by Jerry Goldsmith Varèse Sarabande CD Club / 2013 / 115m (score 86m) The Patrick Stewart generation of Star Trek films staggered to an end in 2002 in Star Trek Nemesis, a film which isn’t nearly as bad as many make out – in fact its problems are similar to the problems with the […]
Composed by Pedro Bromfman Sony Classical (!) / 2014 / 54m The world has finally got what it’s been waiting over a quarter of a century for, a remake of RoboCop. Somehow my life now feels complete.
Composed by Ennio Morricone KeepMoving Records / 2014 / 58m The life of Fyodor Dostoyevsky is as remarkable a story as his celebrated novels (including Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov). Sentenced to death in 1849 after his first novel was published, he was given a last minute reprieve by Tsar Nicholas I and […]
Composed by Angelo Badalamenti MovieScore Media / 2014 / 53m The numbers are staggering: the battle of Stalingrad lasted for six months from August 1942, with the city under siege throughout, and some estimates place the number of casualties as high as two million. It is frequently cited as one of the turning points in […]
Composed by James Horner Varèse Sarabande CD Club / 2013 / 37m Curiously positioned as a rom-com version of Indiana Jones, Vibes featured the unusual screen pairing of Jeff Goldblum, playing a psychic museum collector, and Cyndi Lauper, playing a psychic hairdresser. They are sent to Ecuador by Peter Falk. Everything about it sounds amazing.
Composed by Bear McCreary Sparks and Shadows / 2014 / 79m A new tv show set in what the publicity material calls the “golden age of piracy” (one day perhaps there’ll be a series set in the “golden age of murder”), Black Sails focuses on a pirate crew in the Caribbean in the early 18th century and […]