Check out the latest reviews:
Star Trek Into Darkness
  • Composed by Michael Giacchino
  • Varèse Sarabande / 2013 / 45m

Star Trek Into Darkness is a bit of a paradox, really.  On the one hand, it’s badly-written: the traditional Abrams/Lindelof reliance on coincidence to drive the plot forward; an ill-advised attempt to recreate one of the most beloved scenes from the original cast’s films; indeed, an assumption that (and reliance upon) a fondness for the characters as portrayed for decades by other actors will carry over to the new actors who are playing rebooted versions of them; the almost instantaneous reversal of what is intended to be the big emotional moment towards the end with a ridiculous deux ex machina.  And yet… and yet… I couldn’t help but enjoy it, more so even than its predecessor, which had a similar list of problems and a similar ability to disguise them by throwing quick action and humour at the viewer.

Heidi
  • Composed by John Williams
  • Quartet Records / 2013 / 80m (score 36m)

An expensive adaptation of the classic children’s book by Johanna Spyri made for American television in 1968, Heidi was a return to television by director Delbert Mann.  Mann was a bit of a directorial journeyman, the Oscar-winning Marty sandwiched between episodic television in the mid-1950s, the 1960s spent flitting from one genre to another with mixed results.  He had worked with several top composers by the time he made Heidi, including Elmer Bernstein on Desire Under the Elms, Jerry Goldsmith on A Gathering of Eagles and John Williams on Fitzwilly; and Goldsmith was the first choice to score this television movie, but when his schedule couldn’t accommodate it, Williams – who had very recently moved from his original “Johnny” moniker – was hired.

PR: New release from Movie Wave Records

MOVIE WAVE RECORDS SIGNATURE COLLECTION VOLUME 18,443

MUSIC NOT FROM MAN OF STEEL

Movie Wave Records is proud to announce its latest limited edition release – Music Not From Man of Steel.

Bandolero!
  • Composed by Jerry Goldsmith
  • La-La Land Records / 2013 / 78m (score 44m)

A dark and somewhat nihilistic western, Bandolero! tells the story of a pair of brothers (played by Jimmy Stewart and Dean Martin) being pursued by a ruthless sheriff (George Kennedy) after one of them was involved in a botched robbery which left a woman (Racquel Welsh) widowed.  The western had changed by 1968 and was about to disappear almost completely, and this change is reflected in many of composer Jerry Goldsmith’s scores in the genre; he only really worked in it at the tail end of its popularity, when the good-guys-riding-into-town, defeating the bad guys formula had been replaced by something far darker and less well-defined.  Bandolero! was a year before The Wild Bunch, and it’s from a more conventional mould than most of the films in the genre after that game-changer, but it’s certainly not The Searchers (in any way!)

Come un Delfino 2
  • Composed by Ennio Morricone
  • RTI / 2013 / 41m

A 2011 Italian miniseries, Come un Delfino (literally Like a Dolphin) was loosely based on the life of Italian swimmer Domenico Fioravanti, who was forced to retire young in 2004 after being diagnosed with a cardiac hypertrophy.  This second series, again directed by Stefano Reali and starring Raoul Bova, picks up the story.  Ennio Morricone’s beautiful score for the first series was until recently the last of his score’s to receive an album release (though La Migliore Offerta and the latest series of Ultimo were both released early in 2013); oddly billed as Come un Delfino – La Serie (so many people may confuse it with the previous volume), his music for the sequel has been released digitally only, with a terrible cover, by RTI.

Summertime Killer

Composed by Luis Bacalov Quartet Records / 2010 / 48m Directed by Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi, Summertime Killer was a Spanish-made film released in 1972 designed to break the international market.  Chris Mitchum played a young man out for revenge on the men who killed his father when he was a child.  

The Croods

Composed by Alan Silvestri Relativity Music / 2013 / 70m When I read that DreamWorks Animation was making a film about a family of dysfunctional Neanderthals, I assumed it was going to be the first animated movie about the Kardashians.  But it isn’t.  

Corri Uomo Corri

Composed by Bruno Nicolai Digitmovies / 2007 / 51m A sequel to La Resa dei conti, Corri Uomo Corri (aka Run Man Run) saw Thomas Milian reprise his role as Cuchillo, one of many Mexicans descending on a small Texan town on the lookout for some hidden gold.  As one review I read says – [...]

Shock Treatment

Composed by Jerry Goldsmith Intrada / 2013 / 55m A 1964 thriller designed to live up to its name, Shock Treatment stars Stuart Whitman as a man who poses as a patient in a mental asylum in order to try to dupe a fellow inmate (Roddy McDowell) into revealing the location of a $1m loot [...]

Il Bandito dagli Occhi Azzurri

Composed by Ennio Morricone Beat Records / 2013 / 50m A 1980 crime thriller, Franco Nero stars in Il Bandito dagli Occhi Azzurri (aka The Blue-Eyed Bandit) as a disguised “middle-aged, brown-eyed cripple” (according to the IMDB) who robs his employers using his natural blue eyes to throw them off the scent.  A master of disguise!  Sadly his plan doesn’t [...]

Oblivion

Composed by Anthony Gonzalez and Joseph Trapanese Back Lot Music / 2013 / 70m Oblivion is a science fiction film starring Tom Cruise as a man who thinks he is helping look after the safe transfer of energy from a post-apocalyptic earth’s oceans for transit to new colonies elsewhere in the solar system – but [...]

Il Poliziotto della Brigata Criminale

Composed by Ennio Morricone GDM Music / 2013 / 75m Il Poliziotto della Brigata Criminale is a 1975 crime thriller starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, directed by Henri Verneuil.  It was one of several of the director’s films scored by Ennio Morricone, and of course one of many films in this genre tackled by the composer over his long, [...]

The Shootist / The Sons of Katie Elder

Composed by Elmer Bernstein La-La Land Records / 2013 / 57m The Shootist is an unusually poignant film.  John Wayne – more than a beloved actor, a true icon – played an ageing gunfighter dying of cancer; and while it was not known at the time for sure that it would be his last film, [...]

Riddle

Composed by Scott Glasgow Varèse Sarabande / 2013 / 66m A horror thriller directed by John O. Hartman and Nicholas Mross, Riddle stars Elisabeth Harnois as a girl drawn to a town called Riddle in Pennsylvania in search of her missing brother.  Val Kilmer plays the local sheriff, not impressed by her investigations; and dark secrets [...]

42

Composed by Mark Isham WaterTower Music / 2013 / 42m 42 tells the story of Jackie Robinson, the first black man to play in the major leagues of baseball, some kind of sport apparently which is favoured by the colonials.  For a filmmaker, the story offers rich possibilities – the traditional “triumph over adversity” of sports [...]