Raya and the Last Dragon
Soul Snatcher
The Little Things
Minari
Below Zero
John Powell: Film Suites Volume 1
La Gabbia
Soul
The Midnight Sky
Wonder Woman 1984
Thank you to everybody who left kind comments here, on messageboards and social media. They meant a lot and made me determine that my break will be temporary. I’ll come back – hopefully refreshed and with the unpleasantness a distant memory – later in the year.
–James
It’s not quite the end of an era, but certainly the end of an error. I’ll be on hiatus for a while. The web hosting is funded until June so I’ll make a decision later about whether to keep it here or not, but for a while I’ll not be posting any more. In the mean time, I’d recommend Jon Broxton’s ever-excellent Movie Music UK for your film music review fix.
Thank you to everyone who has said such nice things in the last day or so, it’s really appreciated.
–James
M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs was an attempt to do a genuinely fresh take on the alien invasion formula, looking at it from the point of view of a farming family in Pennsylvania, with brothers Mel Gibson (plus his two children) and Joaquin Phoenix investigating strange noises and crop circles. It’s a bit daft but quite entertaining – the director still had a lot of credit in the bank at that time (which eventually ran out in the next few years).
500 years after dragons sacrifice themselves to save humanity in the face of attack by monsters, the monsters are back – and it’s up to young warrior Raya to track down the last surviving dragon to help save everyone once more. With a fine voice cast led by Kelly Marie Tran, Raya and the Last Dragon would probably have made a fortune had it (as planned) been released in cinemas in a non-pandemic world, and I’m sure it will make a fortune anyway, though in this household it will lead to a series of explanations about why we must wait for it to be widely available on Disney+ rather than only via “premier access”.
I often write about soundtrack albums from films I haven’t seen and offer a cursory plot description as an introduction – often I know broadly what the film is about but sometimes I have to look it up. Not knowing anything about Soul Snatcher, this time I will just copy and paste the plot description from Wikipedia: The impoverished scholar Wang Zijin (Chen Linong) went to Beijing to take the exam and was stared at by Bai Shisan (Li Xian), the little magical fox who took the dan. As long as Wang Zijin is killed and the dan is taken, he can be promoted to spiritual immortal. But did not want to take Dan Road, one person and one fox became the best friends. After going through all risks, what choice should Bai Shishan make? I do hope that clears things up.
Composed by Thomas Newman WaterTower / 55m Starring Denzel Washington and Rami Malek as detectives who suspect Jared Leto is behind a series of murders in LA in the 1990s, The Little Things is directed by John Lee Hancock and released to little positive reception early in 2021. The film marks the third collaboration between […]
Composed by Emile Mosseri Milan / 33m One of 2020’s most critically-acclaimed films, Minari tells the story of a South Korean family’s attempts to make it in rural Arkansas in the 1980s. It’s based on its director Lee Isaac Chung’s own upbringing. For the music, Chung turned to the up-and-coming composer Emile Mosseri, who achieved […]
The great Jerry Goldsmith was at the top of his game for decades, innovating and evolving and always looking to do something new. He could – and did – score any kind of film and almost without fail found some interesting music to write. Taking highlight tracks from his scores produces a playlist that lasts […]
Composed by John Barry Varèse Sarabande / 64m Francis Ford Coppola’s lightest film to that point, the time-travel fantasy Peggy Sue Got Married saw Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage as a couple on the verge of marital breakdown when she is transported back to high school (when she first fell in love with him) – […]
Composed by Zacarías M. de la Riva MovieScore Media / 46m An entertaining if highly implausible Spanish action thriller, Below Zero has proven a huge global hit on Netflix. The film follows a late-night prison transfer which goes very wrong, with an interesting twist coming from the motivation of the character who makes it go […]
Composed by John Powell 5 Cat Studios / 49m Most of us probably became aware of John Powell through his additional music for Hans Zimmer in the mid-1990s – he is one of many to gone from that status to becoming a high-profile film composer in his own right – but he is set apart […]
Composed by Ennio Morricone Decca / 61m A 1985 erotic drama, La Gabbia (literally “The Cage” but it was released as The Trap internationally) is about an American businessman who finds himself in a love triangle in Italy after his girlfriend goes off on holiday. The other two sides of the triangle are mother and […]
Composed by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Jon Batiste Disney / 64m Pete Docter’s previous movie Inside Out was one of Pixar’s finest in my opinion, profound and moving and a great movie by any standards. So he had a lot to live up to in his follow-up – and has not reduced the scope of […]
Composed by Alexandre Desplat ABKCO / 87m George Clooney is not a personal friend of mine, but he seems to have so many qualities – using his fame as a force for good, seemingly a very nice man, an interesting one, a very fine actor – and so quite why it is that I find […]
Composed by Hans Zimmer Watertower / 90m Widely praised as the best film (by a distance) in the DC Extended Universe, Patty Jenkins managed to inject some much-needed life into the series with Wonder Woman in 2017, Gal Gadot taking on probably the most iconic female comic book character. A sequel was inevitable and here […]
Composed by James HornerIntrada / 44m A very fine film, Michael Apted's Thunderheart stars Val Kilmer as an FBI agent… Read more…
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Composed by James HornerSony / 75m An unexpected smash hit, The Mask of Zorro was a thoroughly-entertaining old-fashioned adventure romp… Read more…
Composed by James HornerIntrada / 59m Released in 1993 after sitting on the shelf for a couple of years, House… Read more…