Thomas Newman made a splash with excellent scores for "women's films" like How to Make an American Quilt, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café and Little Women, so it was with great anticipation that his new score for Peter Kosminsky's White Oleander arrived. More of the sweeping, heartbreaking and beautiful music from those other films would surely be in order, and the low-key meandering that has characterised much of Newman's output post-American Beauty could be forgotten. Well, no.

We're firmly in In the Bedroom mode here. After the attractive, if standard, piano theme heard in the opening track, this is music that barely even registers on the audio scale, and when it does tends to be an assortment of weird and wonderful percussion mixed with piano going nowhere and doing nothing. For those who love Newman's work for orchestra but get turned off by his more modern music, it's a nightmare; for those who love In the Bedroom and The Salton Sea, I suspect it will be a dream come true.

Newman is, without question, the most original composer working in film at the moment and has truly created something unique in his style. He clearly doesn't enjoy writing for orchestra nearly as much, which is frustrating for the likes of me, because he is one of the best composers in Hollywood when it comes to doing it. White Oleander has very little to recommend, and Newman seems to have become caught in something of a rut because Road to Perdition aside, his last few scores have been very disappointing. I hope he pulls out of it soon.

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