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   CURRENT NUMBER OF:
     • Years Online: 28
    • Editorial Reviews: 2,267
   • Unique Albums Covered: 3,294
  • Reader Messages Posted: 491,843
 • Reader Votes Cast: 2,606,051


   CURRENT BEST-SELLING SCORES:
       1. The Wild Robot
      2. Solo: A Star Wars Story
     3. Dune: Part Two
    4. Avatar: The Way of Water
   5. Cutthroat Island
  6. The Mask of Zorro
 7. Tomorrow Never Dies
8. Willow
   CURRENT MOST POPULAR REVIEWS:
         1. Batman (1989)
        2. Beetlejuice
       3. Alice in Wonderland
      4. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
     5. Spider-Man
    6. Raiders of the Lost Ark
   7. Doctor Strange: Multiverse
  8. LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring
 9. Titanic
10. Justice League
Gladiator II
Blitz
Red One
Here
Venom: The Last Dance
Joker: Folie à Deux
Covering the best and worst of original film and television music from America's Big Sky Country since 1996, Filmtracks is your spirited home for comprehensive, humorous, and controversial soundtrack reviews. Join our community to support this niche music genre!
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11/29/24 What Lies Beneath   (Alan Silvestri)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you are prepared to appreciate a technically adept adaptation of Bernard Herrmann's score from Psycho for the horror sequences in What Lies Beneath.
Avoid it... if the surprisingly and disappointingly mundane and sparse orchestration of Alan Silvestri's suspense cues for the first half of the film cannot compensate for those snappy moments of Herrmann inspiration later on.
11/25/24 The Paper Chase   (John Williams)
New/Updated Review, Separated From a Dual Review
Buy it... for its charming but somewhat anonymous love theme, which dominates the short score in John Williams' comfortable, early 1970's methodology.
Avoid it... if you strive to hear satisfying substance in the suspense and comedy portions of the score, these passages losing their battle with surrounding source music.
11/22/24 Honey, I Shrunk the Kids   (James Horner)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you are absolutely prepared for a wacky tone of exuberant children's music clearly inspired by Raymond Scott, Carl Stalling, Danny Elfman, and James Horner's own familiar styles.
Avoid it... if you have little patience for scores that fail to combine their many strikingly disparate parts into a cohesive listening experience on album.
11/18/24 Cinderella Liberty   (John Williams)
All New Review
Buy it... if you have a soft spot for John Williams' 1960's light drama and romance sound, Cinderella Liberty translating it into a bluesy breeze for harmonica.
Avoid it... if you expect much substance to this score outside of its two soft, song-represented themes, the remainder functioning as barroom source material.
11/15/24 The Mask of Zorro   (James Horner)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you admire James Horner's career and wish to hear him take his trademark style of writing in a splashy and fascinatingly different ethnic direction, resulting in one of the most engaging and flavorful action scores of the digital era.
Avoid it... if you have no love for Latin instrumentation or were not impressed by the more robust and mature evolution of this score in The Legend of Zorro.
11/11/24 The Sugarland Express   (John Williams)
All New Review
Buy it... if you have an intellectual curiosity for John Williams' diverse but mostly understated character score that opened his collaboration with Steven Spielberg.
Avoid it... if you expect this score to express a convincingly dramatic heart despite having the harmonica and guitar solos to make that happen.
11/8/24 Species   (Christopher Young)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you appreciate Christopher Young's usual intelligent combination of wondrous, thematic beauty and jarring horror techniques.
Avoid it... if you've been enticed by the score's beautiful opening seven minutes and expect the entire work to reflect that style of tonal fantasy appeal, only a handful of other cues refraining from dissonant thrashing.
11/4/24 Earthquake   (John Williams)
All New Review
Buy it... only for John Williams' album rearrangements where his two primary themes are allowed time to develop in variations that don't exist in the film version of the score.
Avoid it... if you have no interest in hearing the least appealing disaster score of this era from Williams, a short and fragmented effort that struggles to form a cohesive narrative due to questionable strategy.
11/1/24 Nightbreed   (Danny Elfman)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... on any album if you seek the most creatively adventurous and instrumentally diverse horror score of Danny Elfman's early career.
Avoid it... if only fifteen minutes of thematic beauty and fantasy intrigue cannot compensate for an onslaught of brutal symphonic horror material that otherwise dominates the work.
10/28/24 The Eiger Sanction   (John Williams)
All New Review
Buy it... if you appreciate John Williams' larger orchestral scores from his standard, early 1970's blend of suspense, action, and contemporary romance.
Avoid it... if you have little tolerance for harpsichords in unexpected places, its use as the prominent voice of this score never quite functioning as well as Williams intended.
10/24/24 Filmtracks endorses Kamala Harris for American president
For the third American presidential election cycle in a row, trolls supporting Donald Trump have found their way to this site's Scoreboard and comment areas. In 2016, there was actually a "Donald J. Trump" troll that threatened Filmtracks and its readers with all varieties of insults and sanctions. Back then, it was funny and stupid. Now, it is dangerous.

One of the fundamental traits of a pro-Trump troll at Filmtracks, and certainly elsewhere, is a reliance upon anger, fear, and hate to divide people by race, ethnicity, gender, religion, education, region, sexual preference, and more. It's easier to tout the benefits of authoritarianism when you scare the wits out of people. Trump himself, of course, if the biggest troll of all.

The readership of Filmtracks, like much of America, can discern this fascist rhetoric and dismiss it as buffoonery. But as dumb as some of these trolls can seem, do not forget that their message resonates with a significant portion of the country. There may be a ceiling to the support Trump can muster, but he's already proven that ceiling to be high enough to win. Polls now show he will win again.

Kamala Harris has been demonized relentlessly by Trump's army of trolls, foreign and domestic. They fear a powerful and intelligent woman of color, and they prey successfully upon carelessness and collective amnesia. Don't let these trolls discourage you from remembering the stark choice here. America's electoral system is imperfect, but it works, regardless of what the trolls tell you. Vote!

-- Christian Clemmensen, Filmtracks owner and editor
10/22/24 Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny   (John Williams)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you are prepared to be impressed by John Williams' ability to maintain his high standards of adventure and romanticism in this rousing conclusion to a nostalgic franchise.
Avoid it... on the album if you expect a satisfying presentation of the music heard in the film, Williams emphasizing suite arrangements that don't always reflect the personality of the score itself.
10/20/24 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull   (John Williams)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you consider yourself any fan of John Williams or the Indiana Jones franchise whatsoever, for despite its flaws, this score is a fun encounter with an old friend.
Avoid it... if you require this score to rival the classic Raiders of the Lost Ark or be as coherent and memorable as any of the previous scores in the franchise.
10/18/24 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade   (John Williams)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... on the inadequate 1989 album if you are willing to tolerate substandard sound quality and only half of the impressive but not overwhelming music written by John Williams for the film.
Avoid it... even on the 2008 and 2024 expanded, remastered editions if you absolutely demand the complete score for the film, because even the longer 2008 set is missing more than 20 minutes of material.
10/16/24 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom   (John Williams)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you want the flavor of John Williams' music for Raiders of the Lost Ark but are deterred by the composer's scherzo-formatted action material, in which case Temple of Doom is a superior alternative.
Avoid it... only if you're going to allow your dislike of the film to get in the way of a score that is far more impressive on the 2008 remastered and expanded set than it was on all its previous products.
10/14/24 Raiders of the Lost Ark   (John Williams)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you're looking to start a collection of John Williams' classic scores from the height of the Bronze Age, for Raiders of the Lost Ark is among both the best and most influential adventure works from that era.
Avoid it... on the 1995 CD album if you absolutely require more complete releases of the score, which just happen to exist on the concurrent double-LP set or the 2008 franchise CD set.
10/10/24 Top Gun   (Harold Faltermeyer)
All New Review
Buy it... without hesitation on the long overdue 2024 set featuring the songs and full Harold Faltermeyer score from this iconic 1980's soundtrack.
Avoid it... if you expect Faltermeyer's abrasive action material to compete favorably with the drama and heroism of his two original themes for the score, not to mention his many interpolations of Giorgio Moroder's song melodies.
10/7/24 Inchon   (Jerry Goldsmith)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... only if you consider yourself a staunch collector of Jerry Goldsmith's works, because while Inchon is a decent composition with two alluring themes, its terrible recording nearly ruins the listening experience.
Avoid it... if you demand a truly vibrant and engaging representation of the war genre from an otherwise reliable Goldsmith, though the recording's performance errors and lingering distortion issues are mostly to blame for this score's ills.
2001 FILMTRACKS NOMINEE: Moulin Rouge
Moulin Rouge
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So I watched the John Williams Documentary   Expand
Sivakumark52 - December 2, 2024, at 8:55 a.m.
2 messages  (76 views) - Newest: December 2, 2024, at 10:11 a.m. by GW
Movie Music UK reviews LAND OF THE PHARAOHS by Dimitri Tiomkin - GSotTC!   Expand
Jonathan Broxton - December 2, 2024, at 8:23 a.m.
2 messages  (16 views) - Newest: December 2, 2024, at 10:45 a.m. by JBlough
Now Playing: Monday, December 2   Expand
Roman - December 2, 2024, at 6:50 a.m.
2 messages  (24 views) - Newest: December 2, 2024, at 11:24 a.m. by Philipp
What are my “must listens” for the final stretch of ‘24?   Expand
ArborArcanist - December 1, 2024, at 7:13 p.m.
9 messages  (139 views) - Newest: December 2, 2024, at 11:01 a.m. by Peter G.
Intrada is releasing John Barry's 'Out of Africa'   Expand
Faleel - December 1, 2024, at 5:14 p.m.
2 messages  (95 views) - Newest: December 1, 2024, at 6:07 p.m. by Soundtracker94
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Review and site status: first half of 2024
Christian Clemmensen - July 27, 2024, at 10:41 a.m.
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