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   CURRENT NUMBER OF:
     • Years Online: 24
    • Editorial Reviews: 2,015
   • Unique Albums Covered: 2,811
  • Reader Messages Posted: 452,889
 • Reader Votes Cast: 2,522,034


   CURRENT BEST-SELLING SCORES:
       1. John Williams in Vienna
      2. Space Battleship Yamato
     3. The Legend of Zorro
    4. Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back
   5. The Forbidden Kingdom
  6. Wonder Woman 1984
 7. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
8. The Call of the Wild
   CURRENT MOST POPULAR REVIEWS:
         1. Alice in Wonderland
        2. Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker
       3. LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring
      4. Solo: A Star Wars Story
     5. Justice League
    6. Gladiator
   7. Harry Potter: Sorcerer's Stone
  8. Spider-Man
 9. How to Train Your Dragon
10. Alice Through the Looking Glass
The Tomorrow War
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F9: The Fast Saga
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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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9/15/21 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.
9/10/21 War of the Worlds   (John Williams)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you appreciate John Williams' propulsive rhythmic figures and high standards of complexity of this era no matter the level of atonality or dissonance prevalent at nearly every moment of this bleak and challenging score.
Avoid it... if you prefer your Williams music to be easily digestible and feature memorable lines of thematic cohesion, a satisfying narrative arc, and an obvious concert arrangement.
9/5/21 The Last Castle   (Jerry Goldsmith)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if your heart can be stirred by the solemn and defiant merging of Jerry Goldsmith's complexly vengeful Rambo scores with echoes of trumpet performances from Patton.
Avoid it... if, despite an impressive tribute recording to the victims of September 11th, 2001, your primary interest in this score is based upon originality in construct and instrumentation, neither of which explored by Goldsmith in the work.
8/31/21 How to Train Your Dragon   (John Powell)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you have always appreciated John Powell's dense and rowdy orchestral style for animated films and seek the opening entry in his resoundingly exciting and thematically rich trio of award-winning scores for this concept.
Avoid it... if you become easily overwhelmed by bombastic fantasy music of immense size or cannot accept hearing Celtic specialty instrumentation at the forefront of a score meant for Vikings.
8/26/21 Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves   (Michael Kamen)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... on the outstanding 2018 or 2020 albums if you seek a more comprehensive presentation of this flawed but occasionally highly entertaining score, a work highlighted by a memorable title fanfare and fine orchestral interpolations of the melody from the famous Bryan Adams song for the film.
Avoid it... if you expect the whole of Michael Kamen's music to soar with any sense of convincing swashbuckling spirit or, more importantly, if you demand a decent performance and recording strategy for a score that deserved far better execution.
8/21/21 Wild Wild West   (Elmer Bernstein/Peter Bernstein)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you expect to hear an outlandish Western parody score, for there's a fair dose of Stripes and Airplane! squeezed into this wildly schizophrenic romp.
Avoid it... if you are hoping to hear Elmer Bernstein write one last, great Western theme, for his merging of The Magnificent Seven and How the West Was Won here is stunted by the awkward presence of the film's parody elements.
8/16/21 Casper   (James Horner)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you seek one of James Horner's most charmingly heartbreaking lullabies for loss and loneliness, performed by solo piano, choir, and full ensemble over the course of twenty gorgeous minutes in Casper.
Avoid it... if the presence of the lullaby cannot compensate for a remainder of the work that supplies merely average comedy action and fluffy children's suspense writing common to both the careers of Horner and Danny Elfman.
8/11/21 Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire   (Joel McNeely)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you appreciate Joel McNeely's now-proven talents and are willing to explore his occasionally impressive and consistently robust venture into the Star Wars universe.
Avoid it... if you approach this video game score expecting McNeely to make extensive use of John Williams' established themes, their applications frustratingly infrequent.
8/6/21 The Rocketeer   (James Horner)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you grew tired of James Horner's later, more seriously weighty dramatic scores and prefer the unrestrained enthusiasm of his early adventure works, among which The Rocketeer is one of the best.
Avoid it... if the overly-consistent innocence of Horner's soaring themes only serves to remind you of a composer rolling shamelessly in a bed of his own favorite musical constructs.
2016 FILMTRACKS NOMINEE: Alice Through the Looking Glass
Alice Through the Looking Glass
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Your nostalgic film score memories   Expand
Steven P. - September 18, 2021, at 10:39 a.m.
5 messages  (23 views) - Newest: September 18, 2021, at 11:34 a.m. by Christian Kühn
The Best Game Score of 2011* is Getting a Release   Expand
Faleel - September 17, 2021, at 7:09 p.m.
2 messages  (121 views) - Newest: September 17, 2021, at 7:51 p.m. by The Orchestrator
Soundtrack-Universe reviews Enemy at the Gates (Horner)   Expand
Soundtracker94 - September 17, 2021, at 1:55 p.m.
4 messages  (70 views) - Newest: September 18, 2021, at 9:19 a.m. by Sam
Was there any discussion of Naoki Sato's 2020 Olympics music?
Mr. Jingle Jangles - September 17, 2021, at 1:38 p.m.
1 message  (98 views)
2 things for any fan of Cliff Martinez here…   Expand
Riley KZ - September 17, 2021, at 12:46 p.m.
2 messages  (81 views) - Newest: September 17, 2021, at 1:17 p.m. by Philipp
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Review and site status: first half of 2021
Christian Clemmensen - July 13, 2021, at 4:46 p.m.
1 update  (2179 views)
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