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   CURRENT NUMBER OF:
     • Years Online: 22
    • Editorial Reviews: 1,941
   • Unique Albums Covered: 2,684
  • Reader Messages Posted: 436,940
 • Reader Votes Cast: 2,475,311


   CURRENT BEST-SELLING SCORES:
       1. LOTR: Fellowship/Ring (2018)
      2. Beauty and the Beast (Legacy)
     3. Predator
    4. Solo: A Star Wars Story
   5. LOTR: The Two Towers (2018)
  6. Space Battleship Yamato
 7. Shawshank Redemption (2CD)
8. The Mummy Returns (2CD)
   CURRENT MOST POPULAR REVIEWS:
         1. Gladiator
        2. Batman
       3. Nightmare Before Christmas
      4. Titanic
     5. Justice League
    6. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
   7. Harry Potter: Sorcerer's Stone
  8. Maleficent
 9. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
10. Edward Scissorhands
Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker
Men in Black: International
Dark Phoenix
The Secret Life of Pets 2
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Aladdin (2019)
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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1/19/20 Bram Stoker's Dracula   (Wojciech Kilar)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if blatantly morbid melodrama of the highest order, complete with excessively pounding percussive rhythms, brooding bass strings, and bloated choral chanting, is the quickest path to the darker corners of your heart.
Avoid it... if the grandest gothic tone and genuinely Eastern European style of the mythical vampire genre doesn't impress you unless all of its components are assembled in a tightly cohesive and functional whole.
12/29/19 Lonesome Dove   (Basil Poledouris)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you enjoy the folksy rhythms behind many of Basil Poledouris' dramatic and Western-styled themes and are interested in what's widely considered to be one of the most effective television scores of all time.
Avoid it... if you have difficulty appreciating conceptually large scores performed by undersized ensembles or if you don't care for the subsequently related score for Quigley Down Under.
12/15/19 Alien 3   (Elliot Goldenthal)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... only if you enjoyed the music's awkwardly experimental textures in the film itself and are thus already well aware of (and prepared for) Elliot Goldenthal's avant-garde, post-modern styles at work.
Avoid it... if you found that the score strove for a doomed balance between frenzied, obnoxious horror and misplaced religious romanticism in context; the 2018 album's presentation offers an extremely muted and constricted mix of that recording.
11/30/19 Die Hard   (Michael Kamen)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... only if you are a diehard fan of the movie and seek one of its collectible albums in order to hear the music that Michael Kamen originally intended for the film before the recording was butchered in the final editing process.
Avoid it... if you expect the few moments of memorable, original material you recall from this soundtrack in context to compensate for an otherwise mundane composition and unsatisfying sound quality on all albums except the superior 2018 set.
10/9/19 Superman   (John Williams)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... on both the 1998 Varese Sarabande re-recording and the 2019 La-La Land Records set for the highest-quality presentations of one of John Williams' most memorable and classic scores.
Avoid it... on any of the releases of the original recording prior to 2019 if you are deterred by the archival, analog sound quality that long restricted the dynamic range of Williams' composition and often varies from track to track.
8/15/19 Apollo 13   (James Horner)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... on the comprehensive, 2019 Intrada album if you own only a handful of James Horner's scores and are in search of the composer at his very best, Apollo 13 exhibiting an exemplary sense of historical patriotism and tension.
Avoid it... if the understated respect that Horner conveys in his rather short score for this film doesn't appeal to your need for more lavishly melodramatic efforts from other works during that fruitful period of his career.
7/23/19 An American Tail   (James Horner)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you seek the melodically rich children's score that launched James Horner's fruitful production in the genre and gained him his first widespread awards consideration.
Avoid it... if you are consistently bothered by Horner's references to Eastern European classical music and other sources of inspiration, despite the fact that they are effectively appropriate in this context.
6/30/19 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban   (John Williams)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... if you, like most film music collectors, marvel at the ingenuity with which John Williams explores each of his mind-bogglingly complex ideas for individual concepts within his fantasy scores.
Avoid it... if you are a strong believer in the thematic continuity of any franchise, for the maestro largely tackled this score as though it were a series of self-contained vignettes with surprisingly little regard for his previous identities.
6/11/19 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets   (John Williams/William Ross)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
Buy it... without reservation on the 2018 La-La Land Records set, for the expanded presentation of the work illuminates thematic development and connectivity to its predecessor that greatly elevates the status of this score.
Avoid it... if you still believe that John Williams' music for the thematically superior but generally comparable Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone failed to generate enough magical spirit to represent the concepts in the stories.
2012 FILMTRACKS NOMINEE: The Amazing Spider-Man
The Amazing Spider-Man
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Roman - April 8, 2020, at 6:52 a.m.
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AhN - April 7, 2020, at 10:07 a.m.
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