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7/31/05 - Rent-A-Cop: (Jerry Goldsmith) --Expanded Review--
"A 'bad cop, good hooker' film fresh off the factory line, Rent-A-Cop
really has nothing distinct to tell about. A former Chicago police detective is
kicked off the force after a sting goes wrong (but it wasn't his fault, of course)
and he is forced to work as a department store security guard while masked as
Santa Claus. That would be Burt Reynolds wearing the costume. And then you've got
a prostitute with a heart of gold who is the only person who can help the
cop solve the case that involves him. That would be Liza Minnelli with the
shrill voice. The cop hesitates, the hooker persists, they both suffer from
the same danger, and they're forced to save their lives together and bring
down the stereotypical 'vice lord' and his criminal gang of thugs. We won't
even get into the self-explanatory romance part of the story. One of the
only things that worked reasonably well for Rent-A-Cop was the
on-screen chemistry between Reynolds and Minnelli (or Burt and Liza, as the
movie poster said in big letters). Other than their strangely funny and
enjoyable pairing, the film's ridiculously predictable plot left no other
redeeming element to the film...." ***
Read the entire
review.
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7/27/05 - The 'Burbs: (Jerry Goldsmith) --Expanded Review--
"If a person were to study the quality of director Joe Dante's satirical comedy
films, the pair of Gremlins entries would likely top many critics' lists.
At the other end of those lists is The 'Burbs. While the film struck the
right set of chords for a handful of critics, it was universally bashed as simply
being "not funny" and the project fell into the pits of obscurity quickly.
Taking jabs at nearly every element of American suburbia, the film follows
the at-home vacation of Tom Hanks' character and his reactions to the absurd
neighborhood in which he lives. Caricatures of the general types of people
you find in real life, the personalities and dwellings of the neighbors in
The 'Burbs are the punch-line. All sorts of eccentricities are on
display, as are the battles between neighbors, both real and imaginary. Dana
Olsen's screenplay is a puzzle that's not really meant to be understood or
solved, relying on the viewer's ability to underanalyze the film in order to
enjoy its pithy discourse...." *****
Read the entire
review.
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7/23/05 - Leviathan: (Jerry Goldsmith) --Expanded Review-- "In
retrospect, 1989 was the crowning year of underwater suspense and horror. Among others,
DeepStar Six, Leviathan, and The Abyss all were released that year,
perhaps due to some level of advancement in underwater
filming technologies. Undoubtedly, The Abyss was only the cinematic success of the
three films, although Jerry Goldsmith's score for Leviathan gives Alan Silvestri's
choral work for The Abyss a run for its money. The premise of Leviathan starts
with promise, but disintegrates into a combination of Alien and The Thing that
dozens of other films have attempted before. An underwater mining crew (consisting of a decent
B-film cast for the time) searching for precious metals 16,000 feet down is testy as it nears
the end of its 90-day shift. The crew discovers the mysterious wreck of a scuttled Russian
ship named Leviathan in the great depths. They plunder various goodies from the ship unaware
that among their discoveries is a mutant gene experiment..." ****
Read the entire review.
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7/20/05 - Criminal Law: (Jerry Goldsmith) --Expanded
Review-- "While the film was absolutely torn apart by critics and
audiences alike, Criminal Law was an introduction of two
eventually well-known people in the mainstream American cinema. Young
British actor Gary Oldman debuted in Hollywood's spotlight with
Criminal Law, as did director Martin Campbell, for whom this
film would be his first leap from television to a career in cinema that
would yield projects like Goldeneye and The Mask of Zorro
(and its sequel) down the road. With a plot that attempts to jolt
audiences with false scares from start to finish, Criminal Law
throws Oldman's cocky character, an attorney, into a series of legal
fires created by Kevin Bacon's maniacal character. The attorney gets
the criminal acquitted on one brutal rape and murder charge before that
criminal then turns around and begins framing the attorney (and generally
harassing him) for subsequent murders...." * Read the
entire review.
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7/17/05 - Warlock: (Jerry Goldsmith) --Expanded
Review-- "Movies about the son of Satan traveling through time to
spur the end of the world can't be all that bad, although Warlock
certainly tried. From the makers of the Friday the 13th series,
Warlock also spawned a couple of sequels, but not ones that anybody
would really want to remember. In this original, actor Julian Sands is the
perverse warlock pursued by a supernatural hunter played by B-film equal
Richard E. Grant, and the journey towards the doom of mankind begins in
17th Boston and eventually plagues modern-day Los Angeles. Typical
horror cliches, including finger chopping, tongue biting, and a certain
flair for sexual deviation, occupy a rather lousy script that pulls
elements without much adaptation from The Terminator and
Highlander. Everything about Warlock is saturated with
1980's slapstick style, including its cheesy special effects and its
original score...."
** Read the
entire review.
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7/14/05 - Gremlins 2: The New Batch: (Jerry Goldsmith) --Expanded
Review-- "In the 1980's, most of the public was aware that if you go to New York and
discover cute little creatures called Mogwais, you never do two things: feed it after midnight
and/or get it wet. If you commit the first error, the cute little fluffball grows into a big
vicious gremlin that will act similarly to the monsters in the Alien series. If you
commit the second error, you compound the problem by causing them to multiply like tribbles.
Either way, expose them to sunshine and your problem is more or less solved. The
original 1984 film Gremlins was a great comedy success, and in the era of sequel
exploitation, Joe Dante took the opportunity to extend himself even further into the slapstick
comedy genre with the 1990 sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Instead of taking over
the small town of Kingston Falls, the little beasts cause their mayhem in the big city. The
first film's two stars are back to witness the fun, and a large corporation's skyscraper is
the location invaded by gremlins...." *** Read the entire review.
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7/11/05 - Not Without My Daughter: (Jerry Goldsmith) --Expanded Review--
"Unintentionally, the film Not Without My Daughter turned out to be a heavily
anti-Muslim statement released just days before the United States
and its allies would invade Iraq the first time, in 1991. An intense personal drama, the film
tells the true story of Betty Mahmoody, an average American woman who married an Iranian man
who worked at the local hospital in America. Set in 1984, the husband takes his wife and their
young daughter on a vacation to Iran, where he proceeds to announce that they will never be
returning to the United States. Trapped in a foreign culture that minimizes womens' rights,
the mother is forced to smuggle herself and her daughter out of Iran and back to the States.
The storyline is compelling and made for fine drama, but the film had two major problems
working against it during its release. First, its depiction of Muslims is truly disturbing,
portraying them as crazed fundamentalists and the true enemies of 'infidels.' Secondly, the
film opened nationally on January 11, 1991..." ** Read the entire review.
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7/8/05 - Forever Young: (Jerry Goldsmith) --Expanded Review-- "Both
poetic and coated with about as much sugar as humanly possible, Forever Young is a
fantasy love story that goes so far with its exploits of romanticism that it even throws in
some 1930's locale and soaring propeller airplanes. The film was immediately recognized for
what it was by audiences and critic alike: a light-duty escape for mostly women to shed a tear
over while their boyfriends or husbands glance around for the nearest exit or beer. After his
30's love interest is put into a coma by an accident, a test pilot played by
Mel Gibson, with nothing left worth living for, decides to rely on his best friend, a
scientist played by George Wendt. Rather than simply killing himself (where would be the fun
in that movie?), the scientist freezes the pilot in an experimental cryogenics device that had
been successfully tested on a chicken. Circumstances cause the pilot to remain frozen for over
50 years, mostly undisturbed in his capsule, before a pair of kids accidentally thaws him out
while playing in an old military storage depot...." *** Read the entire review.
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7/5/05 - Love Field: (Jerry Goldsmith) --Expanded Review-- "Among
composer Jerry Goldsmith's more enjoyable, lesser-known scores of the 1990's is for a largely
forgotten film about segregation, Love Field. From director Jonathan Kaplan, the movie
is a modern period study of a Dallas housewife (with a demanding performance from Michelle
Pfeiffer) and travelling black family on a bus trip to Washington D.C. With the woman
motivated by her
idolization of Jacqueline Kennedy and embarking on the forbidden journey to the funeral of
John F. Kennedy, she is forced to deal with her relationship with a black man and his daughter
as they make their way. Both the police and the woman's husband are searching for the awkward
threesome, and the film focuses on how these primary characters overcome their racial
differences to continue seeking their dreams. Scored in the middle of an extremely hectic pair
of years for the composer (1992-1993), Love Field is understandably lost among the
composer's other achievements of the time...." *** Read the entire review.
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7/2/05 - Mr. Baseball: (Jerry Goldsmith) --Expanded Review-- "Opening on
the same day as The Mighty Ducks in October, 1992, Mr. Baseball caps off the
real baseball season with yet another formula-based sports movie. Tom Selleck is convincing in
his role as an aging slugger and first-baseman for the New York Yankees who womanizes, chew
tobacco, and speaks before thinking, but basically has a good heart (and is apparently
steroids-free,
thank goodness). Witnessing his decline, the New York Yankees trade him to a Japanese team,
the Nagoya Dragons, and the rather unsophisticated brute is forced to not only fix a hole in
his swing, but become accustomed to (and appreciative of) an entirely new culture and
language. Along the way, he falls in love with an endorsement rep for the team (a beautiful
young Japanese woman), finally accepts the advice of his manager, and ultimately helps the
team advance to a playoff confrontation with its archrival. The film did have a certain amount
of charm and genuine comedy, although amid merely average reviews, the project quickly became
a late-night television find...." ** Read the entire review.
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