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10/31/05 - Sleepers: (John Williams) --Expanded Review--
"The only score of 1996 for legendary composer John Williams would also
serve as his first collaboration with director Barry Levinson. For the film
adaptation of Lorenzo Carcaterra's novel, Levinson assembled an outstanding
principle cast for Sleepers. The story of torture, homophobia, and
vengeance claimed in the opening line of the film to be based on true events,
a somewhat unsubstantiated point of controversy surrounding the film at the
time of its release. Whether true or not, the subject matter of
Sleepers is unpleasant at best. Four boys growing up on the west side
of New York steal a hot dog wagon for fun and the runaway cart accidentally
crushes a bystander. While consequently in a reformatory, they are sexually
and physically abused by a cruel and perverted guard. Twenty years later, in
1981, two of the boys kill the guard and the other two, a lawyer and a
journalist, become involved in a conspiracy to cover their tracks and clear
their names of the crime. Topics of honor, religion, revenge, and morality
all abound in Sleepers..." ** Read the entire
review.
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10/28/05 - Rosewood: (John Williams) --Expanded Review--
"For sixty years, America was unaware of the tragedy that occurred in the
small Florida town of Rosewood in 1922. A race riot by whites from that
and neighboring areas left the town in ruins and led to the shooting,
burning, or lynching deaths of between 70 and 250 blacks. The coverup of
the massacre at Rosewood is typical in the history of the deep southern
regions of America at the time; the state's police indicated after the mob
attack that only as many as half a dozen people actually died at Rosewood
in the riot. It wasn't until newspaper reports in the 1980's and later
descriptions of the event on the Discovery Channel that the true extent of
the mob's damage and carnage was exposed. Director John Singleton had
matured greatly since his debut with Boyz N the Hood in 1991, and
Rosewood was a significant production that ended up being very
expensive to produce. It's hard to market films like Rosewood to
the mass American public..." *** Read the entire review.
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10/24/05 - Testament/In Country: (James Horner) --Expanded Review-- "Two
of James Horner's lesser known scores for 1980's films of American bravery were
Testament and In Country. While both offer a somber glimpse at heroism in two of
its varying forms, both rare scores will provide some pleasant surprise for any Horner
collector. The 1983 film Testament was originally produced as a television project for
PBS's "American Playhouse," but the quality of the film was considered so high that
Paramount decided to purchase the rights for a full theatrical release. Its
production qualities are still those of a made-for-TV film, with minimal special effects,
stunning acting, and a reliance on a strong adaptation of Carol Amen's short story, "The Last
Testament." The story resembles many that prevailed in Ronald Reagan's nuclear-ambitious
early-80's, with the concurrently seen telefilm The Last Day better remembered for its
treatment of everyday America after a nuclear war. The stark reality of Lynne Littman's film
is a disturbing experience to say the least..." **** Read the entire review.
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10/20/05 - Vibes: (James Horner) --Expanded Review--
"There are only two groups of people in the world who would have any
reason to even want to remember the 1988 movie Vibes:
Cyndi Lauper fans and James Horner fans. The film was, for some reason,
backed by Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment production company, with a
horrendous script from two of the co-writers of Howard's Splash
who were attempting, probably, to take advantage of the resurfacing
popular interest in parapsychology and the supernatural (spearheaded by
the wildly successful Ghostbusters). The premise of the film
involves two psychicly gifted characters, one a hair-stylist played by
Lauper and the other a museum expert played by Jeff Goldlbum. They are
conned into seeking adventure in Ecuador, thinking that they'd be helping
someone find a lost child when indeed their psychic powers would be needed
on a perilous mission to find a mystic pyramid and unlock its powers.
Along the same idea as Romancing the Stone, the two city folk in a
jungle environment manage to hook up..." ** Read
the entire review.
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10/16/05 - Red Heat: (James Horner) --Expanded Review--
"You can summarize this movie
in just a few words, and most them would be "Arnold Schwarzenegger pairing
with James Belushi to bust criminal ass." Schwarzenegger is the tough cop
from Russia who's been forced to follow a criminal to Chicago, where
Belushi, the underworked slob of a cop, is his liaison to law enforcement in
the United States. It's another buddy cop flick from the pen of Walter Hill,
and while the merits of the storyline itself are dubious at best, who cares?
Schwarzenegger and Belushi are the comedy in and of themselves, and as they
chase dopeheads and other unsavory people, the two manage to teach each
other some helpful lessons about life and entertain us in the process.
Despite being one of the earlier films to shoot (just snippets) in the
Soviet Union, there is nothing intellectually redeeming about the film.
Violence abounds, of course, but in that comic-book fashion that
Schwarzenegger seems to attract in his more comedic films. Composer James
Horner wasn't actually busting through walls in the same physical fashion..." * Read
the entire review.
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10/12/05 - Dad: (James Horner) --Expanded Review--
"A story about the self-discovery of an average, modern American family,
Dad is another lesson on how to and how not to take care of your
parents once they reach the age of senility. A busy banker in the big
city is forced to take leave to attend to his ailing parents and the
"coming together" experience helps heal years of distant relationships
and the story shows the audience about how older folks can learn to
cope with their illnesses and other age-related problems. The film
dances between the realms of drama and comedy, perhaps to a fault that
it cannot recover from. Written and directed by Gary David Goldberg,
Dad would be his first feature film after years of directing TV's
"Family Ties" show. Critical reaction to Dad jumped on this
inexperience and often related the problems with the film to the problems
typical to sitcom comedies. All of the actors in the film would go on to
better representations of their characters in subsequent films
(especially Jack Lemmon in the Grumpy Old Men movies), and the
same could arguably be said for composer James Horner as well...." **** Read
the entire review.
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10/9/05 - Field of Dreams: (James Horner) --Expanded Review--
"Based on writer W.P. Kinsella's book "Shoeless Joe," Phil Alden Robinson's
Field of Dreams is as close to an Americana film about religion as you can
possibly get. The popular flick with Kevin Costner in the lead role abandons all
common sense and throws magic into the cornfields of Iowa. When Costner's farmer
hears voices telling him to build a baseball diamond on his land with the promise
that the ghosts of famous baseball players will inhabit it for games at night, you
can't help but follow the religious parallels between God
requesting a cathedral and God instead requesting a baseball diamond in the
middle of nowhere. Baseball here is the religion, and the film takes the
opportunity to draw important comparisons between baseball and real life
philosophical issues that provide for some heartfelt speeches before it's
done. Unlike Costner, composer James Horner has never been a baseball fan.
But when he first saw a cut of Field of Dreams, he fell in love with
the film and jumped at the assignment despite his lack of knowledge about
the sport...." ** Read
the entire review.
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10/5/05 - Once Around: (James Horner) --Expanded Review--
"Along with several other films that attempted the same perspective on the family
genre in the late 1980's and early 1990's, Once Around is a story about a
dysfunctional family that, like so many in real life, is not really meant to be
understood. That was the problem with Once Around in retrospect: who wants
to watch a film about a family with all of its real life problems when most of us
can go to our parents' houses on any given holiday and witness the same trauma
firsthand? In this case, the weight of the film's success is carried by a cast
consisting of Holly Hunter, Danny Aiello, and Richard Dreyfuss. It was the first
American feature by Sweden's Lasse Hallstrom, director of 1987's critically
acclaimed My Life as a Dog. The funny factor that made the 1987 film a
success is largely absent from Once Around, contributing to its demise.
Composer James Horner's name was in flashier letters on much bigger screens in
1991, and yet he took the time to provide a short contribution for a genre that
his peers were also dabbling in. For Horner, Once Around would turn out to
be similar..." ** Read
the entire review.
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10/2/05 - Class Action: (James Horner) --Expanded Review-- "While many of
director Michael Apted's films have a longevity of popularity based on their quality, Class
Action isn't one of them. That's not to say that the 1991 film isn't without its fair
share of merits, with a fairly positive critical response to the film yielding absolutely no
audience response. A father and daughter tandem of lawyers, played by Gene Hackman and Mary
Elizabeth Mastrantonio, finds themselves on opposite sides of the bar and arguing a large,
contemporary class action case against each other. The father is more of the radical, sleazy
type of attorney who jumps to serve a case against an automaker whose 1985 station wagons have
a tendency to explode. His daughter represents the big business interests, and the case allows
the entire family to interact in such ways as to expose and deal with each character's flaws.
Apted seems to enjoy making films about people in their journeys towards self-discovery, and
in the case of Class Action, it is Mastrantonio's portrayal of the growing up and
coming to terms with Hackman's (and her own) flaws that highlights the film...." ** Read
the entire review.
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