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9/29/05 - Unlawful Entry: (James Horner) --Expanded Review-- "An
interesting premise occupies Unlawful Entry, one that elevates the film beyond its
restraints in the cheap thriller category and thrusts it into one of social drama. A man and
his wife --a typical, loving suburban couple consisting of Kurt Russell and Madeleine Stowe--
are set up in a false burglary attempt on their home and are tricked into relying upon the
assistance of a cop to protect them. The cop is a psycho with a good nice-guy look about him,
however, and Ray Liotta does his best to outperform his previous efforts in exactly the same
kind of role. As the corrupt cop works his way into this couple's lives and eventually lands
the husband in jail, we fear for the innocently vulnerable wife, who not only fails to see
this train of passion steaming towards her, but even gets herself into the 'creepy dark house
by herself' kind of scenarios by the end of film. Until that all-too-familiar end, the film is
somewhat intelligent, but the stereotypical climax is a disappointment for fans of director
Jonathan Kaplan..." * Read the entire review.
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9/25/05 - Thunderheart: (James Horner) --Expanded Review-- "A fictional
representation of events that occurred on a South Dakota reservation in the 1970's, director
Michael Apted and writer John Rusco provide one of the most authentic depictions of
reservation life in Hollywood's history. In real
life, a militant group called 'American Indian Movement' defied the FBI with violent results,
although in Thunderheart, the story has been twisted to include a conspiracy to steal
land from the Native Americans. A murder mystery erupts from these actions, and it gives Val
Kilmer the chance for one of his best performances to date. His conservative, clean-cut FBI
agent attitude is challenged by his quarter Indian heritage, with the film showing his
slowly-developing mystical visions of ghost dancers as he is eventually forced to choose
between the law and the Indians. A fine film in all regards, the project would mark the third
and final collaboration between Apted and composer James Horner. A superior piece than both
Gorky Park in 1983 and Class Action in 1991..." **** Read
the entire review.
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9/22/05 - A Far Off Place: (James Horner)
--Expanded Review-- "While produced by
Steven Spielberg's affiliated Amblin Entertainment and Walt Disney Pictures,
A Far Off Place is not your usual fluffy children's film. Nor was it
any great success with audiences, for perhaps that very reason. Films have
been made before about children persevering in adverse conditions, but A
Far Off Place takes the related series of cliches to all new heights. A
South African white girl, American white boy, and young African bushman are
forced to trek 2000 kilometers across the Kalahari Desert in Africa after
the girl's parents (whom the boy was visiting for the summer) are brutally
murdered on their farm by ivory poachers. Instead of traveling to Cape Town
or any number of small villages within reasonable range, the film
illogically takes them on this long, unrealistic trek and has to rely upon
the stereotypical badguys --in this case, the poachers tracking them in
helicopters and attempting to machine gun them down-- in order to compensate
for their inability to sustain the film with the vistas and character
interaction alone...." *** Read the entire
review.
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9/18/05 - Searching for Bobby Fischer: (James Horner)
--Expanded Review-- "Perhaps the most well developed and respectful
film ever made about the game of chess, Searching for Bobby Fischer
is still first and foremost a movie about human relationships. In this case,
a young boy (and somewhat of a snot) at the center of the story is a
budding chess genius and the adults in his life are forced to realize and
deal with these talents. From the chess hustlers in New York's Washington
Square Park with whom the boy learns the game to his own parents and
eventually the testy professional chess teacher who trains him, the journey
in Searching for Bobby Fischer ironically doesn't actually include
Bobby Fischer himself. The most infamous chess competitor of all time,
Fischer inspires the film in that he inspires all chess enthusiasts, and
while the real Fischer is stuck in a monumental legal battle of citizenship
that has landed him in unwilling Japanese seclusion, it's the presence of
only his spirit that is required to propel the story of this film. A complex
but magical product, Searching for Bobby Fischer would demand both an
atmospheric and character-centered approach from composer James Horner..." *** Read the entire
review.
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9/14/05 - The Pelican Brief: (James Horner) --Expanded
Review-- "Director Alan Pakula's films have never been inclined to
demand large-scale or thematically complex music out of their composers.
From Klute to Presumed Innocent, a Pakula effort is
typically a high-quality suspense story about corruption in the genres
of law, journalism, and politics. The thriller The Pelican Brief
falls into all of these categories, with its story closely following
John Grisham's best-selling novel of the same name. Julia Roberts is a
law student with a sharp mind and an inquisitive nature, and her theory
about a conspiracy behind the deaths of two Supreme Court justices inks
her name on the perpetrators' hit list. She teams with Denzel Washington
who, as a reporter, dodges the same assassination attempts on their lives
in an effort to get the truth revealed. With a seemingly snug fit between
Grisham and Pakula in place, the duties of the composer would fall upon
James Horner, whose popularity was nearing its height..." ** Read the entire
review.
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9/10/05 - We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story: (James Horner) --Expanded
Review-- "There were two films about dinosaurs in 1993 that were either produced or
directed by Steven Spielberg. One was Jurassic Park, for which John Williams wrote one
of the most popular scores of the 1990's. And then there was We're Back! A Dinosaur's
Story, on which James Horner matches Williams note for note in an effort to take a
dinosaur horror score and
twist it into a wildly outrageous slapstick variation. If a collector of
Horner's works looks back at all of the children's scores from 1988 to 1995
--animated and live-action-- then a good head-scratching could result. But
of all the somewhat bizarre projects on which Horner became involved during
that era, none is stranger in content or musical result than We're Back!
A Dinosaur's Story. A Spielberg-produced flight of fantasy, the film
basically follows four singing and dancing dinosaurs as they travel forward
in time to New York and engage in activities that today would constitute a
significant breech in American national security...." *** Read the entire review.
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9/7/05 - Swing Kids: (James Horner) --Expanded Review--
"Few people know that during the height of Hitler's reign in Germany, there
was a loyal and popular following of American jazz music. The youths that
enjoyed the likes of Benny Goodman and Count Basie were, of course, engaging
in what the Third Reich considered illegal behavior, and the film attempts
to show their resilience in the name of music... to an extent. Where
Swing Kids utterly fails as a movie is in its treatment of everything
outside of the jazz itself. Almost as though the filmmakers made the 1930's
jazz the main attraction of the film, they managed to neglect the gravity
of the surrounding social and political events. While you become attached to
a certain number of 'swing kids' in the story, the film makes only vague
and distant references to the persecution and war around them. When the
kids are forced to either enlist in the army or be sent to concentration
camps, their reactions aren't really clear, for in their jazz-centered view
on life, they seem to have no feelings whatsoever for the Jews...." **
Read the entire review.
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9/3/05 - Clear and Present Danger: (James Horner) --Expanded Review--
"After beginning the original trilogy of Jack Ryan films with an overwhelming cinematic and
soundtrack success in the form of The Hunt for Red
October, the series of adaptations of Tom Clancy's novels to the big
screen progressed with less fanfare to Patriot Games and Clear and
Present Danger. While the first film had the advantage of conveying the
most interesting story, the subsequent entries suffered from a lack of
self-importance as the criminal attention turned more towards Ryan and his
family rather than events of a global scale. Harrison Ford was almost
becoming typecast as "the average Joe who has to do something extraordinary"
during this time, and the sequel films --if they can really be called
that--- took on a similarly formula-restricted approach. This less inspired
method of filmmaking translated directly to James Horner's scores for the
two sequels. While his intention was certainly not to try to match the
impact of Basil Poledouris' score for The Hunt for Red October..." *** Read
the entire review.
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