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| 9/29/11
- | Sleeping with the Enemy: (Jerry Goldsmith)
- Updated Review, With Additional Album |
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Buy it... |
if you have a soft spot for Jerry Goldsmith's airy, delicate themes of innocence performed by
solo woodwinds over lofty strings and tingling electronics, regardless of the genre in which
they flourish.
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Avoid it... |
if you prefer your thriller scores to actually thrill you, for the synthetic suspense material
in this one is completely generic and unmemorable compared to the delightful beauty of the
many lightly melodic portions.
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| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
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| 9/27/11
- | Commando: (James Horner)
- Updated Review, With Additional Album |
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Buy it... |
if you are attempting to maintain a complete James Horner collection and dauntlessly tolerate
his early rhythmic action style pounded on electronic pads and steel drums.
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Avoid it... |
if you expect to hear a superior, orchestral paramilitary superhero score along the lines of
Predator or Rambo, because there is some tongue-in-cheek disregard at work in Commando's
cheesy music.
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| Rating: | **
Read the entire review
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| 9/25/11
- | Elizabeth: The Golden Age: (Craig Armstrong/A.R.
Rahman)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you're eager to be slapped across the face by a ballsy and accessible score of immense
size, a surprisingly engaging merging of techniques from two respected composers from
completely disparate backgrounds.
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Avoid it... |
if you expect to hear either anything stylistically new from Craig Armstrong or enough of A.R.
Rahman's far more darkly seductive music for the collaboration in the film or on its album.
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| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
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| 9/23/11
- | Monte Carlo: (Michael Giacchino)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you continue to adore Henry Mancini's 1960's comedy jazz, a sound emulated with great
affection and technical precision in this lightweight affair.
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Avoid it... |
if you can only handle that dated Mancini style for short periods, because Michael Giacchino
goes overboard with forty cues of short, haphazard parody tributes on a static, tedious album
presentation.
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| Rating: | **
Read the entire review
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| 9/21/11
- | Explorers: (Jerry Goldsmith)
- Updated Review, With Additional Album |
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Buy it... |
if you desire a whimsical, optimistic twist on Jerry Goldsmith's usual action style, joined by
a handful of exhilarating statements of redemptive fantasy themes in the composer's trademark
synthetic and orchestral blend for the era.
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Avoid it... |
if you require a significant amount of symphonic meat to accompany your Goldsmith constructs
for this genre, for the composer keeps the environment in Explorers airy, undemanding, and
occasionally downright wacky.
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| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
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| 9/19/11
- | Knight and Day: (John Powell)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if your appreciation of John Powell's espionage mode compels you to seek this lesser cousin of
Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a basically adequate but surprisingly uninspiring continuation of the same
basic idea.
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Avoid it... |
if the interesting fusion of discordant musical genres and international instrumentation in a
handful of snazzy performances cannot carry action material that remains non-descript until
the impressive finale cue.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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| 9/17/11
- | Battlestar Galactica: (Stu Phillips)
- Updated Review, With Additional Album |
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Buy it... |
on the 1999 re-recording released by Varèse Sarabande if you only casually seek the
highlights of the 1978 pilot episode, conducted by the composer himself and featuring vibrant
sound quality.
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Avoid it... |
on the 2011 Intrada series or 1996 4-CD promotional set unless you truly consider yourself a
devoted fan of the original show and its music, because these presentations can be both
redundant and overwhelming when considered in sum.
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| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
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| 9/15/11
- | Squanto: A Warrior's Tale: (Joel McNeely)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you have long sought to expand your collection of Joel McNeely's lesser known, quality film
music, because Squanto: A Warrior's Tale is an early but solid orchestral score in his career.
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Avoid it... |
if easily digestible lyricism and predictable instrumentation for the topic are not alone
worth the cost of the limited album given that the music may be perceived by some as anonymous
in its wholesome approach.
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| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
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| 9/13/11
- | The Black Hole: (John Barry)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
on the 2011 CD album if you, like most film score collectors, have long considered this
memorable John Barry score to be one of the unreleased holy grails of this genre of music.
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Avoid it... |
if you expect the decades of hype surrounding this music, mostly caused by its absence on CD,
to mean that Barry leaves his comfort zone for what amounts to an entertaining but highly
derivative and arguably underachieving score.
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| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
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| 9/11/11
- | Killing Me Softly: (Patrick Doyle)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you're curious to hear Patrick Doyle's keen melodic and instrumental sensibilities
repackage techniques from Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith, and John Ottman's music for the
thriller genre into an engagingly intelligent hidden gem.
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Avoid it... |
if Doyle's sometimes overstated dramatic sense predictably conveys too obvious of a narrative
for you, because he painstakingly emulates the wildly varied emotional state of the
protagonist in this otherwise awful sex romp of a picture.
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| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
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| 9/9/11
- | Last Embrace: (Miklós Rózsa)
- Updated Review, With Additional Album |
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Buy it... |
on the 1991 Varèse album if you are a
Miklós Rózsa completist and are interested in two of his
final scores that are solid in sound quality and compositional merit
despite exhibiting some flimsy militaristic material.
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Avoid it... |
if Rózsa's lush Golden Age romanticism doesn't
impress you regardless of sound quality, despite its understandable
application to films of the 1970's and 1980's that were attempting to
resurrect the best of the noir thriller generation.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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| 9/7/11
- | Up: (Michael Giacchino)
- Updated Review, With Additional Album |
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Buy it... |
if your heart was broken by the tragic whimsy of Michael Giacchino's theme for the primary
couple in the context of Up, its combination of vintage jazz and waltz rhythms both affably
light-hearted and remarkably intimate at the forefront of the film's mix.
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Avoid it... |
if you expect the compressed, download-only album presentation of this score to do any justice
to the dynamic range of the original recording, in which case you'd be better advised to seek
the tardy 2011 CD album with identical contents.
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| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
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| 9/5/11
- | Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: (Hans
Zimmer/Various)
- Updated Review, With Additional Album |
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Buy it... |
if, once again, you have accepted Hans Zimmer's modern, trademark action style as viable for
the swashbuckling genre and want to hear an intelligent merging of thematic ideas from all of
the first three films in this franchise.
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Avoid it... |
if you're simply tired of predictable, simplistic bombast with a synthetically enhanced bass
in a genre it never matched in the first place.
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| Rating: | **
Read the entire review
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| 9/4/11
- | Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: (Hans
Zimmer/Various)
- Updated Review, With Additional Album |
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Buy it... |
only if you accepted The Curse of the Black Pearl as a viable entry in the swashbuckling genre
and seek a slightly more orchestral and jaunty version of the same general sound for the
sequel.
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Avoid it... |
if more tired regurgitation from The Rock and The Peacemaker and an overwhelmingly awful
bass-heavy mix are the last things you need to hear in yet another film involving pirate ships
and swordfighting.
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| Rating: | *
Read the entire review
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| 9/3/11
- | Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black
Pearl: (Hans Zimmer/Various)
- Updated Review, With Additional Album |
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Buy it... |
if you enjoy truly brainless film music that not only ruins the film for some viewers but also
popularly ushered in an era of brute masculinity over style in the genre of swashbuckling
music.
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Avoid it... |
if you've already heard quite enough imbecilic regurgitation from the old Media Ventures
production house of Hans Zimmer and seek intelligence, finesse, or savoir-faire in your high
seas adventures.
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| Rating: | *
Read the entire review
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| 9/1/11
- | Soul Surfer: (Marco Beltrami)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if originality is your desire, for rarely do you hear traditional Hawaiian chants beautifully
integrated into an inspirational, instrumentally creative and occasionally robust dramatic
score.
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Avoid it... |
if the idea of hearing absolutely nothing resembling Marco Beltrami's usual mannerisms makes
you nervous about exploring this surprising and tremendous expansion of his career into the
realm of melodramatic, tonal beauty.
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| Rating: | *****
Read the entire review
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