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September - October 2021
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10/27/21
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The Silence of the Lambs (Howard Shore)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
on any of the album options if you want to spend an hour looking over your shoulder, because few scores are as consistently
unnerving as Howard Shore's morbidly dramatic The Silence of the Lambs.
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| Avoid it... |
if you expect this score to accomplish much more than establish a suspenseful mood, for its structures really aren't that
complicated when studied apart from the oppressive attitude of their performance.
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10/22/21
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Hard Rain (Christopher Young)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
if you'd be enticed by a merging of vintage Hans Zimmer synthetic bass and drum pads with Jerry Goldsmith's aggressive action
rhythms and Bruce Broughton's ambitious brass layers.
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| Avoid it... |
if you prefer your Christopher Young music to be unpredictable and laced with the more challenging dissonance that defines much of
his work, this entry consistently tonal in its brute force.
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10/17/21
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Looney Tunes: Back in Action (Jerry Goldsmith/John Debney)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
if you can appreciate and enjoy Jerry Goldsmith's masterful talent for parody on a grand orchestral scale, his work thoroughly
referencing classic cartoon stereotypes and his own, previously established genre techniques.
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| Avoid it... |
if you appreciate those Goldsmith's talents but find them challenging in the context of the rapidly changing genres of
single-minute cues defined by frantic, energetic flair and mayhem.
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10/14/21
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Aladdin (1992) (Alan Menken)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
on the original 1992 CD pressing if you seek to hear Aladdin as it was meant to be, an entertaining and humorous collection of
songs with strong melodic adaptations in the accompanying underscore.
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| Avoid it... |
on the 2004 "Special Edition" album if you expect to find previously missing score material or a satisfying and comprehensive
presentation of the songs with the lyrics of the original theatrical release.
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10/10/21
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Beauty and the Beast (1991) (Alan Menken)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
on the definitive 2018 expanded set if you want only the best that the animated musical genre has to offer, for Beauty and the
Beast is arguably the top such film of all time.
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| Avoid it... |
on any of the earlier albums if you seek a decently mastered or satisfyingly complete presentation of Alan Menken's melodically
rich score for the film.
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10/7/21
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The Little Mermaid (Alan Menken)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
if you are one of the few remaining fans of musicals who hasn't already formed a polarized opinion about this film, because its
main ballad and two calypso songs alone are cinematic classics.
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| Avoid it... |
if you've never been impressed with Alan Menken's superior and equally awarded works for the subsequent Beauty and the Beast and
Aladdin, the seeds of which clearly evident in especially the score here.
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10/3/21
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Avatar (James Horner)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
if you have any affinity for James Horner's recognizable career techniques and
instrumentation, for Avatar is a masterful merging of all of those familiar ingredients into
a powerhouse of an achievement.
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| Avoid it... |
if you seek to judge the sum of Horner's contribution to Avatar from the extremely limiting 78
minutes available on the initial commercial album, a presentation lacking the majority of the
score and showcasing some of the most blatant portions of Horner's tiresome self-referencing.
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9/29/21
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Total Recall (Jerry Goldsmith)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
if you continue to admire Jerry Goldsmith's top-notch, energetic, cohesive action and fantasy material that is saturated with his
trademark rhythmic and instrumental flair of the 1980's and 1990's.
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| Avoid it... |
if you prefer an earlier generation of Goldsmith action that didn't rely as heavily on such considerable synthetic accompaniment to
the orchestra, the electronics a pivotal component of the fantasy atmosphere in this entry.
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9/25/21
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T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous (William Ross)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
if you were among the very few people who appreciated William Ross' score in the context of the putrid IMAX film, the music
predictably workmanlike but better than expected.
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| Avoid it... |
if you expect highly original themes and instrumental styles from the career orchestrator, neither of which demanded of Ross for
this humorously poor project.
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9/20/21
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The Land Before Time (James Horner)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
if you're enamored with James Horner's classically lyrical orchestral work for the animated children's film genre, because The Land
Before Time is the gold standard by which all his other related scores would be compared.
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| Avoid it... |
if you expect the melodies and comparatively few action cues in this score to rival the rambunctious intensity of Horner's
concurrent work for Willow.
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9/15/21
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Inchon (Jerry Goldsmith)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
only if you consider yourself a staunch collector of Jerry Goldsmith's works, because while Inchon is a decent composition with two
alluring themes, its terrible recording nearly ruins the listening experience.
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| Avoid it... |
if you demand a truly vibrant and engaging representation of the war genre from an otherwise reliable Goldsmith, though the
recording's performance errors and lingering distortion issues are mostly to blame for this score's ills.
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9/10/21
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War of the Worlds (John Williams)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
if you appreciate John Williams' propulsive rhythmic figures and high standards of complexity of this era no matter the level of
atonality or dissonance prevalent at nearly every moment of this bleak and challenging score.
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| Avoid it... |
if you prefer your Williams music to be easily digestible and feature memorable lines of thematic cohesion, a satisfying narrative
arc, and an obvious concert arrangement.
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9/5/21
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The Last Castle (Jerry Goldsmith)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
if your heart can be stirred by the solemn and defiant merging of Jerry Goldsmith's complexly vengeful Rambo scores with echoes of trumpet performances from
Patton.
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| Avoid it... |
if, despite an impressive tribute recording to the victims of September 11th, 2001, your primary interest in this score is based upon originality in
construct and instrumentation, neither of which explored by Goldsmith in the work.
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