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March/April 2023
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4/26/23
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Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (Alexander Courage/John Williams)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
if you had forgotten that John Williams wrote interesting new themes for this score, his music expertly adapted by Alexander Courage into a
fascinatingly refreshing and different style for the franchise.
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| Avoid it... |
if you want your Williams themes to actually sound like Williams music, Courage's extremely smart handling of those ideas pushing them to the
outskirts of Jerry Goldsmith territory.
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4/22/23
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Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (Alan Silvestri)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
on the shorter album presentation if you seek an occasionally entertaining and electronically contemporary variant of Alan Silvestri's
matured orchestral action style of the 2000's.
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| Avoid it... |
if you have no interest in hearing Silvestri mimic the most abrasive synthetic loops of David Arnold from that era, the mix of such
elements distractingly obnoxious during this score's fight sequences.
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4/17/23
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Superman III (Ken Thorne)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
only if you enjoyed Ken Thorne's original direction for this score in context, his combination of comedic prancing and dissonant
electronics a stark change for this franchise.
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| Avoid it... |
if you loved the way John Williams' music for this franchise soared, very little of that initial character remaining in the childish tone
of this comparatively wretched misfire.
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4/13/23
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E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (John Williams)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
on especially the 2017 or 2022 2-CD sets if you seek one of the most popular scores in the history of Hollywood, not to mention a triumph
that stands among the best of John Williams' masterful works.
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| Avoid it... |
if not even the most magical symphonic composition from the height of Williams' career is of any interest to your unusually sour tastes.
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4/8/23
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Superman II (Ken Thorne)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
on the comprehensive 2008 or 2018 sets to appreciate the really fine adaptation work achieved by Ken Thorne for Superman II.
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| Avoid it... |
if nothing but original John Williams music will suffice for you, Thorne's loyalty to rearranging the music from the first film limiting
his options for expanding the musical narrative.
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4/4/23
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Hollow Man (Jerry Goldsmith)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
on the original, shorter album if you are a devoted Jerry Goldsmith collector, the highly
derivative and thematically wayward nature of
Hollow Man teasing the intellect only to a certain extent.
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| Avoid it... |
if you expect Goldsmith to conjure creative new ways to address the film's elements of action,
fantasy, science, or suspense, the tone
and themes of the score never truly comfortable in any of those genres.
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3/30/23
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Sunshine (Maurice Jarre)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
if your love of Maurice Jarre's early classics leads you to this late-career reprise of that majestic orchestral sound, the classically
symphonic highlights of this work undeniably attractive.
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| Avoid it... |
if you expect the score to sustain its superior melodic form outside of the opening and closing suite arrangements, the midsection decent
but not spectacular.
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3/26/23
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind (John Williams)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
on the 1998 Arista or 2017/2022 La-La Land albums with reservations, because such expansive presentations of the intellectually
fascinating score fully reveal the challenging, atonal ambience that John Williams wrote for the first half of the film.
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| Avoid it... |
on any of the albums for this score before 1998, for the sound quality of these products is significantly inferior and they might contain
a horrendous disco version of the main theme that is best left forgotten.
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3/21/23
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The Beastmaster (Lee Holdridge)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
if the lyricism and heart of Lee Holdridge's better works typically appeal to your tastes, this symphonic sword and sorcery romp among
the composer's more robust expressions of fantasy.
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| Avoid it... |
if the archival sound of a rather constricted 1980's recording, along with a few silly comedic passages and bloated heroism, deters you
from an otherwise strong genre entry.
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3/17/23
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Rudy (Jerry Goldsmith)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
on the narratively superior 2022 product if you seek an inspirational score with the same noble heart and good-natured, competitive sense
of movement as Jerry Goldsmith's masterpiece in the genre, Hoosiers.
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| Avoid it... |
if you're dissatisfied with scores that make the most out of only a few positively simplistic constructs, repeating them constantly with
only alterations to their tempo and instrumental intensity.
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3/12/23
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Filmtracks announces its 2022 Awards and Community Award archives
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Filmtracks celebrates the best film music of 2022 with its annual nominees and winners in the categories of "Top Film Scores," "Top
Composers," and "Top Film Cues." The nominees for "Top Film Scores" in 2022 are:
Visit the 2022 Awards section to view the winners (and other categories). Also available is an
official page for the 2022 Filmtracks Community Awards and all such awards back to their
debut in 2009. For more information about these awards or to view the results from previous years, browse the Filmtracks Awards index.
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3/7/23
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Mia and Me: The Hero of Centopia (Christoph Zirngibl)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
if you love finding rousingly excellent fantasy music for orchestra, choir, and contemporary elements in the most unexpected of places.
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| Avoid it... |
if hearing a beefy, modern take on Joel McNeely's Tinker Bell scores is no more appealing to you than suffering the infantile dialogue of
colorfully animated fairies and unicorns.
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3/3/23
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Clear and Present Danger (James Horner)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
if you are roused by basically functional, patriotic music that takes action to a brainless but evenly consistent level of unoriginality.
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| Avoid it... |
if any small measure of James Horner's self-quotation habits make you grind your teeth, for he should have won an award for how
thoroughly he adapts his previously written scores into this one.
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