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January/February 2025
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2/27/25
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Young Woman and the Sea (Amelia Warner)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
for one of the most dramatically wholesome and inspirational sports scores in cinematic history, Amelia Warner rising to the
occasion with simple tonalities that work wonders in the picture.
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| Avoid it... |
if your brain cannot accept the general lack of complication to this score, or if you have an aversion to synthetic and rhythmic
infusions that will remind you of Enya's heyday.
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2/23/25
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Atlas (Andrew Lockington)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
to hear Andrew Lockington return to his comfort zone with large ensembles and creative vocals, Atlas conveying his vintage
adventure and fantasy voice with familiar appeal that leads to a truly outstanding end credits suite.
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| Avoid it... |
if you have always struggled with the composer's tendency to force his themes to earn their presence for a payoff at the end of a
film, this score's set of identities smart but not truly satisfying until the rousing end.
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2/20/25
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Participate in the 2024 Filmtracks Community Awards
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Each year at this time, Filmtracks readers and participants at the Scoreboard Forum share their top ten scores, top composer, and
other optional opinions about the prior year's film, television, and video game scores. These votes are tallied at the end of
February and featured in the Filmtracks Awards section. To participate, all
you need to do is start a new thread at the Scoreboard with your
selections. You do not need to create a profile account, though it is encouraged. For more background about this year's community
vote, view the original announcement. The deadline
is February 28th. Thanks for joining the 2024 vote!
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2/16/25
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Gladiator (1992) (Jerry Goldsmith/Brad Fiedel)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
if you love Jerry Goldsmith's approach to sports dramas, his tone darker in this entry but the inspirational core narrative and
character themes still exemplary.
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| Avoid it... |
if you detest Goldsmith's harsher synthetic instrumentation, including his drum pads, the suspense and fight scenes in this work
adopting a tougher attitude.
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2/13/25
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Blade (Mark Isham)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
on either album presentation only if you are an avid fan of the film itself, because Mark Isham's score is not noteworthy in either
his career or the genre of vampires and urban combat.
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| Avoid it... |
if you expect any dose of supernatural or emotional depth to carry the more romantic side of a typical undead-versus-vampire story,
even one as mindlessly violent as this.
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2/9/25
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The Public Eye (Jerry Goldsmith/Mark Isham)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
on the 2021 Intrada album for a pleasurable extension of Jerry Goldsmith's suspenseful noir methods and his stubborn refusal to
give up on adapting his style from The Russia House into other works.
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| Avoid it... |
on the album featuring Mark Isham's serviceable and workmanlike replacement score, its style and tone far less vibrant and its
themes inferior versions of Goldsmith's rejected ideas.
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2/6/25
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Godzilla Minus One (Naoki Sato)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
if you can appreciate Naoki Sato's emphasis on dissonant torment, anguish, grief, and misery in his original material for this more
thoughtful take on the franchise.
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| Avoid it... |
if you prefer the propulsive personality of the classic Akira Ifukube scores for the concept, this soundtrack cutting between short
re-recordings of that material and Sato's grim new music in a strategic misfire of epic proportions.
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2/2/25
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2 Days in the Valley (Jerry Goldsmith/Anthony Marinelli)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
on the 2012 album with Jerry Goldsmith's rejected score to hear one of the composer's more curious diversions of the 1990's with a
dose of familiar comfort.
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| Avoid it... |
if you believe that Anthony Marinelli's alternative score of thrashing rock and minimal intelligence is a better fit for this
terrible, trashy flick.
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1/30/25
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Dinosaur (James Newton Howard)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
if you regularly enjoy dynamic, entertaining, and ethnically diverse animation scores that paint with as many vibrant colors as the
films' visuals.
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| Avoid it... |
if you require more than an obvious rearrangement of styles and themes from Hans Zimmer's The Lion King and Jerry Goldsmith's The
Ghost and the Darkness for this score's highlights.
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1/26/25
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The Lady in Red (James Horner)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
primarily for intellectual curiosity, as James Horner's first solo film score contains hints of his later dramatic melodicism and
1930's big band jazz affinity in a very small-budget rendering.
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| Avoid it... |
unless you can overcome the extremely sparse sound of the recording, Horner doing his best with minimal players and navigating a
plethora of cost-conscious source pieces from the 1930's.
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1/23/25
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Sudden Death (John Debney)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
only if you're a sucker for stale and predictable orchestral action music for an equally formulaic film.
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| Avoid it... |
if you seek any kind of uniquely redeeming element to elevate this otherwise competent score beyond the rest of its tired class.
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1/20/25
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Heidi (TV) (John Williams)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
on the 2023 Quartet Records presentation for the best sound quality of any album available for this wholesome and occasionally
dramatic children's score.
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| Avoid it... |
if you expect the orchestral majesty of the score's thematic highlights to carry much weight in the rest of the work, which is more
understated and mundane by Williams' later standards.
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1/17/25
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The Talented Mr. Ripley (Gabriel Yared)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
only if you seek the competent and rousing selection of standard jazz pieces from the 1950's, the introverted and reflective score
by Gabriel Yared largely overwhelmed by that surrounding material.
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| Avoid it... |
if you expect the score to trend towards Yared's more palatable work for Message in a Bottle or City of Angels rather than
reprising the chilly atmosphere of The English Patient.
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1/13/25
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The Reivers (John Williams)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
if your affinity for John Williams' sensitive character themes can accept the addition of folksy attitude and some outrageously
exuberant comedy passages.
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| Avoid it... |
on any album if you expect a full and true treatment of the score as heard in the film, though several options combine to satisfy
in relatively good sound.
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1/10/25
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Octopussy (John Barry)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
on the 2024 album if you prefer John Barry's sentimental and conservative James Bond scores of the 1960's and 1970's, for Octopussy
is one last return to that traditional style.
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| Avoid it... |
if you believe the formula of the early Bond scores by Barry favors overly repetitive motifs and action rhythms, in which case the
two more experimental franchise scores following Octopussy are better suited for you.
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1/6/25
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Jane Eyre (TV) (John Williams)
All New Review
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| Buy it... |
on the 2023 Quartet Records album to appreciate an important foreshadowing of John Williams' later romantic inclinations, this
score containing one of his career's most compelling love themes.
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| Avoid it... |
if you demand to hear the integrity of Williams' engaging set of three themes in their original narrative relationships, for the
film version of this score has never been released.
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1/3/25
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For Love of the Game (Basil Poledouris)
Updated Review, With Additional Album
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| Buy it... |
if you seek the final exploration of heartfelt personal triumph and broad strokes of Americana in Basil Poledouris' celebrated
career.
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| Avoid it... |
if you expect the primary themes of this score to firmly reside in your memory, the work's tone mostly perfect but the melodies
lacking the lasting punch needed in this genre.
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