Before turning to the topic at hand, I wanted to pay a little tribute to the MovieScore Media label. I remember reviewing their very first release, 18 years ago – when I was worried that they were a digital-only label, which I didn’t approve of at the time. (Now I’d be very happy if I […] The post Kensuke’s Kingdom first appeared on movie-wave.net ..read more

I don’t know if you can remember this, but apparently a couple of years ago a film was released which did not star Glen Powell. I know it’s hard to believe but Google it if you must – I swear it’s true. Of all the recent Hollywood nostalgic trips back to films of the 1980s […] The post Twisters first appeared on movie-wave.net ..read more

I must admit, I spent so much of my time watching The Union concerned that Halle Berry’s hair covering at least one of her eyes at most times would make her life as a secret agent considerably more difficult than it really needed to be, that I may have missed all the good parts of […] The post The Union first appeared on movie-wave.net ..read more

Three decades after the pretty awful third instalment of the series, Eddie Murphy returned to his most famous role for a fourth one – and while it got a mixed reception, I enjoyed it. Films described as “action comedy” rarely do the comedy particularly well, but this film prompted me to go back to the […] The post Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F first appeared on movie-wave.net ..read more

I can’t quite believe it’s been twenty years since the great Jerry Goldsmith left us. His music has been part of my life for most of my life – still today, rarely a day goes by that I don’t listen to at least some of it. We all have different reasons for liking film music – for some, it’s a musical reminder of a beloved film; for some, it’s a place where you can find great tunes, great melodies; for others, it’s (for the most obvious reason) the most viscerally visual form of music, constructed in a way that allows the listener to either recall a particular film in a particular way, or better ..read more

When I first started making the move from my casual love of the music of films I loved while I was growing up into a more obsessive passion for film music and wanted to explore its golden age, there were only really two composers whose music from the golden age was particularly widely-available on CD – Bernard Herrmann and Miklós Rózsa. While Herrmann turned out to be too much for my tiny, youthful brain at the time (I realise his brilliance now, of course, now my brain is older even if no less tiny) – but Rózsa was an instant hit with me. His music was so exuberant, so full of passion, and ke ..read more

Loosely based on a true story, Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare tells the story of a secret WWII mission – commissioned by Winston Churchill – to take out an Italian ship docked on a small island off the west African coast and thereby cut off a key supply line to German u-boats in the Atlantic. I say “loosely” because in Richie’s hands we get a comic book-like telling of the story full of his trademark banter between the gang. The director’s composer of choice in recent years has been Chris Benstead, who has supplied a succession of good scores for Ritchie’s films. This is h ..read more

We Were the Lucky Ones tells the story of the Kurc family during the second world war. Until it began they lived in the Polish city of Radom, but following Hitler’s invasion some went into hiding, some were taken to concentration camps and others flew to distant corners of the world. The score is jointly credited to Rachel Portman and Jon Ehrlich with no indication of the division of labour – but there is no doubting who was responsible for the main theme, which is nothing short of magnificent. Few can write a tune like Portman and this one is a seemingly effortless mixture of effervescence an ..read more

While Heather Morris’s novelisation of the memoirs of Holocaust survivor Lale Sokolov has not been without its controversy (the Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre has criticised it for some factual inaccuracy), it is an extraordinary love story set against the backdrop of evil and I have found the tv adaptation to be harrowing and powerful. I think it is vitally important that these stories keep being told for generations to come. Sokolov is played with sensitivity by Jonah Hauer-King – who looks uncannily like a young Mark Rylance – while the older version of him, portrayed passing on his mem ..read more

I’ve only done about three useful things in my life – I would like to do more but having no talent for anything is a bit of a barrier. Still, if I can do one useful thing through this website then it’s to highlight great music that you might not otherwise find out about, and here’s my latest attempt. You won’t find a better score either on or off the beaten track lately than Stormskerry Maja, a Finnish period drama with music by Lauri Porra. If I tell you that he’s the great grandson of Sibelius and that the talent has clearly flowed down through the genes then hopefully that’s an exciting sta ..read more