Mysterious Adventures: Original Film Scores 2

A brand new compilation of some old film score work I did for some friends' projects, most of which never got used, or never got released. Take a listen and let me know what you think!

Crust Never Sleeps...

A friend of mine recently found this old video. A group of friends and I put this together as part of the Boulder 24-hour filmmaking competition in 2008. It definitely looks like it was shot and edited in just 24-hours, but it actually won best comedy and best art direction. I wrote the screenplay (based on a story our group developed), did some acting and also composed the "Silly String Girl" theme song. Anyway, it's pretty wild-- if you appreciate non-sequiturs, you'll get a good laugh out of this one...

Movie Reviews: Creed, Trumbo and more...

My dad was in town over Thanksgiving weekend, and we took the opportunity to do a movie marathon!

Sylvester Stallone hasn't been a symbol of quality in a long, long time, so it's easy to forget that the original Rocky (1976) won Best Picture, and was a pretty great film. Creed (2015) is a spin-off of the original Rocky series, and it captures much of the heart of the original. Stallone plays a supporting role as the aging champ helping out his deceased friend's son, and the film is better for it. It was a pleasant surprise. Recommended.

My favorite film of the weekend was Trumbo (2015), starring Brian Cranston (Breaking Bad, Malcolm in the Middle) as the eponymous character. Dalton Trumbo is probably the most famous of the blacklisted screenwriters during the Red Scare of the 1950s, having won multiple Oscars while writing under pseudonyms. It's a very political film, focusing on free speech issues (a subject very dear to my heart), but manages to be incredible entertaining at the same time-- this film oozes with old Hollywood charm. Highly, highly recommended.

Brooklyn (2015) stars Saoirse Ronan as a young Irish immigrant in 1950s New York. It's hard to go into the film too much without oversimplifying it, but I will say that this film has some really wonderful dinner table conversations. The movie is a romance, both about people and places, and it doesn't wrap up in a tidy way. It will leave you thinking, so bring someone along to talk about it afterwards.

Newspapers have been dying, so it's no surprise that we don't see movies about newspapers so much, anymore. But that's a shame, because there's something thrilling about a group of intrepid reporters fighting the system and uncovering corruption. Spotlight (2015) revives that tradition as it details how the Boston Globe uncovered the full extent of the Catholic child abuse scandal. It's not perfect-- I think it sometimes goes overboard trying to make active visuals while relaying key information-- but it's a worthy entry in the genre.

It's odd that the movie is called Victor Frankenstein (2015), because it's really about his assistant-- though I can understand why naming it Igor Stravinsky might be a bad marketing move. Daniel Radcliffe plays this revisionist version of Igor, which brings a lot of humanity to the character. I really appreciated the first part of the film, which explored his origins in the circus and his love for one of its acrobats. James McAvoy is well cast as the mad scientist who enlists Igor's help in conducting some horrific experiments. The last act is a bit overdone and deviates from the focus on Igor, but it will satisfy those who need a spectacular climax. Overall, it's a pretty neat take on the Frankenstein story.

I prefer to see films in the theater, but we did rent the local film Ink (2009), which depicts a dreamworld where the benevolent Storytellers try to protect us from the Incubi, who bring only nightmares. One little girl slips into a coma as the mysterious creature, Ink, kidnaps her unconscious mind. Will the storytellers retrieve her soul? Will her absentee father return to help out? This was locally done in Denver, and won Best Colorado Film from the Denver Film Critics Society. It's an uneven film, but visually it's stunning and creepy.

Movie Review: Age of Ultron (2015)

Pacing is a big deal to me, and when you have a movie with a lot of plot and tons of characters, things can get a bit muddled.  Avengers: Age of Ultron does a pretty good job of balancing things considering how much happens, but I still came away feeling like it was a 3 hour movie crammed into 2 hours and 20 minutes.  Now, I'm a Marvel Comics fanboy from way back; so when I watch this film, I see all the cameos and Easter eggs that probably go over the heads of the average viewer.  It's quite possible that those who only know the movies wouldn't see all the stuff that I do.

Still, if it's overstuffed, it's overstuffed with goodness.  The action sequences are all great, though my favorite parts were the witty dialogue and nice character touches.  Director Joss Whedon is one of the best at working with ensemble casts-- every character advances their own personal story arcs; each actor gets their chance to shine.  I think the interpersonal relationships between the heroes are even better than in the first Avengers film.  Loki is absent this time around, but Ultron manages to be just as compelling a villain, if not moreso.  Genocidal robots are nothing new, but Ultron is a unique and entertaining take on an old trope.

Now, the first Avengers was a big deal.  On top of becoming a cultural phenomenon, it completely changed the film industry.  Superheroes were already dominant at the box office, but The Avengers showed that an interconnected universe could steamroll everything.  Since then, we've seen all the major studios rushing to create their own interconnected universes, and spreading from the big screen to the small screen, too.  Age of Ultron isn't quite as ground breaking as its precursor.  If anything, it probably shows the limits of interconnectedness-- the movie almost sinks under the weight of its cross-referencing.  On the other hand, it does signal an achievement some 30-odd years in the making:  pure, unadulterated comic book storytelling has reached the silver screen.  Up to this point, I feel like they've always compromised (at least a little), but not this time-- we're getting it all: the super, the silly and the shaggy.

Bonus Question:  How many of you would have been willing to see Avengers: Age of Ultron if it had been 3 hours long?  Would you have been more likely to wait until it came out on video?  

Movie Reviews: The Imitation Game, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and more...

The Imitation Game (2014) comes in with the annual rush of awards contenders, and it has all you would expect: a great actor playing an eccentric genius, a high stakes plot involving WWII, and an angle on contemporary social issues.  You'll laugh!  You'll cry!  Yes, it's a very well done film, but it is just as much a genre picture as all the superhero movies that come out every year-- there's nothing terribly ground-breaking here.  But it's nice to see one of the great minds of the 20th Century, Alan Turing, get his due.  If it looks like your cup of tea, I'm sure you'll thoroughly enjoy it.

I was a bit upset with the second Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug... mostly because they ended the film with such an ill-timed cliff-hanger.  Now seeing the latest film, The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), I'm even more pissed off, because what would've been an awesome ending to the second film was an anticlimactic prelude to the third film.  Though I understand why Peter Jackson did it-- the scenes with the dragon are, by far, the best in the trilogy, and the rest of the third film couldn't help but be a let-down afterward.  There are some great sequences in this third and final entry, but like the other films, it feels a bit padded.  Don't get me wrong, this is a good film and it's a good trilogy, it's just easy to be disappointed when it doesn't match the majesty of The Lord of the Rings.  Maybe we'll get a fan-made edit culling the best parts of the three movies into one 3-hour film... I can dream, anyway.

I love a good romantic comedy; unfortunately, not many get made anymore (not good ones, I mean).  Maybe I'm not in the right demographic, but it used to be that Hollywood knew how to make rom-coms that appealed to guys as well as gals.  Definitely, Maybe (2008) really got me, though.  Ryan Reynolds plays a dad on the cusp of divorce who's beseeched by his daughter (Abigail Breslin) to tell her the story of how he and her mom met.  Instead of giving a straight-forward account, he tells her about three women he was involved with before getting married and challenges her to guess which one was her mom.  It's a neat premise for a film, and it plays out wonderfully; all the characters are well-drawn, their lives are layered-- it felt like this was a story about real people living in a real world with real complications.  I adored this film; highly recommended.

After seeing Nightcrawler a few weeks ago, I wanted to check out some other Jake Gyllenhaal films.  Unfortunately, I rented Enemy (2013), a metaphysical thriller based on the Nobel Prize winning novel The Double, by Jose Saramago.  Now, understand that I have a bachelor's degree in Philosophy-- I like Philosophy, I read Philosophy, I enjoy having philosophical discussions.  But I don't like how films like this get all portentous and what-not.  We get it: your film is pondering meaningful, important questions; just, please, crack a joke once in a while.  It doesn't help that this is the second doppelgänger film I've seen this year (the other one being the coincidentally titled The Double), which was similarly dour.  Go see John Dies at the End instead-- it's a much more entertaining way to bend your mind.

***

That's probably the last set of movie reviews I'll do in 2014.  But be on the lookout for my year end Top 10 list later this week!