The latest release from Buysoundtrax is a new recording titled THE JERRY GOLDSMITH COLLECTION VOLUME 2: PIANO SKETCHES, featuring solo piano performances of themes spanning Goldsmith's lengthy career, from 1963's The Prize to one of his last great scores, 1997's The Edge.
Varese Sarabande has announced three new releases for December 9 -- Marco Beltrami's score for the Western THE HOMESMAN, starring Tommy Lee Jones (who also directed) and Hilary Swank; the Mike Leigh-directed biopic MR. TURNER, with the great Timothy Spall as painter J.M.W. Turner and a score by Gary Yershon (Happy-Go-Lucky, Another Year); and a new recording of Elmer Bernstein's movie jazz, ELMER BERNSTEIN: THE WILD SIDE. And on December 16, the label will release Alan Silvestri's score for NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: SECRET OF THE TOMB.
CDS AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Addicted - Aaron Zigman - Varese Sarabande
Duel of the Titans - Piero Piccioni - Digitmovies
Rio Conchos - Jerry Goldsmith - Kritzerland
Titan A.E. - Graeme Revell - La-La Land
IN THEATERS TODAY
Camp X-Ray - Jess Stroup
Citizenfour - Trent Reznor
Exists - Nima Fakhrara
John Wick - Tyler Bates, Joel J. Richard - Score CD due Oct. 28 on Varese Sarabande
Laggies - Benjamin Gibbard
Listen Up Philip - Keegan DeWitt
Ouija - Anton Sanko
1,000 Times Good Night - Armand Amar
Revenge of the Green Dragons - Score CD due Oct. 28 on Varese Sarabande
Stonehearst Asylum - John Debney - Score CD due Oct. 28 on Lakeshore
23 Blast - John Carta
Viktor - Frederic Dunis, Arnaud Frilley
White Bird in a Blizzard - Robin Guthrie, Harold Budd - Score CD due Oct. 28 on Lakeshore
COMING SOON
October 28
The Hero of Color City - Zoe Poledouris-Roche, Angel Roche Jr. - Varese Sarabande
John Wick - Tyler Bates, Joel J. Richard - Varese Sarabande
Nightcrawler - James Newton Howard - Lakeshore
Revenge of the Green Dragons - Mark Kilian - Varese Sarabande
St. Vincent - Theodore Shapiro - Sony
Stonehearst Asylum - John Debney - Lakeshore
White Bird in a Blizzard - Robin Guthrie, Harold Budd - Lakeshore
November 4
Horns - Rob - Lakeshore
The One I Love - Danny Bensi, Saunder Jurriaans - VMI
The Theory of Everything - Johann Johannsson - Backlot
Tracks - Garth Stevenson - VMI
November 11
Enter the Dragon - Lalo Schifrin - Aleph
November 18
The Imitation Game - Alexandre Desplat - Sony
'71 - David Holmes - Touch Sensitive (import)
November 25
Big Hero 6 - Henry Jackman - Disney
The Little Mermaid - Alan Menken - Disney
One on One - Charles Fox - Varese Sarabande
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History - David Cieri - PBS
December 9
Elmer Bernstein: The Wild Side - Elmer Bernstein - Varese Sarabande
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - Howard Shore - Watertower
The Homesman - Marco Beltrami - Varese Sarabande
Mr. Turner - Gary Yershon - Varese Sarabande
December 16
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb - Alan Silvestri - Varese Sarabande
Date Unknown
Chicago Fire: Season One - Atli Orvarsson - Phineas Atwood
Chicago Fire: Season Two - Atli Orvarsson - Phineas Atwood
Die Hebamme - Marcel Barsotti - Alhambra
The Jerry Goldsmith Collection Volume Two: Piano Sketches - Jerry Goldsmith - Buysoundtrax
Jona Che Vise Nella Balena - Ennio Morricone - Beat
Miss Arizona - Armando Trovajoli - Saimel
New York Chiama Superdrago - Benedetto Ghiglia - Digitmovies
1900/Sacco and Vanzetti - Ennio Morricone - Intermezzo Media
P.J. - Neil Argo -Kronos
Sinfonia Per Due Spie - Francesco De Masi - Beat
Summer Song - Andrew Holtzman, Peter Bateman - Kronos
Take Five - Giordiano Corapi - Beat
Vieni Avanti Cretino - Fabio Frizzi - Beat
Viy - Anton Garcia - Kronos
THIS WEEK IN FILM MUSIC HISTORY
October 24 - Ernest Irving died (1953)
October 24 - Merl Saunders died (2008)
October 25 - Konrad Elfers born (1919)
October 25 - Don Banks born (1923)
October 25 - Recording sessions begin for Alex North's score to I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955)
October 25 - Bronislau Kaper begins recording his score to The Brothers Karamazov (1958)
October 25 - Alexander Courage's "Plato's Stepchildren," the last score composed for the original Star Trek series, is recorded (1968)
October 25 - David Shire begins recording his score for Max Dugan Returns (1982)
October 25 - Recording sessions begin for Danny Elfman’s score for Good Will Hunting (1997)
October 26 - Bob Cobert born (1924)
October 26 - Jacques Loussier born (1934)
October 26 - Victor Schertzinger died (1941)
October 26 - Recording sessions begin for Roy Webb's score to Fixed Bayonets (1951)
October 26 - Curt Sobel born (1953)
October 26 - Howard Shore begins recording his score for She-Devil (1989)
October 27 - Samuel Matlovsky born (1921)
October 27 - Recording sessions begin for Hugo Friedhofer’s score for The Rains of Ranchipur (1955)
October 27 - Jerry Fielding begins recording his score for The Enforcer (1976)
October 27 - Frank DeVol died (1999)
October 27 - James Newton Howard begins recording his score to Peter Pan (2003)
October 28 - Gershon Kingsley born (1922)
October 28 - Carl Davis born (1936)
October 28 - Oliver Nelson died (1975)
October 28 - Gil Melle died (2004)
October 29 - Daniele Amfitheatrof born (1901)
October 29 - Neal Hefti born (1922)
October 29 - George Bassman records his score to Mail Order Bride (1963)
October 29 - Michael Wandmacher born (1967)
October 29 - Irving Szathmary died (1983)
October 29 - David Newman begins recording his score for Throw Momma from the Train (1987)
October 29 - Paul Misraki died (1998)
October 30 - Paul J. Smith born (1906)
October 30 - Irving Szathmary born (1907)
October 30 - Teo Macero born (1925)
October 30 - Charles Fox born (1940)
October 30 - The Lion in Winter opens in New York (1968)
October 30 - Brian Easdale died (1995)
October 30 - Paul Ferris died (1995)
DID THEY MENTION THE MUSIC?
THE BLUE ROOM - Gregoire Hetzel
"Shooting in the old 'Academy ratio' (before wide screen) and making exemplary use of composer Grégoire Hetzel’s similarly classic score, Amalric expertly draws the noose of circumstance around Julien. He creates recurring visual motifs, like the housefly that indicates the first sign of trouble; the fly shape also appears as a drop of blood, from Esther’s love bite, on Julien’s white shirt."
Mary Corliss, TIME Magazine
"For most of its brief running time, 'The Blue Room' is a compelling French thriller in a vintage American style, replete with an alluring but alarming femme fatale and a lush, string-heavy score straight out of the late 1940s. Alas, the story doesn’t follow through on its promise."
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
"There is an effort to attain a Hitchcockian grandeur during certain moments of 'The Blue Room,' particularly through sound: Some very big music gets played at the beginning against a series of static, shuttered rooms, and one would be forgiven for wondering if some kind of absurdist comedy is in the works."
John Anderson, Newsday
"'I have a perfect wife, a daughter whom I love, a beautiful home, success at work,' says Julien, the woe-begone adulterer in Mathieu Amalric’s adaptation of Georges Simenon’s 1964 novel, 'The Blue Room.' 'I couldn’t be happier.' Anyone who has been paying attention to the battering that supposedly happy marriages have been taking on the screen lately will recognize that this is a formula for disaster. Amalric, who also plays Julien with a gnomish gloom, gussies up this seeming retread of 'Double Indemnity' and 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' with stylish visuals, a somber pace, a melodramatic soundtrack, and a narrative obliqueness that suggests depths that may or may not exist. Though engrossing and aesthetically admirable, at times the humorless artiness verges on absurdity. It’s hard to take a film too seriously when plum jam and Bach’s 'Chaconne' vie for equal cinematic significance."
Peter Keogh, Boston Globe
"All we know for sure about this image is that it is part of the way that the film imagines the affair, which has a tang of heightened irreality from the start: when the couple make love in the woods, their encounter is accompanied by an unexpected surge of romantic strings in Grégoire Hetzel’s score."
Jonathan Romney, Film Comment
"He's not an unreliable narrator, but because his demeanor is so pathetic, so seemingly harmless, our focus shifts to the events around him and to the growing sense of some unfortunate event certain to befall him. Amalric helps us be carried in that direction, of course, using Grégoire Hetzel's score to evoke Hitchcockian thrillers and ratcheting up anticipation of a big reveal with a plot that is as much a legal thriller as it is the story of a torrid affair."
Tomas Hachard, NPR
"This oblique style is less evasive than immersive. Julien and Esther’s affair is first presented an an abstraction, as a series of disconnected images -- closed doors, half-open windows, and unmade beds, followed by close-ups of bodies -- accompanied by Grégoire Hetzel’s swelling string score. Left to connect the shots on their own, viewers are effectively trapped in the movie before they even know what it’s about. 'The Blue Room' is a complete about-face from Amalric’s last theatrical feature, 'On Tour,' a Neo-Burlesque riff on John Cassavetes’ 'The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie.' Amalric -- an actor whose fidgety, neurotic charm has made him one of the most distinctive presences in contemporary French cinema -- has been making eccentric, under-the-radar films since the mid-’90s; 'The Blue Room' represents his leanest, most morose, and most handsomely accomplished work, distinguished by enigmatic close-ups, lush orchestrations, and delicate lighting. It envelops the viewer in Julien’s headspace."
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, The Onion AV Club
"Mr. Amalric, who directed this dark, delectable, shivery tale, adapting it from the Georges Simenon novel, sets its uneasy, dank mood with energetic economy. The opening credits have scarcely ended before he’s begun arranging his people and parts, mixing shots of the hotel with those of a woman’s damp neck circled with pearls and her shoulder beaded with sweat. A chorus of gasps and moans accompanies the suggestive swells of the lushly orchestrated music and then gives way to bursts of dialogue."
Manohla Dargis, New York Times
"Georges Simenon’s novels have been a steady supplier of French suspense, dating back as early the 1930s and 1940s, when Jean Renoir and H.G. Clouzot both filmed adaptations, and more recently, serving the accomplished likes of Patrice Leconte’s 1989 'Monsieur Hire' and Cédric Kahn’s 2004 'Red Lights'. So when Mathieu Amalric’s 'The Blue Room,' adapted from Simenon’s novella, opens in Academy ratio with the thundering Bernard Herrmann-esque score by Grégoire Hetzel, Amalric is priming his audience for an Alfred Hitchcock-inspired suspense thriller. (Or at least Hitchcock by way of Claude Chabrol, who also adapted Simenon twice with 'The Hatter’s Ghost' and 'Betty.')"
Scott Tobias, The Dissolve
"Only Gregoire Hetzel’s swooping, shrilling orchestral score -- which evokes Maurice Jarre’s 'Eyes Without a Face' compositions in isolated flashes -- nods overtly to the noirish alarm of the material; Amalric’s verbal and visual storytelling otherwise operates at a low-temperature proficiency that stresses the story’s procedural structure ahead of its darker, nastier motivation"
Guy Lodge, Variety
"Yet 'The Blue Room,' which combines Simenon’s taste for mystery with his taste for sex (he once claimed to have slept with 10,000 women, most of them prostitutes), is less of a whodunit than an investigation of a man torn apart by lust -- a sentiment Amalric and editor Francois Gedigier aptly capture by returning time and again to the carnal beauty of the opening sequence, with Gregoire Hetzel’s swooning compositions accompanying the lovers in the manner of a 1940s or '50s melodrama."
Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY - Son Lux
"Widescreen Gotham location lensing by Chris Blauvelt ('The Bling Ring') heads a solid tech package, with the original score by post-rock/hip-hop whiz Son Lux (nee Ryan Lott) striking the right ambient mood."
Scott Foundas, Variety
THE GUEST - Steve Moore
"In the film's production notes, director Wingard cites a double bill he once caught of 'The Terminator' and 'Halloween' as the film's inspiration. (The story takes place in early fall, and the languid climax takes place largely in a high school gym decorated fun-house style for Halloween scares.) Wingard's facility with violent action is uneven. But he certainly knows his recent film history, as proved by the film's retro synth-y musical score by Stephen Moore, which owes so much to John Carpenter's 'Halloween' theme; it's charming and a little bit funny, like that two-second delay before Stevens turns around and introduces himself."
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
"It’s largely thanks to Stevens’ mesmerising performance that 'The Guest' exerts an equally compelling influence over audiences. It has some of the ’80s-pastiche feel of Drive, with an equally well-judged music score, and a less subtle but more satisfying vein of black humour. It should make Wingard an extremely welcome houseguest in Hollywood."
David Hughes, Empire Magazine
"There’s a touch of early James Cameron in the heavy artillery of the second half, while everything from the synth score to the autumnal atmosphere evokes the best of John Carpenter. (The filmmakers even provide a Dr. Loomis stand-in, played by steely 'Wire' alum Lance Reddick.)"
A.A. Dowd, The Onion AV Club
"This 'mysterious stranger with a deadly agenda' plot springboards into a madcap mix of crazy Vietnam War vet dramas, 1980s mad slasher thrillers (with a 'Halloween'-like score), and an homage to Bruce Lee's last movie, 'Enter the Dragon' with its climatic hall-of-mirrors smackdown."
Dann Gire, Daily Herald
"Wingard and Barrett have made some terrific nongenre-specific films in the past, among them 'A Horrible Way to Die' and the terrifically lunatic 'You’re Next,' and 'The Guest' only adds to their reputation as masters of gallows-humor horror shows. With performances that are uniformly excellent across the board, a nervy and nerve-wracking sense of suspense, and the whole idea of Halloween in a desert town (none of John Carpenter’s trademarked 'dry leaves blowing down the sidewalk' here), 'The Guest' is a slow-burn nail-biter that recalls -- in a good way -- Eighties slasher films, small-town terrors, the early work of James Cameron and, yep, John Carpenter’s heyday as well. Even Steve Moore’s synth-heavy score and the diegetic soundtrack choices help establish the film’s Eighties-era debts."
Marc Savlov, The Austin Chronicle
"The film around him is just as glamorous -- it looks great and sounds even better, thanks to a sensual electronic soundtrack that Wingard includes in scenes as the mixtape that Anna presents to David after a night where she's almost tempted to join this stranger in the bedroom down the hall."
Amy Nicholson, L.A. Weekly
"'The Guest' announces its intentions and style in the short opening sequence. There's a close-up of a guy, shot from behind, running down an empty road through a desert. He's wearing heavy military-style boots. We don't see his face. Suddenly, with a blast of terrifying music, the title screen comes, huge purple letters on a black background. The next shot, accompanied by another alarming blare of scary music, shows a horrifying-looking scarecrow, lording it over the desert landscape. In three shots, director Adam Wingard announces what 'The Guest' will be all about, tells us what the film is. The opening locates us easily and confidently in space, time, mood, and genre. 'The Guest' delivers on that initial promise. Director Wingard and his regular screenwriter collaborator Simon Barrett are interested in genre mash-ups and the dramatic possibilities of comedy-horror, as evidenced by their previous full-length feature 'You're Next.' 'The Guest' goes even further in that direction. The music (by Steve Moore) suddenly blasts throughout, with moments of pulsing techno unease, as Anna, crouched in her bedroom decorated with Goth-Girl skull-and-crossbones, desperately tries to figure out more about the hot interloper, now sleeping in the room next door."
Sheila O’Malley, RogerEbert.com
"An opening scene with jack o' lanterns and ominous music sets the stage. (Oooh, Halloween.)"
Bill Goodykoontz, The Republic
"I’ll leave you to discover just how all this leads to a climactic chase through a Halloween maze in a high school gym with dry-ice machines at full tilt, set to a nerve-jangling synth score that evokes John Carpenter’s 'Halloween' (to which Wingard, whose previous features have been low-budget horror films, explicitly pays homage)."
Dana Stevens, Slate.com
"The director Adam Wingard joins the ranks of the current masters of unease with this suspenseful horror tale. David (an excellent Dan Stevens) is a young soldier who visits his dead Army buddy’s family, wins their trust, and begins to pile the bodies up around them, all set to a John Carpenter-like music score."
Bruce Diones, The New Yorker
"It feels like a throwback of sorts, a new movie reminiscent of John Carpenter’s twisted work from the 1980s, including the diabolical electro-synth score."
Anders Wright, San DiegoUnion-Tribune
"We open on a man jogging, glimpsing him only from behind. Though we can’t see his face, we can see he jogs with purpose. Then, a title card slams down over a blaring synth with '70s 'The Exorcist'-style lettering, and moments later we fade in on a field with a scarecrow wearing a gigantic pumpkin head grin. In the space of about 60 seconds, 'You’re Next' filmmakers Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett have already announced their mission statement: a mysterious stranger, an unstoppable force and a Halloween setting signal to the audience (pretty much anyone who grew up in the VHS era), you are about to have a damn good time. A concept hatched after an accidental double-feature of 'The Terminator' and 'Halloween,' 'The Guest' is the perfect synthesis of Cameron, Carpenter and Cannon [Films] and one of the most fun films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The film is embedded with subtle stylistic cues -- an excellent, Carpenter-indebted synth score and its setting in a nebulous '80s/'90s/modern time period you can’t quite place -- that teach you how to watch and appreciate it."
Cory Everett, The Playlist
"The filmmakers clearly know the subgenre but 'The Guest' is less an authentic 80s psycho-thriller than a film which fetishises the decade à la Nicolas Winding Refn, setting it apart from that which it emulates. Moreover it's unafraid to bring in diverse influences if they add value to this disgracefully entertaining carnival of carnage: Stevens smoulders to a John Carpenter-esque synth score and there's a John Woo-echoing shootout."
Emma Simmonds, The List
"That said, I don’t like this movie, and I do like it. 'The Guest' is aping bad movies from 25 and 30 years ago (while loading the soundtrack with high-calorie dark wave and electropop). In doing so, Wingard and Barrett embrace a lot of what’s formally awful about those films without exactly transcending it. As the camera pulls in on David, the score starts banging its head against a wall. This might be something that happened in, say, 'The Stepfather,' but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to repeat it here."
Wesley Morris, Grantland
"'Downton Abbey''s Dan Stevens trades in English gentility for all-American menace as a polite and eerily self-possessed houseguest who, if the ominous score is to be trusted, might not be everything he says he is."
Keith Staskiewicz, Entertainment Weekly
"It's tough to dislike a movie that stages the climatic showdown in a Halloween funhouse at the high school gym with these special touches:
(A) Stevens puts a mixtape that Monroe made for him on the sound system, and it's groovy synth music like John Carpenter composed for one of his schlocky horror movies.
(B) There's a fog machine, and people get lost in it.
(C) It's hard to tell a knife going into someone's head from a knife going into a pumpkin.
(D) [Lance] Riddick never had to put up with this kind of stuff on 'The Wire.'
(E) Nor did [Dan] Stevens on 'Downton Abbey,' but it looks like they're having a good time."
Jeff Baker, The Oregonian
"That slight letdown aside, 'The Guest' is blood-soaked action trash of a high grade, on a low budget that it embraces -- various stylistic choices (notably a soundtrack full of original and vintage synthesizer cheese) very much underlines the pic’s 1970s grindhouse and ’80s direct-to-VHS lineage."
Dennis Harvey, Variety
THE LIBERATOR - Gustavo Dudamel
"Fascinatingly but frustratingly, the film insists on eulogizing Bolivar's never-realized dream of a unified Latin America governed by a single administration -- an ambition never backed up by convincing justification. Those craving nationalistic inspiration might well look beyond Bolivar to Venezuelan-American conductor Gustavo Dudamel, whose unobtrusive but elegant and varied score best conveys Latin America's proudly hybridized history."
Inkoo Kang, Village Voice
"And so this is the process of the film: It cannot show history with any sort of complexity, so it instead gives us masses of people moved by Bolívar's words, and gorgeous sweeping vistas of the landscape backed by a stirring orchestra. We get montages of battles and movement, and symbolically charged moments like Bolívar dancing with his slaves and laying hands on a beatific native woman in order to justify the claim of founding fatherhood for all the people of the continent. Arvelo and Sexton go so far as to endorse the 'Bolívar was assassinated' theory as much as they can without stating it outright. The film instead works best in its small moments: Bolívar in love, or the camaraderie he shows on the battlefield with his compatriots -- and these moments give Ramírez the chance to play a human being rather than a symbol."
Oscar Moralde, Slant Magazine
"The movie’s opening sequence gives the viewer all the movie’s strengths and weaknesses in sketch form. On a dark night, a powerful man enters a guarded manse; the camera follows him from behind. A title tells the viewers that it’s 1828. The man hands his sword to one aide; hands a piece of laundry to a maid. Messages are delivered. Brief conversations are held, in Spanish and English. The man, an important military and political figure, finally gets to the room he’s looking for. A woman waits for him there. 'Now I’ve got you,' the woman says, and the couple begins a clinch. But wait. The house is suddenly under siege. The man -- yes, it’s Simón Bolivar -- must leap from a window to escape. He tries to take the woman with him. 'They’re not here for me,' she protests. Out he goes. The torrential rain begins, as does a flashback that’s intercut with the immediate action: young Simon coping with the death of a parent, fleeing to the arms of a slave on his estate. Now adult Bolivar runs, as the music, by Gustavo Dudamel, grows more lushly urgent and heroic, and a man on horseback says of Bolivar, 'He must die tonight.'"
Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com
"But the film is all bullet points, never narrowing its focus beyond the sweeping drama of the large-scale. You've got a soundtrack of pouring rain, thundering horse hooves and booming drums telegraphing danger. When Bolivar leads his revolutionaries into battle against the Spanish army, nameless faces fall in overwrought slo-mo like so many History Channel re-enactments."
Barbara VanDenburgh, Arizona Republic
"Perhaps most impressive are the resources deployed in shooting this production. As if the film’s ostentatious aerial vistas, merely functional scene-writing and score weren’t distracting enough, Mr. Sexton’s dialogue freezes dead any simulation of the period with tone-deaf lines amid Bolívar’s impassioned rhetoric. 'We’re done here,' is one anachronistic example. And Mr. Huston must put on his best grin to declare, 'I can smell the change.'"
Nicolas Rapold, New York Times
THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY - Alberto Iglesias
"The story is set in Europe, and Amini keeps it in the early '60s; it's a smart choice. Americans abroad weren't targets then, but marks -- big, loud, crude, silly children whose candy it was easy to take. And Amini keeps to that period's style, as well. The movie proceeds classically, without flashbacks or tricky editing; there's a nice score, and good use of location photography."
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger
"There’s some nice attention to detail with the cinematography and music, which lends the movie a retro feel with faded colors and an ever-present score. There are moments when the atmosphere approaches Hitchcockian, although Amini hasn’t managed to replicate the nail-biting of Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of 'Strangers on a Train.'"
Stephanie Merry, Washington Post
"'The Two Faces...' strives to feel like the kind of old fashioned thriller you thought they didn’t make any more. But the melodramatic score’s almost overbearing use of violins fails to create the kind of genuine suspense that more periods of silence would have done."
Graham Young, Birmingham Mail
"'January' skirts by on its tastefulness and appreciation for the source material, however single-minded. It’s a movie of small pleasures: slow-burn suspense; period flavor, with an emphasis on the era’s textures, clothes, and luggage; an effective score by Pedro Almodovar’s regular composer, Alberto Iglesias, which is built around a variation on Arvo Pärt’s 'Fratres'; a basic respect for the viewer’s intelligence. 'The Two Faces Of January 'may not be trying anything bold, original, or especially complicated, but what it does, it does well."
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, The Onion AV Club
"Despite sun-bleached location photography by Marcel Zyskind, 'The Two Faces of January' has the feel of a Forties backlot thriller -- Athens and Istanbul are 'exotic' in the most retro sense, laden with perils and marketplace grifters. Alberto Iglesias’s stringy score and the camera’s 360-degree pans lend a whiff of Hitchcock, but the not-what-they-appear-to-be characters are exactly what they appear to be, and while Dunst looks every inch a Vogue model, her role is too underwritten to make the triangle equilateral. The treat is watching Isaac and the magnetic Mortensen enact an Oedipal dance of desperation, their black hearts racing under white linen suits."
Steven Mears, Film Comment
"The film looks and sounds lovely. Alberto Iglesias’s music sweeps while Marcel Zyskind’s camera captures every rich hue of the beautiful scenery. But, unlike Anthony Minghella’s overstretched 'The Talented Mr Ripley,' Amini’s film never makes fetishes of the antique architecture, period clothing or expensive accessories."
Donald Clarke, The Irish Times
"Set in the sun-kissed ruins of 1962 Athens, it has the feel of something that Hitchcock might have made at the time, a feeling reinforced by a lush, Bernard Herrmann-style score from Alberto Iglesias."
Allan Hunter, The List
"From the start, as holidaying Americans Chester (Viggo Mortensen) and Colette (Kirsten Dunst) take a turn around the Parthenon in 1962, we get that tingle that comes with feeling in safe hands. Amini has borrowed a cinematographer, Marcel Zyskind, from Michael Winterbottom, and a composer, Alberto Iglesias, from Pedro Almódovar. Their combined efforts are seductive but also expressive, honed to a purpose. And the lemon dress Dunst is wearing may be the most perfectly stylish thing we’ve ever seen her in. You want her performance to live up to her gorgeous look, and it does."
Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph
"A handsome, Hitchcock-style melodrama, 'The Two Faces Of January' has a lush score in the Bernard Herrmann tradition and strong performances from the two men fighting for a woman and a moral high ground that neither can legitimately claim."
Allan Hunter, Daily Express
"Isaac comes off best, although the tenuous nature of his devotion to this couple never quite convinces. He and Alberto Iglesias’ Herrmann-like score are the film’s highlights, but the overall piece doesn’t excel beyond being an ineffectual distraction -- Mortensen’s recurring drunken sulking provides (possibly unintended) laughs."
Josh Slater-Williams, The Skinny
"Highsmith has always been a goldmine for such complex interpersonal dynamics, and Amini exploits the father-son thing to the fullest, overstepping the pic’s admirable subtlety somewhat in a final act of contrition between the two characters. But as any student of Hitchcock can tell you, the thematic potential of sexual repression and mother issues runs far deeper, and despite paying homage to the Master of Suspense in so many other respects -- from a tense score that takes its cues from Bernard Herrmann to the vicarious tour of European locales that accompanies the action -- Amini chooses to emphasize the story’s male-male bond over anything to do with Colette. Instead of being the film’s point of fixation, she feels like a third wheel, an innocent schoolgirl type caught up in so much men’s business."
Peter Debruge, Variety
"Spanish composer Alberto Iglesia [sic] signs off on a lovely score that helps get the story through its slow moments, for instance when the trio wakes up on Crete and has to take a bus to the next town. Even in these deadbeat scenes, DoP Marcel Zyskind makes such magical use of light and locations that there’s always something to look at."
Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter
THE NEXT TEN DAYS IN L.A.
Screenings of older films, at the following L.A. movie theaters: AMPAS, American Cinematheque: Aero, American Cinematheque: Egyptian, Arclight, LACMA, New Beverly, Nuart, Silent Movie Theater and UCLA.
October 24
THE DIRTY DOZEN (Frank DeVol) [New Beverly]
GHOSTBUSTERS (Elmer Bernstein) [Cinematheque: Aero]
HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (John Carpenter, Alan Howarth) [Nuart]
M, WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (Herschel Burke Gilbert) [LACMA/AMPAS]
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (Charles Bernstein), A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE (Christopher Young), A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET III: DREAM WARRIORS (Angelo Badalamenti), A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET IV: THE DREAM MASTER (Craig Safan), A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET V: THE DREAM CHILD (Jay Ferguson), FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE (Brian May), WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE (J. Peter Robinson) [Silent Movie Theater]
PREDATOR (Alan Silvestri), ACTION JACKSON (Herbie Hancock, Michael Kamen) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
THE THING (Ennio Morricone) [Arclight Hollywood]
October 25
AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (Elmer Bernstein) [Arclight Hollywood]
THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
CREEPSHOW (John Harrison), GARGOYLES (Robert Prince), THE THING (Ennio Morricone), THE NIGHT OF A THOUSAND CATS (Raul Lavista), THE DEADLY SPAWN (Michael Perilstein), BASKET CASE (David Maswick, Gus Russo), ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST [Cinematheque: Aero]
THE DIRTY DOZEN (Frank DeVol) [New Beverly]
SLEEPY HOLLOW (Danny Elfman), EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (Danny Elfman) [LACMA/AMPAS]
TEEN WITCH (Richard Elliot) [Silent Movie Theater]
October 26
BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (Franz Waxman) [Arclight Sherman Oaks]
DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (Laurie Johnson) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
THE GENERAL [Cinematheque: Aero]
HOLD THAT GHOST [UCLA]
INCEPTION (Hans Zimmer) [Arclight Hollywood]
MASTER OF THE WORLD (Les Baxter), STRANGER AT MY DOOR (R. Dale Butts) [New Beverly]
RIVER WITHOUT BUOYS (Youfu Xu) [UCLA]
THE SHINING (Wendy Carlos, Rachel Elkind) [Arclight Hollywood]
THE TINGLER (Von Dexter) [Silent Movie Theater]
October 27
DEEP INSIDE CLINT STAR (James Cavalluzzo) [UCLA]
MASTER OF THE WORLD (Les Baxter), STRANGER AT MY DOOR (R. Dale Butts) [New Beverly]
ROSEMARY'S BABY (Christopher Komeda) [Arclight Sherman Oaks]
October 28
ANGEL [LACMA/AMPAS]
THE MONSTER SQUAD (Bruce Broughton) [Arclight Sherman Oaks]
SNAKE IN THE MONKEY'S SHADOW (Fu-Liang Chou), SNAKE IN THE EAGLE'S SHADOW (Fu-Liang Chou) [New Beverly]
October 29
PAPILLON (Jerry Goldsmith), AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE (Leonard Rosenman) [New Beverly]
THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (Wayne Bell, Tobe Hooper) [Arclight Hollywood]
October 30
GREMLINS (Jerry Goldsmith) [Silent Movie Theater]
LIFE ITSELF (Joshua Abrams), STEVIE (Dirk Powell) [Cinematheque: Aero]
PAPILLON (Jerry Goldsmith), AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE (Leonard Rosenman) [New Beverly]
October 31
CABIN FEVER (Nathan Barr, Angelo Badalamenti), HOSTEL (Nathan Barr), HOSTEL PART II (Nathan Barr) [New Beverly]
EVIL DEAD 2 (Joseph LoDuca) [Arclight Hollywood]
THE LEGO MOVIE (Mark Mothersbaugh) [Cinematheque: Aero]
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (Richard O'Brien, Richard Hartley) [Nuart]
November 1
HELLO, DOLLY (Jerry Herman, Lennie Hayton, Lionel Newman) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
MULHOLLAND DRIVE (Angelo Badalamenti) [Silent Movie Theater]
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (Richard O'Brien, Richard Hartley) [Nuart]
November 2
BLOW-UP (Herbie Hancock) [Cinematheque: Aero]
IN THE HEAT OF THE SUN (Wenjing Guo) [UCLA]
MEMENTO (David Julyan) [Arclight Sherman Oaks]
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY [Arclight Hollywood]
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