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Mind you I've not heard every single score he's done, but two immediately leap to mind -- both different kinds of bad:
"Unlawful Entry"
"One Day in Auschwitz"
Then there's a separate list of scores that aren't bad, it's just that I don't like them (like "Enemy at the Gates").
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Mind you I've not heard every single score he's done, but two immediately leap to mind -- both different kinds of bad:
"Unlawful Entry"
"One Day in Auschwitz"
Then there's a separate list of scores that aren't bad, it's just that I don't like them (like "Enemy at the Gates").
Where exactly did you hear One day in Auschwitz?
Youtube, a year or two ago. I went through the documentary.
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Probably VIBES although I like the main theme and the instrumentation in the opening and closing. I just find some of the tracks drag.
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Five listens, and I still haven't warmed to Jumanji, except "Monkey Mayhem" which I always liked.
I watched that film for the first time recently (thought it looked like junk 20 years ago, and -- surprise! -- it was), and Horner's score was like a grab-bag of his usual fantasy/adventure licks stitched together with random shakuhachi howls. Definitely one of his weakest efforts from that mid-90's period.
I find the score to be a bit... well, not necessarily "original" but rather "new" (this is coming from someone who really digs Exorcist: The Heretic), as in there's hardly anything for me to grasp in terms of approachable melodies, and the shakuhachi overload is enough for ten scores. "Monkey Mayhem" is the only track that makes me think, "Oh, there's James, where'd he go?".
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I must say the score of his I like the least is Aliens.
I know Aliens has its fans, and I know it was written under duress and a very short amount of time, but I never felt it was the ideal musical accompaniment for that film.
Horner is one of the greats (and the Aliens score has its moments), but I find much of it stylistically wrong for the movie. The action motif (which had previously been used in Wolfen and Star Trek III) had too much of an "eastern" style to my ears. If Horner had been scoring a movie about Genghis Kahn (or Kahn Noonian Singh!) it would have worked great. But not in an Alien picture.
Plus the score falls back on an undue amount of self-recycling (even for Horner) and lifts from other composers (most conspicuously Khachaturian, and Goldsmith -- and yes, I am aware that the climax is tracked with actual Goldsmith cues from Alien, and that particular instance was not Horner's doing).
I do think Horner did a decent job under the circumstances -- I just think he was the wrong choice for the movie. I wish Horner had scored The Abyss instead, and Alan Silvestri (who is better at violent adrenal action scoring) had scored Aliens.
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