Film Score Daily: Film Score Friday 9/4/15

The latest CD release from Intrada pairs the LP tracks from two soundtracks released on the Mainstream label in the 1960s -- director Anthony Mann's 1965 WWII adventure THE HEROES OF TELEMARK, with a River Kwai-ish score by Oscar winner Malcolm Arnold, and the LP re-recording of Jerry Goldsmith's score for the 1966 remake of the Western classic STAGECOACH (the actual score tracks from the film have been previously released by both Film Score Monthly and La-La Land).

IN THEATERS TODAY

Before We Go - Chris Westlake
Bloodsucking Bastards - Anton Sanko
Break Point - Tim Anderson
Chloe and Theo - The Newton Brothers
Contracted: Phase II - Jonathan Snipes
Dirty Weekend - Joel Goodman
Dragon Blade - Henry Lai
Queen of Earth - Keegan DeWitt
7 Chinese Brothers - Chris Baio
Slow Learners - The Wellspring
Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine - Will Bates
The Transporter Refueled - Alexandre Azaria
A Walk in the Woods - Nathan Larson - Soundtrack CD with 2 Larson tracks due Sept. 25 on Varese Sarabande

September 11
The Boy - Hauschka - Milan
The Genius of Film Music - various - Naxos
Sarah/Desordre - Gabriel Yared - Music Box
Wolf Totem (U.S. release) - James Horner - Milan
September 18
Barely Lethal - Mateo Messina - Phineas Atwood
Cartel Land - H. Scott Salinas, Jackson Greenberg - Phineas Atwood
Cooties - Kreng - Milan
Everest - Dario Marianelli - Varese Sarabande
Love & Mercy - Atticus Ross - Capitol
Night of the Demons - Dennis Michael Tenney - Lunaris
Sicario - Johann Johannsson - Varese Sarabande
September 25
Assassin's Creed - Jesper Kyd - Sumthing Else
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood - Jesper Kyd - Sumthing Else
Assassin's Creed Revelations - Jesper Kyd, Lorne Balfe - Sumthing Else
Assassin's Creed II - Jesper Kyd - Sumthing Else
Assassin's Creed III - Lorne Balfe - Sumthing Else
Outlander Vol. 2 - Bear McCreary - Madison Gate
The Walk - Alan Silvestri - Sony
October 2
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Bear McCreary - Hollywood
He Named Me Malala - Thomas Newman - Sony
House of Cards: Season Three - Jeff Beal - Varese Sarabande
Jenny's Wedding - Brian Byrne - Varese Sarabande
Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials - John Paesano - Sony
Narcos - Pedro Bromfman - Lakeshore
No Escape - Marco Beltrami - Lakeshore
October 9
Goosebumps - Danny Elfman - Sony
Steve Jobs - Daniel Pemberton - Backlot
October 23
Suffragette - Alexandre Desplat - Backlot
Date Unknown
Alfredo Alfredo - Carlo Rustichelli - Digitmovies
Hangover Square/5 Fingers - Bernard Herrmann - Kritzerland
I Caldi Amori Di Una Minorenne - Gianni Ferrio - Digitmovies
Il Segreto/Il Deserto Dei Tartari - Ennio Morricone - GDM
La Morte Viene Da Manila - Francesco De Masi - Beat
L'Ordinateur Des Pompes Funebres/Dis-Moi Que Tu Maimes - Claude Bolling - Music Box
Maria Di Nazaret/L'Uomo Che Sognava Con L'aquile - Guy Farley - Caldera
Mark Donen Agente Zeta 7 - Aldo Piga - Beat
Uccidete Johnny Ringo - Pippo Caruso - Digitmovies

James Rocchi, The Wrap

"At first, Francesco Munzi’s 'Black Souls' feels undercooked. Its familiar tale of a family torn apart by crime owes a great deal to narratives we already know and its deliberate pace, with its rolling countryside and strings-heavy score, feels too lethargic. And yet this is one of those pieces that rewards viewers willing to invest in it as the deliberate pace pays off with lived-in characters and a surprisingly emotional undercurrent of near-Greek tragedy. Even those shots of the countryside begin to feel colder and more inescapable as the score becomes more dissonant and disruptive. 'Black Souls' isn’t quite the great film the international cinema buzz machine has touted it to be in some circles, but it is a very good one, the kind that ends with such gravity that you feel its weight for a while after."

Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

FELIX AND MEIRA - Olivier Avary

"'Felix and Meira' director Maxime Giroux is imaginative enough of a visual storyteller that he doesn't need to rely on a slew of dialogue to give us a sense of his characters' inner lives. Meira's (Hadas Yaron) disenchantment with her constricting Hasidic lifestyle is evoked simply with a shot of her slowly stirring her soup at dinner with a bored look on her face -- and the backstory of Felix's (Martin Dubreuil) troubled relationship with his recently deceased father is cannily doled out in organic bits and pieces throughout the film without seeming clumsily expository. Cinematographer Sara Mishara's work here often recalls Gordon Willis's images in the way she bathes many of the Montreal interiors in muted earthy tones and low-key chiaroscuro lighting to evoke a sense of claustrophobic doom appropriate for these characters; when Felix and Meira temporarily flee to Brooklyn, however, Mishara's color palette becomes noticeably more expansive, with a flood of neon blue most memorably punctuating an intimate hotel scene. This contrast between freedom and imprisonment is also wittily suggested in Olivier Avary's score, most notably his use of a lone mournful clarinet in the Montreal scenes and the larger orchestral palette he utilizes in the Brooklyn scenes."

Kenji Fujishima, Slant Magazine

"What's missing here is the vitality and sense of release the couple's romance should bring. Felix and Meira continue to pine and mope; the movie mopes with them in exhausting, often awkwardly intrusive detail. The sheitel comes on and off Meira's shorn head as she vacillates; an aggressively symbolic mouse is trapped and spoken to about the cruelty of the world. The film grinds along in gloomy, poorly lit silences, occasionally accessorized by a mournful flute. The problem is not that these two are incomplete -- that's the source of their mutual attraction -- but that, separately or together, each is so incompletely realized and so joyless that it's hard to care about whether they will make it together. Willy-nilly, the case is all but made for Meira sticking with the decent man who loves her enough to give her up, and a community that knows how to sing and dance. At the end, a gondola slowly noses its way through the Venice canals. Given what's gone before, you'd think there might be some happiness or excitement about the uncertain future it's headed into. Instead there's a fussy baby, and that weepy flute again."

Ella Taylor, NPR

KILL ME THREE TIMES - Johnny Klimek

"The story mechanics of 'Kill Me Three Times,' and 'mechanics' really is the right word, are revealed, as the title suggests, in three discrete episodes, each one telling the same tale from a different perspective and/or time frame. In the event this is starting to sound familiar, the film’s score, by Johnny Klimek, is pretty heavily reliant on surf guitar, or at least a simulation of surf guitar. So, yes, improbably enough in the year of our Lord 2015, Australian filmmaking (once upon a time replete with original and powerful voices, more’s the pity) is offering up a slab of gigglingy sadistic sub-early-Tarantino hogwash. And populating it, dispiritingly enough, with relatively appealing acting talent: Simon Pegg plays the hitman Wolfe, Alice Braga a wayward wife; the rest of the cast is actually Australian, and includes Sullivan Stapleton of 'Animal Kingdom,' Teresa Palmer, here continuing a run of lousy casting luck that also includes 'I Am Number Four' and 'Warm Bodies,' and stalwart Bryan Brown, relaxed and smirky in the small role of the crooked cop."

Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

"The film owes some of its failure, then, to the two-decade-old success of 'Pulp Fiction:' Beyond the narrative double-back, Pegg’s indefatigable hit man is named Wolfe and Johnny Klimek’s score piles on the surfy guitar music. But it’s too listless to even qualify as a proper Tarantino knockoff, and each faux-retro strum on the soundtrack starts to feel like a burden."

Jesse Hassenger, The Onion AV Club

"'Kill Me Three Times' also features a number of perplexing filmmaking choices from Stenders and his team, from gimmicky, sideways shots that are employed too often, to terrible CGI. (A car fire usually doesn’t spread evenly around a car’s body.) Composer Johnny Klimek guitar-led score with surf overtones serves as more of a distraction than sets the mood."

Christine N. Ziemba, Paste Magazine

"The filming must have been a delight to shoot, and a great opportunity for the cast and crew to bask in the sun and enjoy the magnificent Australian beaches behind the scenes. In front of the cameras, however, the result is a lame attempt at channeling the energy of a Quentin Tarantino or Doug Liman film. From the electric guitar on the soundtrack to the predictable duplicitous nature of practically every single character, 'Kill Me Three Times' kills all the fun by the time you reach the halfway point. By then, you just feel like hitting the mute button and enjoying the stunning Australian locale."

Nikola Grozdanovic, The Playlist

"Can a single guitar riff tell you everything you need to know about a movie? The dreadful 'Kill Me Three Times,' which has nothing to offer beyond some aerial looks at the white-and-turquoise beaches of Western Australia, opens with a power chord so cheesy and generic that it immediately identifies this story of amateur criminals as the charmless ’90s throwback that it is. Capable of extinguishing whatever nostalgia you might have for the decade, Kriv Stenders’s film is unashamed to resurrect the laziest tropes of the Tarantino rip-offs that once clogged the shelves of every Blockbuster in the land."

David Ehrlich, Time Out New York

"Johnny Klimek’s score recycles the same guitar motif endlessly, to the point where it seems to be operating independently of the action. Worse, the film is far too enamored of scenes in which blood gushes lovingly from gunshot wounds, drawn out in pornographic slo-mo. Before his 2011 commercial breakthrough with the family-friendly canine tale 'Red Dog,' Stenders was no stranger to noirish thrillers ('Lucky Country,' 'Boxing Day'), but in taking such unseemly delight in its own carnage, the director’s sixth feature feels both amateurish and adolescent, evincing none of the tonal control or finesse needed to elicit more than a yawn."

Justin Chang, Variety

"But everything here feels borrowed from readily identifiable sources. That starts with the bold retro-graphic titles and swingin’ surf rock soundtrack, full of fat guitar licks. It continues with the non-sequential storytelling, divided into three time-shifting chapters ('Kill Me Once,' etc.) of overlapping action that allow key developments to be covered from different perspectives. Add in overdressed sets that call attention to themselves, heightened performance styles, skewed framing and cartoon violence, with the camera lavishing glossy money-shot adoration on every ribbon of bloodshed that explodes whenever bullet meets flesh. What’s missing is wit. There’s nothing wrong with McFarland’s plotting, which is more than sound enough to work, especially with Stenders and editor Jill Bilcock hustling the action along at a driving pace, accelerated by Johnny Klimek’s music. But 'Kill Me Three Times' is too self-conscious to be anything much beyond smart-assy and tiresome."

David Rooney, 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, Crest, LACMA, New Beverly, Nuart, Silent Movie Theater and UCLA.

September 4
CLUE (John Morris) [Nuart]
DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID (Miklos Rozsa), NOTORIOUS (Roy Webb) [Cinematheque: Aero]
DJANGO UNCHAINED [New Beverly]
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (Ennio Morricone), YOJIMBO (Masaru Sato) [New Beverly]
THE MUTILATOR (Michael Minard) [Silent Movie Theater]

September 5
CASABLANCA (Max Steiner), GASLIGHT (Bronislau Kaper) [Cinematheque: Aero]
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (Ennio Morricone), YOJIMBO (Masaru Sato) [New Beverly]
FIVE DEADLY VENOMS (Cheng Yun Yu) [New Beverly]
MICROWAVE MASSACRE (Leif Horvath) [Silent Movie Theater]
THE SOUND OF MUSIC [Cinematheque: Aero]
SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON (William Alwyn) [New Beverly]

September 6
LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF [Cinematheque: Aero]
THE MALTESE FALCON (Adolph Deutsch), THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS (Adolph Deutsch) [New Beverly]
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (Alex North) [Arclight Culver City]
SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON (William Alwyn) [New Beverly]

September 7
THE MALTESE FALCON (Adolph Deutsch), THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS (Adolph Deutsch) [New Beverly]

September 8
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (Bernard Herrmann) [LACMA]
DUEL OF THE IRON FIST (Yung-Yu Chen), SUPER MAN CHU (Chu Yen Wang) [New Beverly]
THE GODFATHER PART II (Nino Rota, Carmine Coppola) [Arclight Sherman Oaks]

September 9
HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT (Alfred Newman), DESIRE [UCLA]
HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS (Richard Harvey), SCHIZO (Stanley Myers) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
MEAN STREETS [Arclight Hollywood]
THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN (Yung-Yu Chen), THE 8 DIAGRAM POLE FIGHTER (Stephen Shing, Chen-Hou Su) [New Beverly]

September 10
THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN (Yung-Yu Chen), THE 8 DIAGRAM POLE FIGHTER (Stephen Shing, Chen-Hou Su) [New Beverly]
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (Leith Stevens), DESTINATION MOON (Leith Stevens) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]

September 11
AIRPLANE! (Elmer Bernstein), USED CARS (Patrick Williams) [New Beverly]
HONOR AMONG LOVERS, MERRILY WE GO TO HELL [UCLA]
THE SENTINEL (Gil Melle) [Silent Movie Theater]
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (Leith Stevens), THE TIME MACHINE (Russell Garcia) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]

September 12
AIRPLANE! (Elmer Bernstein), USED CARS (Patrick Williams) [New Beverly]
DON Q SON OF ZORRO [Silent Movie Theater]
THE LOST WEEKEND (Miklos Rozsa) [Silent Movie Theater]
THE 7 FACES OF DR. LAO (Leigh Harline) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
THREE COMRADES (Franz Waxman), THE MORTAL STORM (Edward Kane) [UCLA]
TWELVE MONKEYS (Paul Buckmaster) [Silent Movie Theater]
WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE (Takatsugu Muramatsu) [Crest]

September 13
EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (Danny Elfman) [Arclight Culver City]
HUMORESQUE, THE NTH COMMANDMENT [UCLA]
MARNIE (Bernard Herrmann) [Arclight Hollywood]
METEOR (Laurence Rosenthal), BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (Jerry Fielding) [New Beverly]
SCARFACE (Giorgio Moroder) [Crest]
THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM (Bob Merrill, Leigh Harline), TOM THUMB (Douglas Gamley, Ken Jones) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]