Film Score Daily: Film Score Friday 5/27/16

Quartet has announced their latest batch of releases -- the first-ever CD release of Henry Mancini's score for THE GREAT WALDO PEPPER, the 1975 period drama that reteamed Butch Cassidy's Robert Redford, writer William Goldman and director George Roy Hill, featuring the same cues as the original MCA LP release (which is nearly all the music included in the actual film); a two-disc set of Riz Ortolani's score for 1963's HORROR CASTLE; and Bruno Coulais' score for the documentary THE SEASONS, from Winged Migration's Oscar-nominated Jacques Perrin.

Varese Sarabande has announced their latest batch of limited edition CDs of contemporary film music, which are expcted to begin shipping next week -- the soundtrack to the direct-to-video animated sequel OPEN SEASON: SCARED SILLY, scored by Rupert Gregson-Williams and Dominic Lewis; the score for the drama OF MIND AND MUSIC, composed by Carlos Joe Alvarez (Deadline); and two CDs of film music from composers featured at the last two KRAKOW MUSIC FESTIVALS, in 2015 and 2016, featuring mostly previously released music.

Guy Lodge, Variety

TOM AT THE FARM - Gabriel Yared

"The most interesting poetry, though, is what exists between Tom and Francis as their relationship deepens. 'You look like him,' Tom says to Francis of the uncanny sibling resemblance. Tom begins to transpose his residual romantic feelings onto Francis, who, in turn, comes to see Tom as a surrogate for his brother, someone he both needs and deplores. Their relationship tests the limits of masculinity, and all of the rivalry, jealousy, and displays of sexual power it contains. The haunting orchestral music and low-contrast cinematography give the scenes between the men a surreality uncommon in the horror-thriller fare of today. "

Emily Buder, IndieWIRE

"The film can be mannered -- it rams home its Hitchcockiness too hard, with an oppressively Herrmann-esque score by Gabriel Yared; and Dolan really likes lingering shots of his own pretty visage -- and in the end it doesn’t quite know what to with all its murky layers of mystery. But it looks darkly lovely, its performances are fiercely charismatic, and its examination of the ways in which fear, deceit, violence and desire can mingle is insightful and intriguing."

Hannah McGill, The List

"You may wonder why Tom doesn’t just get in his car and leave? I certainly did at times. But Dolan’s film wants us to believe that Tom is a sort of willing prisoner -- a Stockholm Syndrome casualty whose self-loathing, grief, and love for Guillaume compels him to act with emotion rather than reason. Dolan gives a wounded, nuanced performance as Tom, but the first half of the film is a slow burn that burns way too slowly. And when the film does finally gather some Hitchcockian tension in the homestretch (thanks to Gabriel Yared’s sinister score), it doesn’t follow through in a satisfying way. Dolan has always been an enigmatic filmmaker. But in 'Tom at the Farm,' the puzzle pieces never quite add up to a complete picture."

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly

"The vibe up at the farm goes from odd to terrifying rather quickly. Dolan shoots scenes of hosing down slop or visiting empty bars with a heightened existential dread. There’s a great tone derived from natural lighting and a disquieting orchestral score. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make up for how our main character and visiting supporting players behave so illogically. It’s like they’re not real human beings."

Jordan Hoffman, New York Daily News

"Dolan stars in 'Tom at the Farm' as Tom, who drives out to the country to meet the mother of his dead boyfriend Guillaume. The ominous score from Gabriel Yared, however, sets the tone: This will not be a movie of sad recollections and tearful grieving but, rather, a twisty, dark little drama. Arriving at the family home, Tom discovers that Guillaume’s mom, Agathe (Lise Roy), has no idea who he is -- or even that her son was gay. That doesn’t seem to be the case, though, with the home’s other resident, Guillaume’s brother, Francis (Pierre-Yves Cardinal). Without much explanation, Francis proceeds to torment the younger Tom, coercing him into helping out on the farm, even tempting him sexually, although it’s not quite clear whether this intimidating bully is actually gay."

Tom Grierson, Paste Magazine

"Compelling visuals, an evocative score by Gabriel Yared and a kicky use of the late-1960s hit 'The Windmills of Your Mind' -- in French! -- are pluses."

Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

"There’s no mystery to their relationship, no build or revelation (wow, you think Francis might be, like, GAY?), and while there’s undeniably something interesting in the tale of a young hipster’s capitulation to a backwoods Angry Top, it’s undone by the lack of even rudimentary psychology, and by the filmmaker’s shaky command of tone. His over-emphatic use of music, for example -- with Gabriel Yared channelling Hitchcock-era Bernard Hermann -- would work superbly well, were it accompanying the High Camp romp this is clearly meant to be. But alas, the filmmaker appears to take this nonsense seriously -- as a final ‘poetic’ encounter in a gas station seems intended to demonstrate -- and the film, initially intriguing, succumbs, like its maker, to an over-inflated sense of its own importance."

Shane Danielsen, IndieWIRE

"From the outset, 'Tom at the Farm' is slathered in a feverish hyper-romantic orchestral score by Gabriel Yared ('The English Patient') that incorporates a fragment of Arnold Schoenberg’s early pre-12-tone masterwork, 'Verklärte Nacht.' Written when the composer was roughly the same as age as Mr. Dolan, it expresses a boundless intensity that matches the sensibility of a filmmaker who fearlessly embraces extremes. The movie’s musical bookends are the ultraromantic 'The Windmills of Your Mind' (sung in French) and Rufus Wainwright’s 'Going to a Town,' which asks, 'Do you really think you go to hell for having loved?'"

Stephen Holden, New York Times

"The real thrills consist of one monologue brilliantly delivered by Manuel Tadros as a bar owner, and most of Gabriel Yared’s old-school orchestral score."

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post

"Gabriel Yared's score is also bold and lush, but sometimes seems determined to force suspense where there doesn't appear to be any, and the ending felt a little rushed and abrupt for our tastes. But some of these criticisms are a little predicated on Dolan having made a pure genre picture, and that's certainly not his intention -- he's not simply aping Hitchcock, Clement and Chabrol (to name but a few), but melding them with his existing style and concerns. And while the mix didn't entirely work for us, that's not to say it isn't exciting to see him grow in that way."

Oliver Lyttleton, The Playlist

"Bouchard wrote 'Tom At The Farm' as a study of the double lives some gay men are still forced to live, even in this day and age. ('Homosexuals learn to lie before they learn to love,' the Canadian playwright declares in his preface.) But Dolan, a gay artist whose own work has dealt both casually ('Heartbeats') and centrally ('Laurence Anyways') with sexual and identity politics, mainly treats the material as a Hitchcockian exercise. In place of his usual collection of pop-music needle drops, the director employs a string-heavy suspense score by Gabriel Yared, teasing the approach of danger. Ominous helicopter shots emphasize the vast, foreboding isolation of the farmland, as though Tom were the unwitting star of a Canadian 'Texas Chainsaw' remake. Moments of horror-movie dread -- like our hero sprinting through a cornfield, razor-sharp stalks slowing his flight -- puncture the pregnant tension of the indoor scenes. Compared to Dolan’s other efforts, it’s downright austere, but the director’s ostentatious style still threatens to upstage the performances, his own included."

A.A. Dowd, The Onion AV Club

"For the first hour, at least, the film pursues the antagonistic relationship between Tom and Francis with seductive abandon, underscoring the tension between them, sexual and otherwise, with composer Gabriel Yared's assertive strings. Adapted by Dolan and Michel Marc Bouchard from the latter's eponymous play, 'Tom at the Farm' consummates the focused intensity of the stage with a series of seething images: a sudden chase through an autumn cornfield, bloodied hands after the birth of a calf, a face peering through the screen door of the farmhouse as if from the inside of a cage. Indeed, Tom is trapped. Whether by dint of rural Canada's social strictures or his obscurely traumatic family history, Guillaume hid his relationship with Tom from his mother, Agathe (Lise Roy), and Francis, desperate to keep her 'happy' yet unwilling to relinquish his one link to life beyond the farm, holds the visitor more or less captive."

Matt Brennan, Slant Magazine

"Dolan's latest, 'Tom at the Farm' was completed several years ago (before last year's 'Mommy') and is the first time he has adapted an extant work for the screen. Based on a play written by Michel Marc Bouchard (and Bouchard wrote the adaptation with Dolan), the adaptation appears to adhere closely to the original (I have not seen the play), with only a couple of scenes where the action is 'opened up.' (Those scenes, on the whole, are not successful.) 'Tom at the Farm' strains to be a psychological thriller but its length (102 minutes) dissipates the tension that should be taut and compressed. This is Dolan's first attempt at genre, and while there is much to admire here (mainly the visuals and the score, both stunning), Dolan's interests lie in the strange undercurrents of sado-masochism between the two main characters, and it's a through-line that deserves more attention. That through-line could have carried the entire movie if Dolan had let go of being faithful to the original. Beautiful visuals abound throughout (André Turpin, who also shot 'Mommy', is the cinematographer), and there's a moody high-contrast look to the landscape (bright trees and bright corn behind dark shadows and fog) that speaks of secrets, torment, hope. The lush and heavy-on-the-strings score of Gabriel Yared is a clue to what Dolan was after. The score punctuates all of the scenes, casual or intense, adding portentous emotion, tension, fear of what is coming. It's a melodramatic score, and 'Tom at the Farm' works when it is a family melodrama. These are out-there people with outrageous emotional lives, subsisting on lies and denial, and the abyss between what they think their lives are and what their lives really are is enormous. All of them choose denial. They get tied to one another by their shared lies, and their unspoken agreement to keep on lying. The score supports that uneasy and terrible energy. The visuals, like the score, are exaggerated and stylistic, starting off with the helicopter shot following Tom's car into the countryside, making him seem dwarfed by the surrounding land, a tiny figure entering an unknown isolated world. It's a nod to Hitchcock or Kubrick. The thriller elements, the chase scenes, the reveal of horrifying secrets, feel like add-ons, clumsily done and unmotivated, especially when compared to the dark and deep dance (metaphorical and literal) of violence and sex going on between Tom and Francis. That's the real juice and guts of the film. It could be an answer to the nagging question throughout: Why the hell doesn't Tom just leave? In thrillers, people are always making ridiculous choices that go against their self-interest, or ignoring the red flags in front of them of potential predators. In a well-done thriller, you mostly forgive the unreal quality of these moments. But 'Tom at the Farm' does not foreground the thriller aspect enough (although the score tries mightily to do so), and so Tom doesn't seem quite real. Nobody does."

Sheila O'Malley, RogerEbert.com

"Lusciously coiffed Quebecois prodigy Xavier Dolan overreached with last year’s 'Laurence Anyways,' a three-hour transgender saga that overindulged his admittedly striking stylistic affectations. Perhaps even he agreed, since 'Tom at the Farm,' the 24-year-old hyphenate’s delicious fourth feature -- and first excursion into genre terrain -- is a trimmer, tarter effort all round. Perhaps not coincidentally, it’s also his first collaboration with another writer. A kinky queer noir detailing the dangers awaiting a gay Montreal hipster (Dolan) as he journeys to the homophobic heartland for his lover’s funeral, it’s an improbably exciting match of knife-edge storytelling and a florid vintage aesthetic best represented by Gabriel Yared’s glorious orchestral score. Dolan’s most accomplished and enjoyable work to date, it’s also his most commercially viable.It’s a short leap, of course, from Highsmith to Hitchcock -- not that 'Tom at the Farm' has anything in common with 'Strangers on a Train,' barring the obvious homoerotic ancestry. Though he shows an unexpected knack in the film’s opening and closing stages for razor-cut suspense, Dolan fosters the Hitch connection mainly through the lush strings of Yared’s almost ever-present score, one so uncannily in thrall to Bernard Herrmann that viewers familiar with Dolan’s previous output -- hitherto reliant on tastefully curated jukebox soundtracks -- may initially assume he’s sampling extracts from lesser-known film scores from the Golden Age of noir. So overwhelming and insistent as to constitute a narrative voice in itself, Yared’s work constitutes a significant formal risk, but its sweeping intricacy stands in sufficiently stark contrast to the film’s otherwise contempo-chic construction to make it a thrilling one. Meanwhile, as even Dolan’s detractors have come to expect from his work, the film looks as gorgeous as it sounds, with Andre Turpin’s rich, crisply composed lensing effectively playing the landscape’s bleak, affectless minimalism against its deep autumnal coloring. Working, as ever, as his own costume designer, Dolan makes even mud-splattered workwear look a tiny bit fabulous."

Guy Lodge, Variety

"To be fair, audiences unimpeded by the knowledge that Tom is also the director are at an advantage, since that awareness no doubt skews one’s perception. Already on his fourth feature at age 24, Dolan is not without some justification for his narcissism. His command of film craft is evident in the expressive imagery of Andre Turpin’s cinematography, the sinuous fluidity of Dolan’s editing, and the ballsy over-saturation of a lush score by Gabriel Yared in the classic suspense mode. But 'Tom at the Farm' is also ponderous, overwrought and more than a little pretentious, with a brooding self-seriousness that at times veers into camp."

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.

May 27
THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (Michael Kamen) [Nuart]
BLUE VELVET (Angelo Badalamenti) [Silent Movie Theater]
BUG (Brian Tyler), KILLER JOE (Tyler Bates) [New Beverly]
THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (Christopher Komeda), SCREAM OF FEAR (Clifton Parker), CIRCUS OF HORRORS (Franz Reizenstein) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
NORTH BY NORTHWEST (Bernard Herrmann), TO CATCH A THIEF (Lyn Murray) [Cinematheque: Aero]
THIRTEEN (Mark Mothersbaugh) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
A TOUCH OF ZEN (Tai Kong Ng, Ta Chiang Wu) [Silent Movie Theater]

May 28
THE AFRICAN LION (Paul Smith) [New Beverly]
BLUE VELVET (Angelo Badalamenti) [Silent Movie Theater]
BUG (Brian Tyler), KILLER JOE (Tyler Bates) [New Beverly]
THE HUNTED (Brian Tyler) [New Beverly]
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (John Williams), INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (John Wiliams), INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (John Williams) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
REAR WINDOW (Franz Waxman), PSYCHO (Bernard Herrmann) [Cinematheque: Aero]
TEEN WITCH (Richard Elliot) [Silent Movie Theater]
A TOUCH OF ZEN (Tai Kong Ng, Ta Chiang Wu) [Silent Movie Theater]

May 29
THE AFRICAN LION (Paul Smith) [New Beverly]
BLUE VELVET (Angelo Badalamenti) [Silent Movie Theater]
DIAL M FOR MURDER (Dimitri Tiomkin) [Cinematheque: Aero]
THE GREEN SLIME (Toshiaka Tsushima, Charles Fox) [Silent Movie Theater]
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (Maurice Jarre) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
TROPICAL HEAT WAVE (Stanley Wilson), PANAMA SAL (Gerald Roberts) [New Beverly]
A TOUCH OF ZEN (Tai Kong Ng, Ta Chiang Wu) [Silent Movie Theater]

May 30
BLUE VELVET (Angelo Badalamenti) [Silent Movie Theater]
TROPICAL HEAT WAVE (Stanley Wilson), PANAMA SAL (Gerald Roberts) [New Beverly]

May 31
BLUE VELVET (Angelo Badalamenti) [Silent Movie Theater]
HOT SUMMER IN BAREFOOT COUNTY (W. Henry Smith), PREACHERMAN (Roland Pope, W. Henry Smith) [New Beverly]
RAINTREE COUNTY (John Green) [LACMA]
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (John Morris) [Arclight Sherman Oaks]

June 1
BLUE VELVET (Angelo Badalamenti) [Silent Movie Theater]
CARRIE (Pino Donaggio) [Cinematheque: Aero]
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (Wendy Carlos) [Arclight Hollywood]
REBECCA (Franz Waxman) [AMPAS]
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (Lennie Hayton) [Arclight Culver City]

June 2
BLUE VELVET (Angelo Badalamenti) [Silent Movie Theater]
CHINATOWN (Jerry Goldsmith) [Arclight Santa Monica]
DRESSED TO KILL (Pino Donaggio), OBSESSION (Bernard Herrmann) [Cinematheque: Aero]
VIY (Karen Khachaturyan) [Silent Movie Theater]

June 3
BLACK SUNDAY (Les Baxter) [Silent Movie Theater]
BODY DOUBLE (Pino Donaggio), FEMME FATALE (Ryuichi Sakamoto) [Cinematheque: Aero]
HOUSE (Asei Kobayashi, Mikki Yoshino) [Nuart]
MATINEE (Jerry Goldsmith) [UCLA]

June 4
THE CASSANDRA CAT( Svatopluk Havelka) [Silent Movie Theater]
THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (Dick Hyman), ESCAPE FROM LIBERTY CINEMA (Zygmunt Konieczny, Jerzy Satanowski) [UCLA]
SCARFACE (Giorgio Moroder), CARLITO'S WAY (Patrick Doyle) [Cinematheque: Aero]

June 5
MOULIN ROUGE (Craig Armstrong) [Arclight Hollywood]
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips) [Silent Movie Theater]
'TIL MADNESS DO US PART [UCLA]