Film Score Daily: Film Score Friday 6/21/19

The latest release from Intrada features Bear McCreary's score for this spring's horror/sci-fi/comedy sequel HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U.

Next week, La-La Land plans to release a two-disc set of Mark Snow's music from the recent 11th season of THE X-FILES.

Peter Sobczynski, RogerEbert.com

"Weaver’s Dr. Kay is a sociopathic Ayn Rand consumed with mad science whose mob connections provide her with homeless people -- 'nobody that matters,' she says -- on whom she conducts illegal experimental procedures. Where Frank is all laconic physicality, Dr. Kay is cerebral, verbose and vicious. (The score even gives her a few pipe organ cues.) Her dialogue is fantastic, and Weaver joyfully pitches the character’s condescension, insults and vitriol at all of her antagonists."

Chris Packham, The Village Voice

"There are three things worth knowing about Walter Hill’s wacky pulp exercise 'The Assignment.' The first is that the film’s macho, quasi-anti-heroic protagonist, a hit man named Frank Kitchen, is played by Michelle Rodriguez (notably not a man), at first with the aid of a fake beard, a carpet of Sean Connery-esque chest hair, and a glorious prosthetic dong. The second is that Frank’s nemesis and tormentor, the megalomaniacal plastic surgeon Dr. Rachel Kay, is played by Sigourney Weaver in what has to be her hammiest performance, and that she narrates the film from the confines of a straitjacket. The third is that the plot, which is a mess, finds the evil Dr. Kay taking revenge on Frank by way of a forced sex reassignment surgery that makes him look like Michelle Rodriguez. 'The Assignment' has a point to make about identity, and it sticks to its guns (literally and figuratively) by refusing to make any change to Frank’s persona or Rodriguez’s raspy drag performance. (A nice touch: In an attempt to disguise himself as a woman post-surgery, he dons a wig despite having his own shoulder-length hair.) There is transgressive potential in packaging this as super-sleazy exploitation, complete with a burbling synth soundtrack by Giorgio Moroder and Raney Shockne. But perhaps there is a fourth thing worth knowing about 'The Assignment,' and that’s the fact that it has no clue what it’s going for."

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, The Onion AV Club

"But the larger-than-life stylization that made it possible to swallow, even luxuriate in the cartoonish excesses of such vintage Hill joints as 'Warriors,' 'Streets of Fire' and 'The Driver' is absent here. Even allowing for its evident budget limitations, '(re)Assignment' is drab-looking (despite random brief moments of B&W), with rotely handled violent sequences, and British Columbia too obviously standing in for the Bay Area. The synth washes of ’70s disco king Giorgio Moroder’s themes only underline a sense that this is a trunk project whose expiration date passed some time ago -- if it was ever fresh to begin with."

Dennis Harvey, Variety

FINDING STEVE McQUEEN - Victor Reyes

"Steve McQueen was the essence of a certain brand of gleaming heartless cool, but 'Finding Steve McQueen,' as directed by Mark Steven Johnson (whose journeyman credits range from the action fantasy of 'Ghost Rider' to the indie sentimentality of 'Simon Burch'), is an uncool movie in almost every way. It’s one of those films in which the period atmosphere relies too much on an official array of groovin’ ’70s rock songs ('Draggin’ the Line,' 'Funk #49'), as well as the kind of cheesy 'light' caper music you used to hear on TV soundtracks of the era. And though the movie is based on a burglary that actually occurred (it was the largest bank robbery in the U.S. up until that time), 'Finding Steve McQueen' is overly invested in the broad comic irony of half a dozen bumbling yokels from Youngstown, Ohio, pulling off the crime of the decade."

Owen Gleiberman, Variety

THE HOLE IN THE GROUND - Stephen McKeon

"'Hole In The Ground' digs a little deeper in its third act, switching from cheap gotcha scares to a psychological trauma that immerses the viewer into Sarah’s psychological terror while expanding on her post-divorce scars. Stephen McKeon for provides an excellent score too, filled with squealing strings, to build up some kind of atmosphere. The problem is that the pervading ambiance Cronin builds up is one-note and ultimately falls flat in comparison."

Jordan Ruimy, The Playlist

"Though Cronin and Stephen Shields' script displays some compelling symmetry in its articulation of the terrifying concept of people we know the best looking unfamiliar, and has a clear visual motif (the presence of mirrors and distortions, kicking off with Chris looking at himself in a fun house mirror), it becomes frustrating to wait for this horror movie to be more than just loud. What 'The Hole in the Ground' has more consistently than scares is a good score by Stephen McKeon, which is more disturbing in sound than how the film looks. With shrieking strings that feel more prepped to attack you before anything on-screen does, they can be the most uneasy part of the tale, as numerous scenes create a tension that’s then diffused by a lame cut to the next scene. 'The Hole in the Ground' might think that it’s piling on tension to the story with these crescendoing passages, but instead it feels like music is just being used to fill in its many gaps."

Nick Allen, RogerEbert.com

"Cronin, for his part, conducts the chaos with wired aplomb, as he and cinematographer Tom Comerford crank up the autumn-chill atmosphere in ever-darkening woodsy tones. Composer Stephen McKeon and production designer Conor Dennison make their own essential contributions to the overriding spirit of classy schlock, flirting playfully with genre cliché as their director tacitly namechecks everything from 'Goodnight Mommy' to 'The Blair Witch Project.' When one scene even finds Sarah wallpapering a room in those signature Overlook Hotel hexagons, it’s hard not to laugh out loud: At a time when the obnoxious term 'elevated horror' keeps making the festival rounds, Cronin’s nifty debut is happy to meet the genre at its level."

Guy Lodge, Variety

"Irish writer-director Lee Cronin makes his feature debut after several horror-themed shorts with the spooky, suspenseful 'The Hole in the Ground,' an Ireland-Belgium-Finland co-production acquired by A24, which will release it first on DIRECTV at the end of January and then theatrically in March. The focus here on a stressed single mother (Seana Kerslake) coping with a difficult elementary-school-aged son (James Quinn Markey) will evoke comparisons for many with 'The Babadook,' and while this is more generically conventional than Jennifer Kent's breakout thriller, it still taps potently into parental anxieties and primal fears. Thoughtful technical credits, especially the varied, layered score by Stephen McKeon, add an extra layer of polish."

Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter

THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT - Yves Gourmeur

"'The Hummingbird Project' is the kind of film where Salma Hayek says, as she reaches out to a colleague, 'You don’t have to hide behind this gimmicky neutrino-messaging bulls–t,' as if she doesn’t sound like she’s reading stereo instructions. The playful score by Yves Gourmeur ('Méprises') and sharp, serious cinematography by Nicolas Bolduc ('Enemy') are also whimsically at odds with one another. It’s a film that owns its contrasts, that’s for certain."

William Bibbiani, The Wrap

THE IRON ORCHARD - Duncan Thum

"'The Iron Orchard,' though geographically confined, is all over the place. We flit past the patches of Jim’s life that matter (what happened during those two years, as the dollars poured in?) and linger on those that don’t. Random flashbacks alert us to his youth. The musical score is overcooked, the cast underpowered, and the dialogue something of a mishmash -- 'I’m saying sayonara to this sh*thole mañana.' Mon Dieu!"

Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

"Laying twangy plucked guitar chords beneath crane shots of McNeely cruising through Texas highways in vintage vehicles (too pristine to be anything but collectors’ items, circa 2018), 'The Iron Orchard' leans into nostalgia, assuming we’ll mistake the world that McNeely’s building as belonging to anyone but him and his bros. He lands in West Texas in 1938 as a laborer for the Bison Oil Company, after the family of his well-to-do Fort Worth girlfriend, Mazie (Hassie Harrison), tells him to make something of himself. In the film’s first act, whenever a motivation for McNeely’s bald arrogance and arbitrary petulance is lacking, 'The Iron Orchard' flashes back to overexposed images of this painful rejection. Later, when McNeely is happily married to Lee (Ali Cobrin) and managing his own oil fields, the flashbacks are suddenly of his being bullied in school, as the film scrambles to find new excuses for his autocratic behavior."

Pat Brown, Slant Magazine

THE LOST CITY OF Z - Christopher Spelman

"Appearance may be the movie’s strongest asset. Beautifully rendered on 35mm celluloid, cinematographer Darius Khondji may be the movie’s MVP. He carefully drapes part of the film in gorgeous chiaroscuro shadows and other acts decorated with an amber hue glistening against the verdant jungle floors. Likewise, the production design and the music are exquisite, the former lending the movie its courtly qualities, the latter imbuing the picture with a sense of scale and the operatic qualities Gray loves so much. Wes Anderson’s key music supervisor Randall Poster and George Drakoulias -- new collaborators to the Gray creative sphere -- are clutch, helping the director zero in on resplendent opera and classical music."

Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

"Exquisitely shot (on celluloid) by Darius Khondji in Northern Ireland and the Colombian jungle, the film exceeds its limited means in every respect. Exemplifying its traditional aesthetic virtues is Christopher Spelman's score, which, in its vigor, beauty and unfailing efforts to amplify the narrative action, evokes past masters from Max Steiner to Miklos Rozsa."

Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter

A MADEA FAMILY FUNERAL - Philip White, Christopher Lennertz

"Perry doesn't even try to successfully integrate the story's comedic and dramatic elements, merely toggling back and forth between them as if in need of mood stabilizers. The musical score composed by Philip White desperately tries to keep up, providing saccharine jazzy melodies for the serious moments and practically resorting to rim shots for the comic ones."

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter

QUEEN OF THE DESERT - Klaus Badelt

"'Queen Of The Desert,' which premiered in Berlin more than two years ago, is Herzog’s distaff spin on 'Lawrence Of Arabia,' down to the 'exotic' swell of its knockoff throwback score, the vast expanses of majestically arid terrain, and an appearance by the legendary British archaeologist himself. To be fair, T.E. Lawrence (played here by Robert Pattinson, summoning some Peter O’Toole cheekiness under familiar headwear) only makes a cameo. The film focuses instead on one of his contemporaries: Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman), the English writer whose travels through the Middle East earned her the respect of both British officials and the various tribal leaders she encountered along the way, as well as a key role in the restructuring of the region after World War I."

A.A. Dowd, The Onion AV Club

"It’s obvious that he’s on more than nodding terms with Lean’s Oscar-magnet (whose seminal Maurice Jarre score resurfaces in Klaus Badelt’s stylings here), having reverse-quoted Lean’s iconic extended sequence of a camel-rider emerging from desertine mirages for the astonishing finale of his 1979 near-masterpiece 'Nosferatu – The Vampyre.'"

Neil Young, IndieWire

"For modern audiences, Kidman’s embodiment of Bell may serve to represent an early symbol for equality of the sexes, but in Herzog’s more Germanic way, it actually stands to represent a kind of superiority: Here was a woman whose thirst for life left her towering over the petty ambitions of bureaucrats, civil servants and other small men. The movie celebrates that spirit in every aspect, from its valorizing widescreen cinematography (all the better to appreciate the scenery of a shoot based primarily in Morocco and Jordan) to its even more hagiographic score (composed by Klaus Badelt, doing his best Maurice Jarre, with ululating Arabic vocals to boot). And yet, Herzog’s script loses its way in the desert at one point, dutifully chronicling a life whose principal conflicts are a bit too abstract to dramatize. In the end, it’s not clear what’s driving Bell, nor what’s holding her back."

Peter Debruge, Variety

"The film then becomes an episodic series of expeditions, during which conflicts are no sooner suggested than Gertrude is charming her way out of sticky situations with Turkish military, nomadic warriors and cultured sheiks. 'The deeper we immerse ourselves into the desert, the more everything seems like a dream,' she says, in one of countless variations on the same theme. But the action is less dream-like than prosaic, despite ample helpings of spectacular scenery accompanied by Klaus Badelt's swelling symphonic score."

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

SAINT JUDY - James T. Sale

"Monaghan radiates a winning measure of defiant resilience and dignity, even when she and her illustrious co-stars are reduced to mouthpieces for political sentiments (as in Common’s censure of ICE) -- which is depressingly often. While Wood may be as amazing as “Saint Judy” contends, its incessant glorification quickly wears thin, as it’s always clear that everything will work out in front of a sea of admiring faces -- including Molina’s jaded Ray, Krause’s profit-first former spouse, and a group of Honduran immigrants she helped -- set to James T. Sale’s rousing music. That it most certainly does, with director Hanish delivering perky montages and wannabe-uplifting slow-motion walks up courtroom stairs along the way. With no nuance found throughout its journey, though, the film makes historic triumph feel woefully underwhelming."

Nick Schager, Variety

THE ZOOKEEPER'S WIFE - Harry Gregson-Williams

"Beyond its hurried pacing and general glossiness, however, 'The Zookeeper’s Wife' isn’t necessarily bad. The stunning production designs, the lush cinematography, the involving score, the dynamite acting -- they all serve Caro’s newest film well, and even when they can’t make it as strong and compelling as this film ultimately could’ve been, they bring the emotional gravitas that should be found in every frame of this dramatized account. Yet, the film’s always-apparent mediocrity continually makes it frustrating."

Will Ashton, The Playlist

"It’s a tribute to the inherent fascination of the true story 'The Zookeeper’s Wife' is based on that the film still manages to be so frequently affecting. Caro and screenwriter Angela Workman, adapting Diane Ackerman’s nonfiction book, treat this material as an old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama, and with the help of an impassioned Chastain, they effectively deliver emotional high points in ways that only occasionally feel heavy-handed and manipulative, with Harry Gregson-Williams’s score the most egregious offender."

Kenji Fujishima, Slant Magazine

"Instead, the movie contents itself to deliver that overly correct handsomeness of certain period pieces, where hot-blooded events of our not-so-distant past are presented as meticulous taxidermy specimens. In service of her most demanding movie yet, 'Whale Rider' director Caro pays considerable attention to the film’s costumes, sets, and emotion-swelling score -- not to mention all those unfortunate accents -- but somehow never fully re-animates these remarkable events."

Peter Debruge, Variety

"Caro knows how to amp up the tension, which she does in the third act, as Polish Resistance fighters (including Jan) battle German soldiers in the street. And you can sense her trying to keep the bombast in check: Harry Gregson Williams’ somewhat syrupy score is deployed with discretion, and the movie doesn’t rub your nose in Nazi sadism or Jewish agony (aside from one shameless fake-out involving an off-screen gunshot and a key character). That said, some of the most visually arresting bits are also the most manipulative, the ones where you feel the filmmakers fishing for gasps and sighs -- a sequence in which Caro cuts back and forth between the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and a Passover seder, and another in which the ashes of the burnt-down Ghetto flutter and float picturesquely through the sky ('It’s snowing!' Ryszard exclaims)."

Jon Frosch, The Hollywood Reporter

June 21
BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE (Quincy Jones), CACTUS FLOWER (Quincy Jones) [New Beverly]
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS [New Beverly]
LA COLLECTIONNEUSE (Blossom Toes, Giorgio Gomelsky) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (Carter Burwell), BLOOD SIMPLE (Carter Burwell) [Cinematheque: Aero]
POLA X (Scott Walker), RIVER'S EDGE (Jurgen Knieper) [UCLA]
SHAMPOO (Paul Simon) [Vista]
THE SHINING (Wendy Carlos, Rachel Elkind) [Nuart]

June 22
THE BIG LEBOWSKI (Carter Burwell), THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE (Carter Burwell) [Cinematheque: Aero]
THE BLACK STALLION (Carmine Coppola, Shirley Walker) [Vista]
BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE (Quincy Jones), CACTUS FLOWER (Quincy Jones) [New Beverly]
CANDY (Dave Grusin) [New Beverly]
CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG (Richard M. Sherman, Robert B. Sherman, Irwin Kostal) [New Beverly]
THE HIDDEN FORTRESS (Masaru Sato) [Vista]
THE KILLER (Lowell Lo) [Vista]
TARNATION (Max Avery Lichtenstein), GOODBYE, SOUTH, GOODBYE (Giong Lim) [UCLA]

June 23
CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG (Richard M. Sherman, Robert B. Sherman, Irwin Kostal) [New Beverly]
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (John Williams) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
THE DARK CRYSTAL (Trevor Jones) [UCLA]
FARGO (Carter Burwell), A SERIOUS MAN (Carter Burwell) [Cinematheque: Aero]
SWEET CHARITY (Cy Coleman) [New Beverly]

June 24
OCEAN'S ELEVEN (David Holmes) [New Beverly]
SWEET CHARITY (Cy Coleman) [New Beverly]

June 25
THERE'S A GIRL IN MY SOUP (Mike D'Abo), THE LOVE GOD? (Vic Mizzy) [New Beverly]
TO BE OR NOT TO BE (Werner Heymann) [LACMA]

June 26
KRAKATOA, EAST OF JAVA (Frank DeVol), THE BOSTON STRANGLER (Lionel Newman) [New Beverly]
TOPAZ (Maurice Jarre) [New Beverly]

June 27
AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON (Takanobu Saito) [LACMA]
CHINATOWN (Jerry Goldsmith) [Laemmle Royal]
DEAD MAN (Neil Young) [Laemmle NoHo]
THE DOORS [Cinematheque: Aero]
THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (Jeff Grace), WOLF'S HOLE (Michael Kocab) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
KRAKATOA, EAST OF JAVA (Frank DeVol), THE BOSTON STRANGLER (Lionel Newman) [New Beverly]

June 28
BULLITT (Lalo Schifrin), PENDULUM (Walter Scharf) [New Beverly]
DAISIES (Jirí Slitr, Jirí Sust), FRUIT OF PARADISE (Zdenek Liska) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS [New Beverly]
IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES (Paul De Senneville, Olivier Toussaint) [Cinematheque: Aero]
MATANGI/MAYA/M.I.A. (Dhani Harrison, Paul Hicks) [LACMA]
PRINCESS MONONOKE (Joe Hisaishi) [Nuart]
THE TRIBE [Vista]

June 29
ALICE'S RESTAURANT (Arlo Guthrie) [New Beverly]
BULLITT (Lalo Schifrin), PENDULUM (Walter Scharf) [New Beverly]
DOG DAY AFTERNOON [Vista]
THE REIVERS (John Williams) [New Beverly]
SKIDOO (Harry Nilsson) [New Beverly]
STRAY DOG (Fumio Hayasaka) [Vista]
YOUR SISTER'S SISTER (Vinny Smith), HUMPDAY (Vinny Smith), WE GO WAY BACK (Laura Veirs) [Cinematheque: Aero]

June 30
LADIES OF LEISURE, BABY FACE (Leo F. Forbstein) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
MOTHRA (Yuji Kosecki) [Vista]
OUTSIDE IN (Andrew Bird), TOUCHY FEELY (Vince Smith) [Cinematheque: Aero]
PANELSTORY (Jiri Sust), THE VERY LATE AFTERNOON OF A FAUN (Miroslav Korínek, Jirí Stivín) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
THE REIVERS (John Williams) [New Beverly]
THE SHINING (Wendy Carlos, Rachel Elkind) [Arclight Culver City
THE SHINING (Wendy Carlos, Rachel Elkind) [Arclight Hollywood]
THE SHINING (Wendy Carlos, Rachel Elkind) [Arclight Santa Monica]
THE SHINING (Wendy Carlos, Rachel Elkind) [Arclight Sherman Oaks]
THE STERILE CUCKOO (Fred Karlin), 3 IN THE ATTIC (Chad Stuart) [New Beverly]

THINGS I'VE HEARD, READ, SEEN OR WATCHED LATELY

Heard: The Promise (Yared), Sausage Party (Menken/Lennertz), War & Peace and Other Television Themes (various), Oceano (Morricone), Star Trek: Discovery (Russo), Utopia 2 (Tapia de Veer), The Jungle Book (Debney)

Read: Galactic Pot-Healer, by Philip K. Dick

Seen: Rocketman, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Men in Black: International, Aladdin, Foul Play, The Thin Man, Model Shop, They Came to Rob Las Vegas

Watched: The Hitchhiker ("Best Shot"), Mosaic ("Zebra-itis"), House ("Histories"), Mystery Science Theater 3000 ("Carnival Magic", "The Christmas That Almost Wasn't")

As a lead-in to the release of Tarantino's 1969-set Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the New Beverly is currently showing a retrospective of films from 1968 and 1969, full of the kind of when-will-you-ever-get-the-chance-to-see-it-again movies that are the main draw of that theater for me. The source materials range from a brand-new print of The Wrecking Crew to a surprisingly good panscanned-16mm copy of They Came to Rob Las Vegas.

For their Wednesday matinee series, they have been screening Hitchcock's color films from the 1960s, using vintage, IB Technicolor prints, which gave me my first chance to see Marnie in a theater. It's certainly not one of the great Hitchcocks, but I find it endlessly fascinating, and I put it in the small group of what I think of as "emotional Hitchcocks," films where the character relationships are ultimately more important than any thriller plotting -- Sabotage and Shadow of the Doubt are the best of these.

Marnie also has one of Herrmann's most overtly emotional scores, up there with Jane Eyre, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Vertigo and Obsession, and it was the last Hitchcock/Herrmann score before Torn Curtain split them apart permanently. Other plusses include a witty script credited to Jay (Presson) Allen (following earlier drafts by Evan Hunter, who much later wrote a book, Me and Hitch, about his experiences on Marnie and The Birds), and one of the most appealing ingenues of the 60s, Diane Baker, who has that Rachel McAdams ability to be engaging even when playing an antagonistic character. Not to mention the typically excellent matte paintings by Albert Whitlock.

But apart from the overpoweringly gorgeous Herrmann music, my favorite thing about Marnie is almost certainly Sean Connery. Marnie was made around the same time as Goldfinger, so he was at his charismatic peak of Bond-ness, and when Connery first saunters on screen it feels like Bond himself just dropped by on his way home from Fort Knox. Connery's mixture of charisma and danger makes him perfect for the part, and it's a pity it was the only film he ended up making with Hitchcock (he was talked up to star in Hitchcock's The Short Night, but the director died before the film could go into production).