Sometimes the critical and commercial failure of a film can overshadow its strong points. Such is the case with Capone, whose score by legendary rapper and produce El-P is among the film’s saving graces. I was, admittedly, cautious of how […]
Seijun Suzuki is one of film’s most stylish directors. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his magnum opus Tokyo Drifter, where Suzuki’s bombastic and bizarre indulgences flow unimpeded. Rather than try to balance this out, prolific composer Hajime Kaburagi […]
Film music can be incomprehensible when detached from the underlying film. Snippets of ascending strings building tensions, rhythmic unaccompanied drums, or ominous rumbling synths build atmosphere for the images on screen. But they have trouble standing on their own. They […]
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is a lonely, desolate landscape, one of the few places left in America that feels undisturbed by humanity’s touch. And yet, in Anatomy of a Murder it feels lively. Duke Ellington’s stylish score is the cause, making […]
Paul Rudd’s son had the same reaction to the announcement of Ant-Man as many of us unfamiliar with Marvel’s less popular characters: “I can’t wait to see how stupid that’ll be.” On paper, the sentiment isn’t wrong. Ant-Man controls an […]
The history and study of film music is largely a European and American centric one. Even today, most Western audiences are only familiar with composers from these two areas, largely ignoring the film music produced throughout the rest of the […]
A nearly forgotten English classic, If…. is one of those genuinely provocative films that only the 60s and 70s could produce, satirizing school and religion, glorifying sex and drinking, and offering youth the dangerous idea of freedom. Marc Wilkinson’s hypnotic […]
In 2011, Cliff Martinez helped popularize the 80s synth and electropop revivalist subgenres through his work on Drive. While this remains his most popular work, Only God Forgives is perhaps his strongest score to date. It fuses elements from Drive, […]
Jazz is the stereotypical music of film noir. Soft piano and crooning sax, the perfect moody complement to those scenes of smoke-filled bar; desolate, rain-soaked streets; the honking of a ’38 Packard and the holstering of a ’38 special. The […]
Vertigo: the sensation of a loss of stability; a spinning, destabilizing unease, that you and the world around are careening into chaos and you can do nothing but watch, transfixed. In a high stakes moment, vertigo strikes veteran detective Johnny […]