Cohen & Tate (Bill Conti, 1988): Intrada very recently released a CD containing the first ever album release of Bill Conti’s score to this late 80s Roy Scheider thriller.  It is a surprisingly dark and aggressive score for Conti and isn’t immediately recognizable as his work.  It is an effective score and an interesting look at a different side to a popular composer.

The score is dominated by some very aggressively low piano music, which generally serves as the primary theme for the score.  Harsh strings and some very deep brass, particularly French horn, additionally build upon the foreboding atmosphere that is established by the primary piano music.  Much of the score is fairly dissonant and non-melodic, instead going for more of a rhythmic approach.  There are some exceptions where Conti does introduce more melodic elements, such as a fairly cold, but definitely melodic theme that is particularly clearly established in the cue “Tail Lights”.

The later part of the score includes some pretty intense action music, with percussion joining the deep piano and strings to create some aggressively fast-paced, very rhythmic music.  The short cue “It’s Really Them” is one of the first really strong examples of this aspect to the score and this approach is further developed impressively in the cue “Kaboom”.  In the end, all of the different elements of the score come together in the fairly impressive “The Last Battle” cue.

The Color Purple (Quincy Jones, 1985): To date, The Color Purple remains the only full-length theatrical movie directed by Steven Spielberg that did not contain a score by John Williams.  Before Spielberg joined the project, Quincy Jones was already attached as a producer and wished to score the film as well.  Jones, working with a fairly large team of co-composers and orchestrators, delivered a score that fit the film exceptionally well and also plays quite well on CD.

The primary theme to the score is a beautiful melody that seems to be inspired by Georges Delerue.  In fact, the theme is perhaps a bit uncomfortably close to Delerue’s main theme from the 1967 film Our Mother’s House.  Despite this similarity, it is still an exceptionally nice theme that works extremely well in the film and the score.  The theme is initially introduced as primarily a flute melody, but is developed into more fully orchestral versions.  Much of the score has a pretty distinctively rural quality to it, particularly emphasized by the occasional use of harmonica.

The score also occasionally introduces some other ethnic elements, most significantly some African rhythms, starting with the cue “High Life/Proud Theme”.  Jones and his team are particularly effective at blending some of the score’s melodic themes with these African rhythms in order to retain a cohesiveness to the score.  This ethnicity is most impressively featured in the very powerful cue “Celie Shaves Mr./Scarifiaction Ceremony” which underscores one of the film’s most intense sequences. 

Songs play a key role in the film as well due to one of the key characters, dubbed by singer Tata Vega, being a singer in a 1930s juke joint.   The most important of these is the very distinctive, jazzy song “Miss Celie’s Blues (Sister)” which actually opens the soundtrack album (as the first part of the “Overture” cue) and then is given a complete performance later.  Vega also performs the songs “Careless Love”, “The Dirty Dozens” and leads a choir in the lively gospel song “Maybe God Is Trying to Tell You Something”. 

Back in 1985, a 2-LP soundtrack album was released that was pressed on rather striking purple vinyl.  The same program was eventually released on a 2-CD set that still remains in print and readily available.

Coma (Jerry Goldsmith, 1978): Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Michael Crichton’s 1978 medical thriller Coma was generally one of the composer’s more dark and challenging scores of that era of his career.    The score somewhat straddles the line between the more atonal approach that Goldsmith sometimes took during the 1970s and the more melodic approach that dominated his later scores.

A distinguishing element of this score was that Goldsmith composed it using a limited orchestra, principally featuring piano, strings, and percussion as well as some occasional electronics.  Brass is entirely absent from the score.  The result is a score that has a sort of compressed, vaguely oppressive tone, reflecting the overall mood of the film itself.

While much of the score is fairly non-melodic and atonal, Goldsmith does provide a melodic, somewhat pop-inspired love theme that is only used very sparingly.  The theme is given a full performance in the cue “Cape Cod Weekend (Love Theme from Coma), but is rarely re-visited within the main parts of the score.  The expanded soundtrack ends with a song entitled “Sunday’s Moon” which adds lyrics by Goldsmith’s wife Caroline to the theme.

A 35-minute soundtrack album was released on LP at the time of the movie’s release and has been re-issued twice on CD, once by the now-defunct Bay Cities label and also by the Chapter III label, which paired it with Goldsmith’s score to Logan’s Run.  Most recently, Film Score Monthly released an expanded, 51 minute (including bonus tracks) program of the score as part of a 2-disc set that also included scores from two other Michael Crichton movies, Westworld and The Carey Treatment.  That release is still available.

All of the soundtrack releases have included an additional disco instrumental entitled “Disco Strut”, written by Don Peake.  This cue is pretty much exactly what you would expect from a cue by that title and is definitely a product of its era.  The soundtracks also include a disco version of Goldsmith’s love theme, which benefits from the strong source melody, but still is rather dated.

The Comancheros (Elmer Bernstein, 1961): In the 1960s and early 70s, Elmer Bernstein often provided some extremely rousing and exciting scores for westerns, including several starring John Wayne.  The Comancheros was the first of Wayne’s westerns that Bernstein scored and is a very entertaining score.

Right at the beginning, the score opens with a “Main Title” cue that starts with some exciting militaristic percussion followed by an extremely lively, brassy march.  This heroic-sounding main theme is a pretty archetypical example of exactly the kind of music that is most often associated with classic westerns, particularly the style made by John Wayne.  This theme is incorporated pretty regularly throughout the rest of the score and is pretty much always welcome. 

While the main theme anchors the score, Bernstein provides a nice variety of orchestral themes, including some very dynamic and rhythmic action music as well as some softer themes for some of the quieter moments.  One particularly interesting example of the latter is the cue “Eulogy”, which opens with some fairly fast paced music before settling down into some gentler, introspective orchestral music.  As for the action music, an obvious example is the very aptly named cue “Attack”.  This cue remains melodic, with some very effective string melodies, while using rhythmic composition and some impressive percussion to create an exciting mood.

Film Score Monthly released a CD containing the complete score from the film as part of their Silver Age Classics series.  While a limited edition, the CD is still readily available.  The CD ends with two unused songs performed by singer Claude King and a mono mix of the main title.

Commando (James Horner, 1985): This score for the hit Arnold Schwarzenegger thriller was one of the most hard-driving and action packed scores of James Horner’s career so far.  Varese Sarabande released the score as a 3,000 copy limited edition CD that is now sold out and generally goes for very high prices (over $100) on the secondary market. 

The score makes considerably heavier use of electronics than is typical for a Horner score, which gives the score much more of a rock instrumental sound than is usually expected from the composer.  Most of the score has a very rhythmic style to it, with bits of steel drum and occasional saxophone bursts adding to the at times almost frenetic sound. 

Horner does introduce one fairly melodic theme that is only very sparingly used in the score, although there is a lengthy presentation of it in the mid-section of the “Prologue and Main Title” cue that opens the CD and towards the end of the very lengthy “Infiltration, Showdown, and Finale” cue.  This one melodic theme is really the only one that sounds distinctly like Horner’s style.

The intense, throbbing electronics approach to this score causes it to really stand apart from Horner’s other scores from that general era.  Particularly in his earliest work, there was a certain sameness to a lot of Horner’s scores, including a tendency to re-use certain favorite motifs from score to score.  That is definitely not the case here and this score really serves as an early indicator of the composer’s range.

The Commitments (Various, 1991): Alan Parker’s musical about members of an Irish working class community that decide to put together a soul music band contained such great music that I quickly ran out to buy the soundtrack CD after I saw the film in the theater.  The album was a pretty big hit, so I’m sure I wasn’t alone in that.

The songs on the album are all pretty much soul and blues standards, well performed by the cast of the film, including Andrew Strong, Angeline Ball, Maria Doyle, Niamh Kavanagh, and Robert Arkins.  Fitting with the storyline of the film, the performances have a bit of a rough, vaguely amateurish sound to them, but that generally just lends them a lot of charm.

The songs on the album are all ones that are pretty sure to be familiar to most listeners, whether you have seen the film or not.  Some of the songs include “Mustang Sally”, “Chain of Fools”, “Try a Little Tenderness”, “In the Midnight Hour” and others.  The CD contains a total of 14 songs from the film.  A second volume of the soundtrack was later released, although I never really felt a need to pick it up as the most prominent songs from the film were all featured on the first one.

The Clearing (Craig Armstrong, 2004): As I know little about the film, it is fairly unlikely that I would have bought this soundtrack myself. It is one of several that I was given by a friend who works at the movie studio and it is a pretty good score.  My only previous familiarity with Craig Armstrong was mainly through his projects with Baz Luhrmann, which tended to be pretty song-oriented.  It is interesting hearing a more full score.

Much of the score has a very dark and moody quality.  The opening cue is a solo violin presentation of the score’s main theme.  This kind of low-key presentation of the theme establishes a pretty distinctive mood right at the start.  The theme is a fairly simple motif, built around a fairly simple 8 note melody with the first 3 notes repeated.  This motif is woven throughout the score, often either via the solo violin or via piano (including a stand-alone solo piano cue of the theme). The soundtrack ends with a full orchestral arrangement.

Armstrong includes some electronic elements as well, introducing a bit of a modern style to some parts of the score.  The early cue “Arnold On His Way” especially showcases this aspect of the music and comes as a somewhat interesting shift in tone after the moody, more classical instrumentals of the first couple cues.

Cliffhanger (Trevor Jones, 1993): Trever Jones’ Cliffhanger is one of my favorite action scores of the early 1990s and it comes from what I think was probably the most purely entertaining action film of Sylvester Stallone’s career.  I’ve always found it a bit puzzling that Jones didn’t make a bigger name for himself as an action composer.

The score is built around an absolutely thrilling main theme.  The theme is built around a series of very brassy fanfares backed by some absolutely soaring strings.  This is one of those themes that really sticks in your mind after listening to the album or seeing the film.  The opening cue of the album is a terrific concert arrangement of the theme.  It may have played over the main title, although I don’t recall for sure.  Either way, it gets the album off to a rousing start while firmly establishing the score’s primary musical voice right from the beginning.

Stallone’s action movies often tended to have something of a brooding quality to them and Jones’ score does reflect this with some cues that are fairly moody.  This is pretty effective scoring, with Jones retaining a melodic quality that never strays excessively far from the style of the main theme.  This helps to keep the darker side of the score from becoming oppressive and also retains a cohesive sound to it.

One thing that might be a tad surprising about the score is that it doesn’t have a lot of extremely high-adrenaline action music.  It isn’t completely absent, of course, but even some of the core action cues like “Bats” or “Helicopter Fight” still stay very anchored in melody and are a bit heavier on tension and mood than on what you might usually expect for a big-budget action movie.  When more actively percussive music comes into play, it tends to be particularly effective due to its fairly sparing use.

Cloak & Dagger (Brian May, 1984): I haven’t seen it for years, but this was a movie that I especially enjoyed when it first came out.  I was 15 years old and already a definite computer/video game nerd by then, so the film connected with me pretty well.  What I don’t remember was ever really thinking too much about the music in the movie, particularly since there was no soundtrack released.   Intrada released Brian May’s score for the first time earlier this year and I found the music to have a certain familiarity, although not as much as I might have expected from a film that I saw a number of times back when it was reasonably new.

May provided a pretty charming adventure score for the film.  It is a fully orchestral score with a somewhat old-fashioned sound.  Considering the computer and video game theme to the film, it is actually a bit surprising that the score is so traditional and lacking in electronic elements.  The score is dominated by some very active string and piano melodies, with occasional militaristic brass and percussion brought into some of the action sequences, including a pretty great march that appears occasionally during the score and then gets a full performance in the end credits cue.  Gentle woodwinds often accompany piano during the more quiet parts of the score.

The score is very energetic and fast paced, although it is somewhat limited in thematic elements.  May does introduce a very short primary motif that serves as something of a main theme for the score, but it isn’t one that is especially distinctive and, thus, probably not one that will stick in your mind too much after seeing the film or hearing the album.  In fact, this fairly minimalist main theme is probably the reason that I didn’t find the music exceptionally memorable based on multiple viewings of the film.  This isn’t necessarily a negative, though, as the music is pleasant to listen to and likely served the film well.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (John Williams, 1977): If pressed to pick my favorite score (and favorite movie, for that matter), I inevitably end up picking Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  In the early days of my soundtrack collecting (when I was around 10 years old), I remember calling around to every record store in town until I found one with the LP in stock and then convincing my father to drive me across town to buy it.  On the day that I purchased my first CD player, this soundtrack was the first disc that I bought to play on it.  I simply love this music.

The film gave John Williams one of the most complex structures that he has ever had to work with, allowing for a score that has a pretty wide variety of styles.  “Nocturnal Pursuit” (I’m using the cue names from the original 1977 soundtrack release) contain exciting, militaristic chase music full of dynamic brass and fast paced strings.  “The Abduction of Barry”, on the other hand, is as scary and disquieting as any horror score, with its dissonant choral vocals mixed with deep blasts of brass and screeching strings.

Of course, the most famous motif in the score is the 5-note Williams-composed tune that the aliens use as a base for their attempt to communicate.  This motif has a key role in the film’s plot and, in fact, is probably on the short list of examples where an element of the score has been critical to a film’s storyline.  The amusing and clever “The Conversation” represents this motif’s most prominent use, with Williams later making extensive use of it during the finale sequences.

Finally, Williams provides a hopeful, incredibly memorable primary theme for orchestra and chorus for the alien visitation.  that is first introduced in “I Can’t Believe It’s Real” and then developed spectacularly during the amazing finale pieces “The Appearance of the Visitors” and “Resolution and End Title”.  This theme is composed in a way that it blends exceptionally well with the famous 5-note motif during these concluding cues.  The visitation theme also intentionally has a slight resemblance to the key melody of Leigh Harline’s “When You Wish Upon a Star”, which Williams actually subtly, and very effectively, incorporates (with credit) during the finale as well.

There have been three different CD releases of the Close Encounters soundtrack to date.  The first release was by Arista Records and contained a direct transfer of the old 40 minute LP program, but without the disco arrangement of the main theme that had been included as a separate 7-inch single with the LP package.  A few years later, Varese Sarabande licensed and re-issued the same program, but with the disco track included at the end.  Finally in 1998, Arista released a “Collector’s Edition” CD that contains a full 77 minutes of music from the film, presented more or less in film order.  This edition also included some of the music that scored sequences added to the 1979 “special edition” version of the film, including a gorgeous orchestral performance of “When You Wish Upon a Star” that was incorporated into that version’s end credits suite.

While the collector’s edition release is definitely the one to get if you are only going to purchase one version of the Close Encounters soundtrack, the CD of the original LP program really is worth obtaining as well.  Back when program lengths were limited somewhat by the capacity of an LP, Williams (or his music editors) had a real talent for putting together excellent programs that really highlighted the best of the music as the best possible listening experience.  While the original program isn’t complete and often presents the music out of film order, it really is an exceptionally good organization of the score and I still find myself choosing it over the collector’s edition fairly often.

Cloverfield (Michael Giacchino, 2008): The surprise hit monster movie Cloverfield had no score during the film, due to its format as supposedly being found home video footage.  For the end credits, composer Michael Giacchino (the usual collaborator of the film’s producer J.J. Abrams) wrote a 12 minute original musical suite entitled “Roar!”  Not surprisingly, there is no soundtrack CD, but this end-credit suite is available for download from iTunes.

The suite of music is great fun!  It really sounds like Giacchino jumped at the challenge of essentially writing an exciting, fully-developed monster movie action score compressed down to 12 minutes.  The suite contains dynamic brass and percussion themes along with soaring strings, some stirring choral segments, and even some sensitive, introspective thematic material.

It is exciting, thrilling orchestral bombast and incredibly cool considering that it was all written strictly for the end credits.  For a 99 cent download, this is pretty much a no-brainer for any fans of Giacchino, or this type of orchestral thriller music in general, to purchase.

The Cobweb (Leonard Rosenman, 1955): This very early Leonard Rosenman score (it was only his 2nd) was released by Film Score Monthly as part of their Golden Age Classics series, paired on CD with music from Rosenman’s score to Edge of the City.  According to the liner notes, the score is presented complete at a running time of a little under 37 minutes.

The score is dark and often dissonant, using a full orchestra to create a frenetic and at times unsettling sound.  The film was a dramatic feature set in a mental institution, but the score, taken alone, sounds more like music from a horror film or a dark thriller.  In many ways, the style of the composition seems to have more in common with chamber music than with the more fully symphonic film scores that were typical at the time.  Fairly atonal strings and woodwinds dominate, with occasional bits of brass and percussion used for emphasis.

Cocoon (James Horner, 1985): Ron Howard’s Cocoon was an especially creative blockbuster, mixing alien visitation science fiction with a human interest storyline about the process of aging.  The film was particularly notable for reviving the long dormant careers of veteran actors including Don Ameche (who won an Oscar for the film), Hume Cronyn, and Jessica Tandy.  The film was also the first of several acclaimed collaborations between Howard and composer James Horner.

Horner provided a score that has something of a mix of his typical 1980s science fiction scoring (it is very reminiscent of his two Star Trek scores at times) and some more nostalgically tender scoring for the character-driven aspects of the film.  The science fiction scoring is particularly evident in the fairly dynamic early cue entitled “The Chase”, while the more tender side is especially well represented by the tenderly melancholy cue “Rose’s Death”.

At the heart of the score is a memorable main theme that is initially presented in a fairly low-key piano performance at the beginning of the opening cue, “Through the Window”.  The theme is developed considerably over the score, frequently performed on different instruments and at a variety of tempos.  A tender, nostalgic secondary theme is often used in conjunction with the primary theme as well.  In most cases, the primary theme is largely associated with the science fiction aspects of the story while the secondary theme is used for the more character-driven material.

One particularly notable cue in the score is “The Boys Are Out”, which is a nostalgic, swing-dance type melody used during a night-on-the-town sequence.  This cue is a definite pre-cursor to the approach that Horner took to scoring the similarly themed film *Batteries Not Included (which featured some of the same cast) a couple years later.  The cue is impressive in that it fulfills an old-fashioned, nostalgic requirement, but still feels like it comes from the same family as the rest of the score.

The soundtrack album contains about 40 minutes of Horner’s score and is organized pretty far off from film order.  The album also includes one rock song, “Gravity” performed by Michael Sembello.  This was used during the famous dance sequence in the film, but is a bit jarring on the album due to its placement pretty much right in the middle.  The soundtrack is out of print and pretty difficult to obtain and this definitely seems like a score that is in need of a re-issue, preferably expanded and in a more logical order.

Cocoon: The Return (James Horner, 1988): The 1988 sequel to Cocoon re-united most of the original film’s cast (but not director Ron Howard), although the result was a somewhat lackluster re-tread.  James Horner was also brought back to score the sequel and delivered a workable score, but one that didn’t really expand much beyond the themes he had written for the original film.

The opening cue on the soundtrack, “Returning Home”, is essentially a re-visit of the “Theme from Cocoon” cue that closed the first soundtrack.  The orchestrations are a bit different which does show that the cue was likely newly-recorded, but it does pretty much immediately establish that Horner’s main goal with this score is going to be to repeat what he had provided for the first film.  The rest of the score has some definite changes in orchestrations and some occasional new melodies, but is still very familiar to those that know the first score well.

One key change in focus in the sequel score is that the swing-style music that was used in a single cue on the soundtrack to the first film is much more prevalent this time.  Multiple cues on the new soundtrack are presented in this style: “Taking Bernie to the Beach”, the lengthy “Basketball Swing”, and the last part of “Good Friends”.  These cues are based around the same basic melody used in “The Boys Are Out” from the first film, but develops it quite a bit for the sequel, adding a number of variations and supplemental melodies.  Fans of that cue in the first score, or of Horner’s *Batteries Not Included score, are likely to find this aspect of the Cocoon: The Return score pretty satisfying.

The soundtrack CD was released by Varese Sarabande at the time of the film’s original release and featured a generous 53 minutes of Horner’s score, presented in some pretty long cues, some 8 minutes or longer all the way up to a 11 1/2 minute finale cue.  The soundtrack is out of print, but is relatively easy to find at reasonable prices.  In fact, it is far easier to find than the soundtrack to the original Cocoon and is probably a reasonable substitute for those that like the music but don’t currently own either CD.

The success of Back to the Future in 1985 came as something of a surprise.  The film had been a pretty troubled production, particularly since the lead actor had to be replaced a few weeks into shooting.  As the movie neared its release date, the low expectations started to be replaced by extremely positive reviews.  Once it opened, positive word of mouth propelled it to become the year’s top grossing film and it remains a true enduring classic from that era.

Several careers were boosted dramatically by the film.  Robert Zemeckis instantly became an A-list director and Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd both were transitioned from TV stars to movie stars.  The film also firmly established Steven Spielberg’s credibility and marketability as a producer on films he didn’t direct.  The film also became an important franchise for Universal, eventually spawning two sequels, an animated TV series, an attraction at the Universal Studios theme parks, and various merchandise tie-ins.

Alan Silvestri’s career as a film composer also received a major  boost from the film’s success.  He had previously had success as a composer for TV (particularly scoring many episodes of CHiPs) and had collaborated with Zemeckis for the first time on the previous year’s hit Romancing the Stone, but Back to the Future was the first time he really achieved widespread attention and acclaim. 

Even though the soundtrack album only had a small portion of his score (the whole score wouldn’t come out until nearly 25 years later), the main theme quickly became extremely recognizable and the sequels both received score-only soundtracks.  After Back to the Future, Silvestri has continued to work regularly on major film projects right up to the present, including every subsequent film that Robert Zemeckis has directed.

My collection includes the original song soundtrack that was released in 1985, the complete score collection released in 2009, both of the sequel soundtracks, and a Varese Sarabande re-recording of music from all three films.  After the break, I will discuss each of the albums in some detail.

Back to the Future (Song Album, 1985): The original Back to the Future soundtrack was primarily a song album, although it did contain about 11 minutes of Alan Silvestri’s score.  The song album was a very big seller and is actually still in print today.

The best known songs from the film were the two by Huey Lewis and the News.  The film was released while the band was at the height of their popularity thanks to the hit “Sports” album that had come out in 1983.  Lewis’ mix of 80s rock with 50s doo-wop style was really a perfect fit for the time travel plot of the film.

The best known song from the film was “The Power of Love”, which hit #1 on the pop charts and is very well-used in the film’s early scenes.  The other Huey Lewis song on the album is “Back In Time”, which played over the film’s credits.  This one is more directly tied to the movie, with lyrics that reference the characters and the film’s plot.  The early part of the CD (side 1 of the old LP) also contains 80s rock songs by Eric Clapton and Lindsay Buckingham.  Both songs were only heard very briefly in the film as radio source music, but they are generally good songs.

Silvestri’s very recognizable main theme for the film is also presented in a 3 minute arrangement that played during the second half of the end credits and is simply titled “Back to the Future” on the album.  Side 2 on the old LP (or the second half of the CD) opens with an 8 minute suite of highlights from Silvestri’s score entitled “Back to the Future Overture”.  It is a well selected suite that covers a lot of the key parts of the score, although it is obviously in no way comprehensive.

The rest of the CD contains the music from the 50s portion of the film, including the songs prominently featured during the pivotal school dance sequence.  The section opens with Etta James’ performance of her classic song “The Wallflower (Dance With Me Henry)” and then continues with the songs from the dance: “Night Train”, “Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine)” and “Johnny B. Goode”.  Interesting, the album credits those last 3 songs to the characters in the film (“Marvin Barry and the Starlighters” and “Marty McFly with the Starlighters”) and the actual names of the performers aren’t given.

Back to the Future (score album, 2009): For many years, the score to Back to the Future was one of the biggest “holy grail” releases for film score fans.  In late 2009, Intrada finally filled that long standing gap with a 2-CD release containing the complete score on disc 1 and about 40 minutes of alternate takes on disc 2.

The album opens with a short (23 seconds) statement of the main theme fanfare that was intended to accompany the opening title.  This wasn’t actually used in the movie (replaced with sound effects), but still provides a great opening for the score album.  This is followed by the music from the Twin Pines Mall sequence that introduced the DeLorian time machine.  Up to that point, the rest of the 1985 scenes were either scored with pop songs or were left un-scored entirely.

Silvestri’s brassy fanfare and main theme are among the more recognizable (even to the general public) movie themes from the 1980s.  The main theme is incorporated throughout the score.  Silvestri uses the opening fanfare pretty regularly, essentially as the theme for the Marty McFly character.  Slower tempo versions are used in cues such as “Lorraine’s Bedroom” or “Marty’s Letter” to emphasize the more character-oriented scenes.   Full statements of the theme are often used during the action sequences.

The majority of the score is heavy on brass and strings with lots of percussion also coming into play during the action sequences.  The nature of the film gave Silvestri a pretty wide range of moods to convey and he meets the challenge very well.  His action scoring is very impressive, in cues such as “Skateboard Chase” and especially the 10 minute “It’s Been Educational; Clocktower”, which is easily the highlight of this score.  Other interesting cues include the almost dreamlike state conveyed in “’55 Town Square”  and the highly romantic strings (leading into a romantic re-statement of the main theme) in “Tension; The Kiss”.

The alternate takes on disc 2 came as a major surprise as it wasn’t really widely known that Silvestri had previously recorded an earlier version of the score that was later replaced.  This earlier version is mostly thematically the same as the cues used in the film, but the tone was somewhat darker, particularly with the use of less muted brass creating a somewhat higher tension to the music.  Another significant difference is that Silvestri used the main theme quite a bit more in the final version of the score.  The differences are often subtle, but the overall feel of the alternate version of the score is definitely different.

Silvestri’s score is a milestone and it is wonderful that it is finally fully available.  While the song album provided a solid sampler of the score’s key moments and the Back to the Future Part II soundtrack also covered some similar areas, the unavailability of the original score still was a pretty serious gap.  Intrada is to be commended for the excellent job they did at filling that gap.

Back to the Future Part II (1989): When the second Back to the Future film came out, it was a bit surprising that the MCA Records soundtrack was entirely a score album, containing about 45 minutes of Alan Silvestri’s music.  After the success of the song album for the first film (including a #1 hit single), another song album for the sequels might have been expected.  Director Robert Zemeckis apparently decided to opt for scoring the new films (the 2nd and 3rd films were shot back-to-back) strictly using Alan Silvestri’s orchestral music.  The second film doesn’t even have a closing credits song.

A large portion of the second film (mainly the entire 3rd act) essentially doubled back on the first film, showing many of the same scenes from a different perspective.  Because of this format, Silvestri doesn’t really introduce much in the way of new themes in this film, instead continuing to build on the first film’s themes and even essentially re-orchestrating some of the same basic cues.  This makes the album play like an extension to the first film’s score.  Back when it came out, it even took a bit of the sting out of the unavailability of most of the first film’s score.

The film was overall quite a bit darker and more downbeat than the first one and this is reflected in the score.  In particular, the cue “Alternate 1985”, which accompanied the depressingly bleak alternate reality created in the film, is probably the darkest bit of scoring in the series.  To a degree, the score actually feels like it has more in common with the unused version of the first film’s score than the final version.

Back to the Future Part III (1990): While the second film mostly repeated the themes from the first, the third film gave much more opportunity to introduce substantial new themes.  While the second movie re-explored the same basic settings as the first, the third shifted nearly all of the action to the old west.  The introduction of a love interest for Christopher Lloyd’s Doc Brown also provided new opportunities.

The third score still has the same basic style and is definitely recognizable as being from the same series as the previous two.  The main Back to the Future theme is still used pretty regularly and most of the action music has a similar quality to what was in the previous scores.  The old west provides Silvestri the opportunity to use some traditional western motifs, including harmonic.  The cue “Hill Valley” even concludes with a harmonica version of the main fanfare.

Silvestri introduces two major new themes, both of which are used frequently and even dominantly in the score.  The first is a very tender, string and woodwind melody that serves as the love theme for Doc and Clara.  This is among the most beautiful melodies that Silvestri has written and, impressively, it still fits with the other music from the series. A fully realized version of this theme is presented in the cue “At First Sight” and is re-used regularly during the other scenes involving the romance.

The other major new theme is a new march that serves as a primary theme for the western setting.  It is a somewhat faster paced, more actively upbeat theme than the main series theme.  During many of the action sequences, this new theme is used along side the main theme, which tends to be very effective in this score.  While the theme appears in bits and pieces regularly throughout the score, it doesn’t receive a full performance on the CD until the cue “We’re Out of Gas” late in the album. It also is very prominently featured in the end credits suite.

The soundtrack for the 3rd film was licensed out to Varese Sarabande and runs about 40 minutes, covering the major parts of the score.  The sequencing on the CD is a bit odd, though, generally having little to do with the order of events in the film itself.  For instance, “part 2” of  the train sequence (the film’s climax) is the second cue on the disc!  I would imagine that they figured this sequence was best presentation, but it definitely is apt to annoy purists who like hearing the music in film order.

A new song entitled Doubleback was written and performed by ZZ Top for the film.  The album doesn’t include the full vocal version of the song as it played over the end credits, but it does include a country-style instrumental only version, mainly featuring fiddle and harmonica.  The vocal version of the song appeared on a couple different ZZ Top albums and is also easily purchased as a download from Amazon, iTunes, or other download services.

Back to the Future Trilogy (Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by John Debney, 1999): Varese Sarabande released this compilation album of re-recordings of music from all three films, performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by John Debney.  The album provides a pretty good sampler of the key themes from each of the three films.  For some reason, the performances are a bit slower in tempo than the originals which does take away from it a bit, but this isn’t extreme and probably wouldn’t even be noticeable to anyone that doesn’t know the original soundtracks well.

At the time that that the disc came out, the biggest selling point really was that it contained 30 minutes of music from the original film, nearly 3 times what was on the original soundtrack release.  Particularly notable were the first availability of the complete music from the skateboard chase and the clocktower sequence.  Of course, this is much less important now that the full score is available on the Intrada discs, but it was definitely a welcome expansion at the time.

The set does include one piece of music that isn’t available anywhere else.  The last cue on the disc is a 4 minute suite of music from “Back to the Future: The Ride”, the attraction that closed a couple years ago at Universal Studios Hollywood and Florida.  Not surprisingly, the music from the ride is variations on the themes from all three films, but Silvestri does provide some new bridging material and the overall arrangement is unique to the ride.

I honestly can’t remember being this conflicted about a movie recently.  I can definitely say that I enjoyed the movie and that I even am interested in seeing it again.  At the same time, I’m initially did not feel inclined to say it really was a good movie.  That is part of the reason why I didn’t get around to writing this until about 2 weeks after seeing the film.  In fact, I’ve even gone back and revised this opening paragraph to be a bit more upbeat after realizing that the rest of my review is a lot more positive than I really expected it to be.

Right after seeing the movie, my first instinct was to tell various family and friends that this was the best movie I had ever seen that was made from a really bad script.  As I’ve thought about it more, I even think the script was generally pretty good as I recall a lot of snappy and amusing dialog, some good character moments, and well-chosen action sequences.  I think the real problem with the film is that the underlying story is very poorly conceived.  I really do think that this may be the best example I’ve ever seen of a very talented group of filmmakers and actors making the very best of some pretty bad underlying material.

I’ve seen a lot of comments about how much mileage this movie was able to get out of nostalgia for the character and the earlier films, but I think that wouldn’t really go very far if there weren’t an awful lot that is right with the movie.  First and foremost, it still looks and feels like an Indiana Jones movie.  Although he played the character as noticeably older, and perhaps a tad wiser, Harrison Ford seemed to pretty effortlessly slip back into the role.  I actually hope that other filmmakers will note his performance here and recognize that he is clearly still very capable of playing action heroes.  I think he is an actor that has mostly been misused for the past few years.

It was great seeing Karen Allen’s return as Marion Ravenwood, even if she really didn’t have all that much to do in the film.  The interplay between her and Indy was pretty much on the mark, really.  It was very reminiscent of their relationship in the original film, but with some additional history.  While it has been somewhat controversial, I was really happy with the decision to end the film with Indy and Marion’s wedding.  I felt it was a good reflection of the maturity that both characters have achieved with age.  I also thought it provided some appropriate closure to a series that I suspect probably really is finished, in spite of the various rumors to the contrary.

I do think that Shia LaBeouf was appealing and well cast as Indy and Marion’s son, Mutt, but I can’t really say that I thought the character came close to being distinctive enough to carry a film on his own as has been rumored.  With that in mind, and considering how long it took to get Spielberg and Ford’s schedules to coincide (along with that of George Lucas) and all of them to agree on a script, I just don’t see too much of a chance of another film.  I could be wrong about this (and almost hope that I am), but this really does seem like one final nostalgic return rather than the re-start of the series.

For the nostalgia factor, I was really happy to see the brief tributes to Marcus Brody (and, consequently, the late Denholm Elliot) as well as to Indy’s father.  It was disappointing that they weren’t able to coax Sean Connery out of retirement for at least a brief cameo, but I was glad that they still found a couple very effective ways of acknowledging the character, particularly in the context of the new father/son relationship between Indy and Mutt.  As for Marcus, I greatly enjoyed his sort of bumbling comic relief in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and, thus, thought it was absolutely perfect to end a chase sequence by having the bad guys run into his statue, causing the head to go through their windshield.  That felt to me like a very sharp, highly in-character tribute.

The overall look, pacing, and rhythm of the film also seem right.  While Steven Spielberg has really matured a lot as a filmmaker over the last 20 years, I think it is great that he still likes to periodically go back to the type of popcorn-movie that generally launched his career.  If he had been making nothing but films like Schindler’s List and Munich in the years since the last Indiana Jones film, I’m not sure if he could have slipped back into this series effectively.  I’m glad he still does occasional projects like the Jurassic Park films, War of the Worlds, and this one.

Some have complained that the now-standard use of CGI animation does give some of the special effects work in this film a less realistic appearance than in the earlier films, but I honestly didn’t really notice it much.  I really wouldn’t say that the special effects work in the series ever really fit the definition of "realistic", regardless of the technique used.  The effects may look a bit different this time, but I can honestly say that it wasn’t something that crossed my mind while watching the film.

I thought the action sequences and chases were very well-staged and, just like in the previous films, lots of fun.  Yes, several of the sequences were completely absurd, but that is not only what I expect from this series, but a large part of its charm.  I’ve been a tad surprised to see other reviews that have criticized sequences like Mutt’s Tarzan swing through the jungle or Indy surviving a nuclear blast in a lead refrigerator.  Sure, both sequences were insanely over-the-top and kind of silly, but they also both put a huge grin on my face.  I really think this kind of pretty much fearless over-the-top action is a big part of the charm of these films.

I’ve now talked a lot about what was right with the film.  As I stated at the top of the review, my overall reaction to the film was pretty mixed mainly due to pretty serious story issues.  To put it simply, I think the plot is just plain too complicated.  The Indiana Jones films have pretty much provided classic examples of Alfred Hitchcock’s concept of a MacGuffin, the term he used to refer to the object that everyone in the film wants to find, steal, protect, or destroy.  What that object is or does really shouldn’t matter at all or occupy much time or attention in the film.

In the previous films, the MacGuffin could be explained in just a few words, thus requiring very little of the running time for exposition and allowing the films to maintain a previously almost unprecedented pacing.  In both Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy was seeking Biblical objects that were already well-known to most people in the audience.  Even those that didn’t already know about the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail could pretty quickly get the point when told that the ark was the box that held the tablets containing the 10 commandments and that the grail was the cup used by Christ at the last supper.  The ark’s "power to level mountains" and the grail’s ability to grant endless life could also be explained quickly and easily.  While the Sankara Stones that were sought in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom were not a well-known artifact, the film pretty much skipped any serious explanation other than that one of the stones brought good luck to a village and that all of them would bring great power when brought together.

In the new film, the crystal skull of the title is essentially a MacGuffin once again, but this time they have given it a much too complicated back-story.  To be honest, I’m not even sure I even entirely understood it by the time the film was over.  As best as I can tell, the skulls belonged to alien visitors (I think inter-dimensional instead of from outer space) who were, apparently, the gods that were worshiped by the ancient Aztecs, who built their lost city of gold as a tribute.  When brought together at the temple in the lost city, they apparently opened some sort of a doorway while also imparting psychic abilities or some sort of eternal knowledge to anyone who was looking into their eyes.  It also, for some reason, triggered a launch of a flying saucer that either was traveling to space or to another dimension or something.  Anyway, I think that not entirely-successful attempt at a description kind of illustrates the problem here. 

The major impact of the over-complicated plot is that this film pretty much slows to a halt multiple times as it makes not-entirely successful attempts at explaining what was going on.  Prior to this film, slow spots in an Indiana Jones movie almost seemed unthinkable.   A big part of the problem is that even Indy’s motivations and role in the whole adventure become somewhat murky by the end of the movie, particularly after a scene where Indy briefly is forced to stare at the skull and then starts claiming that some of his activities are what it told him to do.  In the past films, the characterization was really a pretty simple mix of a desire for "fortune and glory" and a somewhat overdeveloped sense of altruism, again providing an easy framework for action sequences fueled by dogged determination. 

The problem with the story also impacted the effectiveness of some of the supporting characters.  Cate Blanchett’s villain was particularly hurt by confusing characterization and motivations.  I didn’t mind so much that her desire to find the skull was more based on personal ambition than loyalty to her Soviet leaders as that was a tradition that was pretty much established in the first film with Belloq, who remains the best of the series’ villains.  The bigger problem is that it really was hard to figure out what those motivations actually were.  We were given some indications that she had psychic abilities (or at least thought she did), but that didn’t really amount to much until the confusing climax.  I guess she was ultimately seeking knowledge, but that aspect of her personality almost seemed to come out of nowhere at the end of the film.  It certainly didn’t help much that Blanchett’s performance was a bit too cartoonish, with a pretty uncomfortable resemblance to Natasha from the old Bullwinkle cartoons…

Another weak link was John Hurt’s role as one of Indy’s old colleagues who had initially discovered the skull.  By the time the film catches up with the character, he had apparently gone mad as a result of staring too long at the skull, but it is never entirely clear why that is or why he suddenly returns to normal at the film’s climax.  The character is generally inscrutable to the point of being fairly irritating.  I think the film would have been better off either eliminating the character entirely or having him remain missing (leaving clues) until the finale.

I will say that my initial reaction to hearing that the film involved aliens was generally not very positive, but I now don’t really think that was a bad idea.  Necessarily, the film shifted the setting from the 1930s to the 1950s and a storyline involving aliens fits in pretty well with the types of serial adventure films from that time period.  I think the big mistake was that they way overdeveloped the idea.  Had the story involved a very straightforward and simple artifact that just happened to be alien in origin (instead of religious like in the other films), I think it would have worked just fine.  The error was in seriously trying to over-explain the whole thing.  We have long heard that Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford wanted to do another film, but it was long delayed by trying to get the right story and script.  In a lot of ways, the end result really seems like the work of too many screenwriters severely over-thinking what needed to be nothing more than a lightweight framework for lots of action and adventure.

Despite these huge misgivings about the story, the good really does outweigh the bad here.  As I said at the beginning, I have felt very conflicted about the movie and I think this review probably reflects that.  Looking back at what I wrote, the first half reads a lot like a rave review and the second half reads like a pan.  I think that does basically reflect the two sides to the movie itself, but what is good is so good that I would have hated to miss it.  For me, I think it boils down to being glad that we got one more Indiana Jones film after all these years while also feeling like it was something of a missed opportunity. 

The 5 years between the second and third Indiana Jones sequels were pretty eventful ones in my life, as is probably typical for the years between age 14 and 19.  In early 1985 (a little over 1/2 year after Temple of Doom came out), my family moved from Flint to Kenosha, Wisconsin.  My parents ended up making another move to Sandusky, Ohio just 3 years after that, although I was attending college in Milwaukee by that time.

We ended up all seeing Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on opening day at a theater in Cleveland, so the movie’s opening day (the Wednesday before Memorial Day 1989) must have been shortly after I completed my sophomore year of college and returned to my parents’ home for summer vacation.  While there were a couple movie theaters in Sandusky at the time, they were generally older theaters and their presentation usually left a lot to be desired.  As it was only about a one hour drive to Cleveland, we quickly got into the habit of going there to see most movies.  My grandmother also lived in Cleveland at the time, so we were able to often combine a trip to the movies with a visit to see her as well.

I don’t remember the name of the specific theater where we saw the film, but we basically picked it out by looking in the paper for the closest theater that listed a 70mm 6-track presentation and Lucasfilm’s THX sound system, which had become pretty commonplace in larger cities by that time.  Our whole family (including my mother this time) got up fairly early to head into Cleveland for the first opening day matinee of the movie.  I’m not sure if there were any midnight showings of this one, but we did go to the first regularly scheduled showing at that theater.

Even with the show being fairly early in the day on a Wednesday, the theater was pretty full, although I don’t recall for sure if it was a completely sold-out show.  The most memorable audience moment actually came during the previews.  Just a couple minutes into them, the film broke and the lights came back up.  A few moments after that, someone in the theater started loudly humming the Raiders March.  It took only another moment or so until pretty much the entire audience had joined in.  I strongly suspect that this was considerably more frightening to the poor employee that was tasked with getting things up and running again than the more traditional audience taunts and complaints would have been.  Fortunately, they were able to get it fixed pretty quickly and the movie itself played through without interruption.

Last Crusade is a very good film with some considerable strengths.  Sean Connery is absolutely great as Indy’s father and he and Harrison Ford played off each other wonderfully.  It was also nice seeing Denholm Elliott and John Rhys-Davies reprise their roles from the first film and, of course, the action sequences and big set pieces were as much fun as ever.  I can easily understand why most people seem to prefer this one to Temple of Doom and some even consider it to be the best of the original three movies.

For a couple reasons, though, it is pretty solidly in third place for me.  While Temple of Doom was able to genuinely surprise me by going off in a different direction in setting and style compared to its predecessor, Last Crusade instead repeated a lot of key elements from Raiders pretty directly, whether it be the reuse of the Nazis as the key villains, the quest for another famous Christian religious icon, or even the use of some very similar settings and locations.  I couldn’t help but feel like Lucas and Spielberg took the complaints about Temple of Doom too much to heart and responded by largely reworking Raiders for the third film.

I also can’t help but think that the difference in my memories of the films are somewhat reflective of the different viewpoints of an 11-year-old, a 14-year-old, and a 19-year-old.  By the time Last Crusade came out, I was a pretty avid moviegoer that was seeing a pretty wide variety of movies of many different styles and genres.  As excited as I was about seeing this one, I doubt I was quite as receptive to it as I was when I was younger.  I do recall still seeing the film a few times over the course of that summer, but I don’t think it was more than a handful.  Even taking into account home video, I have a hunch that I still probably haven’t seen Last Crusade as many times in total as I saw Raiders in the theater during its first year of release.

With that in mind, I’m very excited to go see an opening-night showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull tomorrow night, but I also can’t help but wonder exactly how I am going to respond to one of these movies now that I’m 38-years-old, married, and a father.  There is a good chance I’ll write a review of the movie over the next couple days, but I suspect I won’t really have enough distance to write another one of these "memories" articles about it for quite a few years.

By the time the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom came out in 1984, the dominance of the multiplex was really starting to take hold.  The sequel opened both at the big single-screen Flint Cinema where Raiders played, but it also opened at a suburban multiplex (the Genesee Valley Theaters) that was much closer to our family’s home.  This was the same release pattern that was used for Return of the Jedi the year before.  My sister and I saw Jedi at the first after-school matinee at the multiplex and then saw the film again that weekend in the better 70mm 6-track Dolby presentation at the Flint Cinema.

We had expected to follow the same basic pattern with Temple of Doom, which was also opening the Wednesday before Memorial Day, a week or so before school let out for the summer.  Much to our surprise, my father had other ideas.  At the time, the local newspaper in Flint came fairly late in the afternoon.  After work, my father was looking through the paper and called my sister and I into the room.  He then showed us the full-page ad for the movie that announced a midnight showing that night at Flint Cinema and asked us if we could promise to still get up and make it to school the next day if we all went to see it.  Of course, our answer was a definite "yes". 

Not being a night person at all, my mother again opted out of the first showing (another good excuse to see the film again soon…), but my father, sister, and I headed out to the theater late that evening.  This was my first experience seeing a midnight movie.  It wasn’t a sold-out show, but the enthusiasm level of the audience was about as high as it could get.  The crowd cheered and applauded at all the right moments and clearly was having a great time.  I particularly got a kick out of the reaction to Indy’s entrance.  The first time we see the character in this film, he is well-groomed and dressed in a white tuxedo.  The audience reacted with applause, although it was a bit restrained and even a little delayed as it took a moment for it to register that it was him.  At the end of the prologue, Indy makes a second entrance dressed in his traditional leather jacket, fedora, bullwhip, etc. and that prompted cheers and wild applause.

I obviously had a much better idea of what to expect than I did prior to the release of the first film, which led to quite a bit more heightened excitement about the film, but also a lot less mystery and surprise.  What I actually liked a lot about the film (and I’m a bigger fan of it than many people are) was that I felt that Lucas and Spielberg really did find some surprising and unexpected directions to take the movie.  Right at the very start, I certainly wasn’t expecting the movie to open with an entire Busby Berkley style musical number.  I even recall momentarily wondering if they were running the wrong movie.  A lot of people were also put off by the darker tone and overall modified structure compared to the first film, but I felt that it made the movie seem a bit fresher than most sequels.  The film was, if anything, even faster paced than the first and, even with the ultra-late showtime, I certainly had no trouble staying awake for the movie.  Yes, I did make it through the school day the next day as well.

I liked the film a lot and did see it several times in the theater that summer, but not as many times as the first film.  In fact, it wasn’t even really the movie that most dominated my attention that summer.  As a 14-year-old boy, I was right in the primary target audience for Ghostbusters, which became my favorite movie of that summer and the one that I gave the most repeat viewing.  The Indiana Jones films have overall likely withstood the test of time better over the last 24 years and I suspect most people might even be a bit surprised to learn that Ghostbusters was actually a bigger box-office hit overall that summer.  Still, it did play through the whole summer and I do recall several return trips to see it again.

In my post on Raiders, I mentioned that the John Williams score was something of a milestone.  While the sequel score wasn’t as much of one, it did come as something of a surprise to me and still remains one of my favorites.  The big surprise was Williams’ decision to abandon all of the themes that he had written for the first film with the exception of the iconic Raiders March.  At that point, I never really had conceived of a sequel score that would essentially start from scratch instead of further developing the first film’s music.  It caught me a bit off-guard, but also appealed to me very much.

I will close with probably the silliest and oddest personal story that relates to this movie.  At the very end of the credits is a somewhat cryptic credit that simply says "Thanks to Reed Smoot".  Being a couple teenagers, my sister and I both thought that was kind of a funny name and were also intrigued by the mysterious credit.  It then became a running joke for the two of us for quite some time, with us often joking about being the only members of the "Reed Smoot Fan Club".  Without the vast information available online today, we didn’t have any success finding any information on Mr. Smoot.  We were pretty sure he wasn’t the early-20th century Utah Senator that was the only reference we found to the name.  I now know that Mr. Smoot is actually a respected cinematographer that is best known for his work on a variety of IMAX features.  He apparently did some second-unit photography work on the film, which was the basis of the credit.  If Mr. Smoot ever stumbles on this, I hope he doesn’t mind that a couple silly teenagers had some goofy fun with his credit.

With 19 years having past since we last saw Indy in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and 27 years since the character was first introduced in Raiders of the Lost Ark, I’m part of a likely pretty large group of adults who will be going into this new movie with a hope of recapturing a little bit of magic from my childhood.  I was only 11-years-old when the first movie came out and was 14 and 18 when the previous sequels came out.  As a long-time movie enthusiast, I probably would list other films (including others by Spielberg and Lucas) as somewhat higher on both my lists of favorites and bests, but I can think of very few that invoke more fond memories or that had quite as much influence on my love of movies and my cinematic preferences.

When Raiders of the Lost Ark came out back in 1981, I was already a fan of the Star Wars films (The Empire Strikes Back came out one year earlier) and, not surprisingly, was immediately very receptive to the promotion of a new George Lucas movie starring Harrison Ford.  My older sister (who was 14 at the time) also had a definite movie-star crush on Ford, which also helped to build our family’s interest in the movie.

The first that I ever heard about the film remains my pick for possibly the most amusingly wrong magazine article I’ve ever seen about a movie.  I don’t remember the specific publication (although my sister may still have the clipping somewhere in her files), but it was a movie rumors column in either a teen magazine or a general entertainment magazine of some sort.  The short article ran right around the time that The Empire Strikes Back was released and announced that the 3rd film in the Star Wars series would be coming out only one year later and would center around the character of Han Solo.  The title of this new film would be "Lost Raiders of the Ark".  I’m sure that whoever wrote that is very proud…

Back in 1981, I didn’t really follow the movies very closely and certainly didn’t have access to the kind of ready information on the topic that is out there today.  For the most part, the first real awareness of Raiders came primarily when the ads started hitting.  Back then, George Lucas and, especially, Steven Spielberg were not really household names, so the ads heavily promoted the movie as "From the creator of Star Wars and the director of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind".  As I said, the Star Wars connections were the big draw for me, although I had seen and enjoyed Close Encounters (but only on TV).  I didn’t see Jaws until a few years later.  After seeing Raiders, I quickly became a Spielberg fan, something that really solidified a year later when our family went out to see a sneak preview of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial without knowing much of anything about the film other than that it was from the same director.

My father took my sister, my best friend, and me to see the first evening showing of Raiders on its opening night.  We were living in Flint, Michigan at the time and saw the movie at The Flint Cinema, an old-fashioned single-screen theater.  Built in the late 60s shortly after the end of the movie palace era, it wasn’t anything overly fancy but was mainly known for a large screen and 70mm, 6-track Dolby presentation.  I think Raiders was actually the first film we saw there as the first two Star Wars films had opened at the nearby Eastland Mall Cinemas instead.  The movie pretty much blew us all away.  We knew it was supposed to be a fast-paced adventure movie, but I don’t think any of us really were prepared for the scope of the film or the sheer level of adrenaline it would pump.

My Mom wasn’t originally sure she was that interested in the movie (she hadn’t really liked Star Wars) and decided that she didn’t feel like dealing with the opening night crowds for the movie.  We, of course, all came home and told her that she needed to see the movie as soon as possible and we all went out to see it with her the next weekend.   As a joke, we all conspired ahead of time to repeatedly warn her that the movie started out very slowly, but promising her that it got better as it went along.  As you might expect, the very exciting opening sequence in the idol cave caught her very much off-guard.  She really loved the movie, although the intensity did get to her a bit at times.  She was holding my Dad’s hand during much of the movie and afterwards they laughed that she instinctively pulled her hand to her mouth, thus biting my Dad, during the Well-of-Souls sequence when the snake climbed out of the skeleton’s mouth.

Over the course of that summer, this became the first movie that my sister and I went to see multiple times in the theaters during its initial release (we had seen Star Wars and a few Disney films more than once due to re-releases).  By the end of the film’s run, I saw it a total of 13 times.  My father absolutely fell in love with the movie as well and went along with us to many of those showings.  Prior to that, he had never been much of a movie fan and didn’t typically see anything more than once.

John Williams score to the movie also represented a bit of a milestone for me.  I had started to become interested in movie scores a couple years earlier.  My interest was first sparked by John Barry’s orchestral score to Disney’s The Black Hole, which ended up being the first score soundtrack that I purchased.  My interest expanded dramatically after getting first The Empire Strikes Back and then the original Star Wars soundtracks and I then started a collection of movie score LP’s from movies involving outer space.  Over a year or so, I bought a bunch of albums including Close Encounters, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Superman, 2001: A Space Odyssey, etc.  After seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark and hearing Williams amazing music for the film, I immediately wanted that soundtrack.  It was at that point, that my interest really broadened to film scores in general instead of just to souvenirs of space movies.  This really established my musical tastes for the long term as film scores remain the dominant part of my collection and my music purchases today.

I loved the sequels and have certainly been very impressed and excited by other action/adventure movies over the years as well.  I think Raiders will always hold a very special place in my memory, though, and I don’t really believe any other movie will ever quite match the surprise and excitement that surrounded this one.

Steven Spielberg’s new adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel War of the Worlds contains many of the conventional elements of the mainstream disaster movie and adds an unusual layer of realism, both in style and characterizations. The result is a genuinely scary film that maintains a very high level of tension and excitement.

The film, which was adapted by screenwriters Josh Friedman and David Koepp (the latter also adapted Jurassic Park and its sequel The Lost World for Spielberg) pretty closely follows the structure of Wells’ novel, but transports the setting from 19th century London to present day New York. The central character of an absentee father (Tom Cruise) trying to escort his children to safety is created for the film, a smart decision as Wells novel was told through the eyes of an undeveloped first-person observer, an approach that wouldn’t likely work as well on film.

Cruise gives a good performance as Ray, a man who initially is not very sympathetic or heroic, but is ultimately forced to find some maturity and parental instincts by the extreme circumstances of the alien invasion. The character is a variation of the charming, cocky, but irresponsible persona that Cruise has frequently portrayed in past films and it is interesting seeing those traits treated more as negatives that need to be overcome instead of strengths, a somewhat natural progression as Cruise has become older and is naturally going to be playing characters with greater responsibilities. Ray is likable, but clearly a lousy parent who has to struggle to gain enough trust from his children to provide any chance that he can keep them safe.

Dakota Fanning gives a very convincing performance as Rachel, Ray’s 10-year-old daughter, continuing the tradition of very strong child performances in Spielberg’s films. I was particularly impressed by the realism of the character. Rachel does not act like a typically precocious movie child, but instead her reactions seem very realistic for a 10-year-old placed into horrifying circumstances. Instead of being a pillar of strength, as movie kids sometimes are, she truly seems like a frightened child. I particularly appreciated the inclusion of several scenes where Ray and the older son put a great deal of effort into trying to shield her from some of the horrors going on all around.

The teenage son, Robbie, played by Justin Chatwin, is also more realistically portrayed than I initially expected. At first, it seems like the character is going to be the typically morose and disinterested movie teen, but there is more complexity there as the character reveals some unexpected heroism and strength. Some of the film’s most effective character moments come from the conflicts between Robbie’s youthful impulse to get involved and fight back and Ray’s parental instinct to keep his child safe.

Of course, this film isn’t primarily a character-oriented film and the main attraction is going to be the special effects and action. Spielberg wastes no time getting into the core of the alien invasion story and the tension rarely lets up throughout the nearly 2-hour running time. It very effectively builds up a powerful overriding sense of dread and hopelessness that is very unusual for this type of mainstream disaster movie. Unlike the more traditional recent genre efforts (such as Independence Day or Armageddon), there is an unexpected sense of authenticity to the emotions prompted by the unfolding events. I suspect this more authentic portrayal of events in a disaster movie was part of Spielberg’s motivation for making this film, particularly in an era in which recent real world events make it a bit harder to accept this kind of destruction being taken lightly. While the film is overall probably the most downbeat of Spielberg’s mainstream blockbusters, he still is able to recognize the points where a little bit of humor is needed. Generally, these bits of humor come from the character dialog and never seem out-of-place or out-of-character.

Stylistically, this film does not have the slickness that you might expect from a big-budget blockbuster in this genre. Visually, the previous Spielberg film that this most resembles is Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg and his long-time cinematographer Janusz Kaminski forgo the use of a widescreen format and use handheld photography and muted colors and lighting to generate a gritty, somewhat dirty, often first-person look to the proceedings. The grainy, 35mm photography makes for an interesting contrast to the slick, widescreen digital approach that Spielberg’s friend and sometimes collaborator George Lucas used on his recently-released final Star Wars film.

There are some very spectacular set pieces showing death and destruction, but they aren’t gleeful or exploitative and instead inspire a realistic sense of horror in the viewer. Spielberg also shows his skill for building a great deal of tension with some smaller sequences, including an intensely frightening sequence involving a panicked crowd and a very tense, extended sequence featuring Tim Robbins in a strong supporting performance as a man whom the circumstances have pushed over the edge of sanity. This sequence concludes with a final confrontation that is made exceptionally powerful by Spielberg’s decision to keep it off-screen.

If you are looking for a movie that revels in the destruction, this probably isn’t the right movie to see. A number of sequences and images in this film leave a lingering impression that may be a bit hard to shake. While the film is sufficiently restrained to have achieved a PG-13 rating, the overall intensity of this film is such that parents should give careful consideration (and possibly pre-screen the film) before taking their kids.

The visual design of the alien tri-pods very convincingly realizes the descriptions that are included in Wells’ novel. The film also includes a few visual nods to George Pal’s previous film version as well. Spielberg shows great restraint by holding of on showing the aliens themselves until very late in the film and even then the sequence is fairly short. Again the visual design is faithful to Wells’ descriptions.

With his 21st score for a Spielberg directed feature film, composer John Williams once again adds a very important element to the film’s success. The music is among William’s darkest and most intense compositions, often adding immeasurably to the sense of dread. This score does not have the distinctive melodic themes common to most of Williams’ other scores, instead having a more abstract, even atonal, quality. It probably isn’t a soundtrack album that I will listen to very often, but the score is absolutely right for the film.

The sound design on the film is also very good, with some extremely skillful use of surround sound. Very distinctive sounds are used to signal the arrival of the alien tri-pods (much the same way that the booming footsteps were used to signal the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park) and sound is also often used to convey off-screen events, basically allowing your hearing and your imagination to generate the images. There is even one very effective scene in which the screen is completely black while a key event is conveyed entirely through sound.

Of course, this is the third theatrical film that Spielberg has directed about aliens visiting the Earth. While this film really has little in common with E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (although there is one short bit that I think was an intentional, but subtle reference), there actually are some stylistic similarities to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, despite the obvious difference in the intent and nature of the aliens. The earlier film had some rather tense sequences prior to the point where we learned the aliens intentions and some of that is echoed in this film. The previously-mentioned panicked crowd sequence, in particular, has some echoes of a similar sequence in the earlier film.

The one small complaint that I had about the film is that the ending, while appropriate and generally faithful to Wells’ novel, seems to come a bit abruptly. It is generally the right ending for this movie (although there is one character-oriented decision that I found a bit questionable), but it felt like it could have used a bit more build-up than it received. There seems to be a bit of a leap in time and place that could have used a bit more connecting material. It isn’t a fatal flaw, by any means, but it does cause the film to ultimately fall a bit short of the potential suggested during the first 3/4 of its running time.

Despite this slight flaw, this is still a fine addition to Spielberg’s impressive body of work and an overall very satisfying adaptation of one of the true classic works of science fiction.

Copyright 2005, Jeffrey Graebner