the new world

We went to see The New World today, and I really liked it. I am a big fan of The Thin Red Line, and so it only took Sean saying he loved it for me to want to go see it.

The movie is great, the scenery is great – generally everything is great. Except James Horner’s score. Not so great.

“Please kill me.” That’s what I was thinking around the time of the 394th repeat bar of his fucking super-irritating never-ending monotonous orchestral swell. The 10% that didn’t make me want to jam a Bic pen into my ears was quite nice, but it was completely ripped off of something else – either his older stuff from Braveheart or maybe some Dvorak piece I can’t put my finger on. Not only was it terrible, but it was about twice as loud in the mix as it needed to be.

Worst music ever. It was seriously distracting me from enjoying what was otherwise a very beautiful film – and I mean that. Malick’s trademark splicing of exposition with Serene Nature Footage (tm) is quite nice. Colin Farrell does a good job, and so does Q’Orianka Kilcher and Christian Bale, although his role was a bit static. Come to think of it, John Smith’s character was a bit flat, too – I don’t think Malick did a very good job of explaining why he was so melancholy and angsty, but it didn’t detract too much from the story as a whole.