Soundtracking: Toy Story 2

by Chris Feil

No one uses music to trigger instant tears with such sudden velocity as Pixar does. The “Married Life” sequence from Up, Coco’s “Remember Me” gaining depth through repetition, the reverence for youth that defined the entire Toy Story series with “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”.

But the first time Pixar went for the emotional jugular in a way that felt like a definitive part of their musical brand was to come in Toy Story 2. The sequel introduces us to Jessie, a cowgirl compatriot to Woody, filling space as a collector’s item instead of being cared for by an adoring child. But the film offers a standalone musical montage of Jessie’s former life as the prized possession of a girl named Emily, one who slowly and painfully outgrows her to the sound of Sarah MacLachlan and “When She Loved Me”.

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Soundtracking: Rocketman

by Chris Feil

Rocketman is just about the jukeboxiest musical that ever jukeboxed, arriving on the screen with a structure more indebted to that of the stage than the kind of musical biopic (namely Bohemian Rhapsody) some might have expected. It’s as if Elton John’s and his Billy Elliot collaborator Lee Hall had shifted gears mid-conception, opting for a film with what had originally been planned for the stage. Safe bets will be on Rocketman coming to Broadway eventually anyway.

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Soundtracking: Moulin Rouge!

by Chris Feil

Perhaps it’s easy to forget how revolutionary Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge! was in 2001. The thing about masterpieces is their legacy sometimes overshadows the context that birthed them. But at the time, the musical was a massive gamble and creative leap, helping to relaunch the genre that had died a slow death at the box office and to cultural  cinematic tastes. Just as Luhrman’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet had aggressively re-imagined its text for the MTV set, he delivered something even more drug-fevered to the musical, shattering notions of what the genre’s limitations were and how it could exist in the modern era.

Musicals may be more commonplace now, but they have yet to be as audacious since. But as much as Luhrman’s trippy, frenetic stylings play nearly twenty (gasp!) years later as its most obvious innovations, it was Luhrman’s music choices that were the biggest shock to the system for movie musicals.

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Soundtracking: Bridesmaids

by Chris Feil

“Hold On” by Wilson Phillips ends Bridesmaids on a high note, both soaring the film to its crowd-pleasing crest and underlining the emotional depths of what we’ve just watched. Yes it’s a film about women leaning on eachother for support in crucial moments, but it’s also about the journey out of isolation. But even with all of the pathos, it’s still an upbeat experience. You couldn’t pin a more appropriate song on the feeling that the film conjures, or for its central journey.

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Soundtracking: Funny Games

by Chris Feil

Joining the Criterion Collection this week is Michael Haneke’s notorious Funny Games, a confrontational allegory about western obsession and consumption of violence as entertainment. Here a family is psychologically tortured by two young male invaders, with the fourth wall broken and the audience taunted for their refusal to stop watching. The film plays with the gentle and the profane within our society, the contrasts between them drawing out what is toxically mundane about both. Haneke introduces his metaphor in the film’s angelic opening scene, and music is his shocking first tool.

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