Game of Shadows
by Hans Zimmer

Just when you think you're out, he pulls you back in. After a fairly up-and-down year (thanks mostly to Pirates 4), Hans Zimmer and team come back at us with a score that is brimming with a creative punch. From gypsy dances to stealthy underscore, Games of Shadows pretty much sums up everything I love about Zimmer when he is "feeling" the project. Much like the film itself, the score feels more alive than the first film and seems to have an unscripted chemistry working from one track to the next. Along with some marvelous action tunes, there is a catchy motif embedded for Professor Moriarity to keep things well rounded. To that end, the return of the main theme is also welcome as is the unpredictable remix heard in the album's closing. Where Pirates 4 (the soundtrack) fell short, Game of Shadows reigns supreme. While true, there is music heard in film that is not on the album, and perhaps the dialogue on the disc is a bit too quirky to include, it is still too tough to resist the allure of such a highly-energized package.

Johnny English Reborn
by Ilan Eshkeri

There's always a fine line between parody and being just too obvious about it. Ilan Eshkeri's score for Johnny English Reborn shows that you can play the music straight but still integrate enough of a comedic vibe to keep the proceedings appropriately jest. For sure, there is great fun to be had with this score and it is quite staggering to consider that Ilan has ranged from a Young Victoria to Ninja Assassin (with a little Centurion mixed in), and now to this. Talk about keeping the portfolio diverse! Ever since Stardust, I had taken a liking to Ilan's work, and now it's great fun to see so many different sides to his composing voice. With English Reborn, he offers up a package of fun "secret agent" themes and peaking action cues that's sure to get the party started! The first 7 tracks alone are worth the price of admission. Please don't overlook this score.

Hugo
by Howard Shore

It would be false to assert that the score for Hugo is poor because the technical proficiency is clearly in place. However, one really needs to be in a mood for some French pleasantries to thoroughly enjoy this album! With Hugo, Howard Shore delivered an appropriate score but it's one that failed to bring out any magic. Content to simply be the background layer, the music is easy on the ears but never really asserts itself. With accordion overload in place, I actually had to break the listening experience up into a couple of different sessions as this type of one-sided score simply doesn't appeal to me. That said, I am sure it will be charming in the movie itself and that's the ultimate end-game. Unless it grows on me within the film, I'll not be spinning through this album again.

The Adventures of Tintin
by John Williams

In a rare double-bill, John Williams has made our soundtrack-loving lives quite brighter in late-2011 with the promise of two new albums in a month's time! Indeed, War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin are upon us. With Tintin, there's an air of sophisticated playfulness at work but it's an output that left me a bit disengaged (similarly to War Horse). Themes abound but they're not trademark anthems, which is perhaps what some of us expected. So while Tintin won't stack up to the themes of Potter, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars, it does offer a more intellectual take on what film music for animation can sound like. An interesting study, but I would have preferred to play in the sandbox a bit more instead.

Puss in Boots
by Henry Jackman

Puss in Boots is a delightful romp of a score, transporting us to the adventurous times of the Zorro films and even El Cid in its furried presentation. It also didn't hurt that Rodrigo y Gabriela were back in the Remote Control Studios, this time lending contributions to an album that delivers on expectations (unlike what we received with the Pirates 4 soundtrack). Composer Henry Jackman flirts with paying too close of an homage to James Horner at times, but ultimately toes the line just enough to keep this one in a class of its own.

In Time
by Craig Armstrong

In Time gives off a Quantum of Solace vibe, only with Justin Timberlake serving in the 007 role. But fear not, this seems to be more Logan's Run than James Bond, so perhaps seeing J.T. in the lead role will be somewhat acceptable. Beyond the casting, however, this is a film that serves up quite an eclectic, at times dramatically stirring, musical score by Craig Armstrong. Taking on more of a world-fusion approach for this futuristic tale, Armstrong avoided cliches and quietly delivered one of this year's better soundtracks. It's always nice when a score avoids the typical strands and delivers a few creative surprises. And at 46 minutes, the length of the album is near-perfect, so there's no need to buy additional time!

The Cape (La La Land Records)
by Bear McCreary

Big fan of Bear, more so with his post-Galactica work such as Dark Void and Human Target, but either way, I acknowledge that he is a superior talent. With The Cape, my anticipation level hit its ceiling, especially when I heard the composer's excitement toward the material. After listening to this double-disc set from La La Land, I unfortunately left the proceedings surprisingly disappointed. While there are a number of innovative cues, along with valuable moments of vintage superhero motifs, the overall experience is stifled by its length and prevented The Cape from fully taking flight. Two discs may have been a bit much this time, and had this release been scaled down to purely the highlights, then I would be telling another tale. Still, there is enough here to once again prove that Bear deserves a bump up to mainstream movies. Also nice to hear him depart from the reliance on world percussion instruments!

Music from the Transformers Trilogy (Silva Screen)
by London Music Works/Steve Jablonsky

In a bit of a love/hate experience with the music of Transformers, this release catapults it back toward the former as Steve Jablonsky's music never sounded better. Teaming up with London Music Works, who seem to be the new players for Silva's re-recordings, the highlights from each of the three films are presented here and the selections are tremendously entertaining (and downright epic in some cases, as with track 15). I'd say this compilation is hands-down the best presentation of the material and is worth checking out even if you had a reserved appreciation of the series as I did.

Lord of the Rings Symphony

Structured into six movements, Howard Shore's opus for The Lord of the Rings is now presented in its most accessible manner yet. Part of the reason I never became enveloped by the film series is because it felt too large to get my arms around. Likewise with the music; the time commitment was a bit too steep to regularly partake! This latter issue has been solved with this excellent release of Shore's work, even if the performances didn't exactly bowl me over.

Squanto: A Warrior's Tale
Composed by Joel McNeely

Lest we forget, Joel McNeely is one of THE top composers in the industry today (for my money). A clear reminder of this comes via a magnificent new release from Intrada records of, Squanto: A Warrior's Tale. In short, this one's a pleasant surprise! The score is full of touching themes, absorbing action cues, and a sense of historical remembrance. If you've had your fill of mediocre summer soundtracks, then jump back into the mid-90's when a unique talent was first making his mark on the industry. It's just a pity that we don't hear more from Joel today.

Captain America
Composed by Alan Silvestri

It's easy to get swept up in the nostalgia of the type of score that Captain America represents. In it, we're treated to real orchestral themes and a composition that is unafraid of assuming a firm identity. That said, I do wish it was just a bit more creative with the boundaries it plays in. Sure, I'm a big fan of bold themes and invigorating action cues, but there needed to be a bit more originality in the mix for me to fall in love with this score. Further, the main theme for Captain America isn't even fully realized until the march, which is the last cue on the album and that's only if you bought it digitally. So, a respectable effort in all, but one that is to closely reminiscent of G.I. Joe and the A-Team for me to give any grade higher than a B.

Super 8
Composed by Michael Giacchino

To some, I will continue to sound like a looping track. Soundtracks with too much of a running time is to the detriment of the experience and marginalizes the high points. Such is the case with Giacchino's, at times impressive, Super 8, which checks in with a multitude of brief cues and an inexcusable length. The thematic highlights still hit home but the price that one pays to get there is high. Almost too high -- I barely made it through, myself.

What shame. This series evolved into one scrapping hulk of a joke with writing, acting, and storytelling so awful it would make a middle schooler take notice. Jablonsky's score has been sliding downward with the series, and too make things even jucier, there is the alleged theft of the Inception trailer music that is borrowed in this score. Whether or not that can be excused is another story, but in the grand scheme of things, Jabonsky failed to build upon his entertaining first installment and has tread backward along with Michael Bay since 2007. Had there been any shred of evolving ideas, than I would have been happy. Instead, this third chapter goes nowhere new, much like the movie it accompanies.

Kung Fu Panda 2
Composed by Hans Zimmer and John Powell

More fruitful than the James Newton Howard collaboration, I'd say, Hans Zimmer and John Powell prove to make a formidable pair in the world of Kung Fu Panda. For the second film, they seemed to have raised the bar higher both thematically and in energy, creating an animation score that is leaps and bounds above most. Particularly from track 9 on, the music is unavoidably impressive, expecially as the main theme is taken to greater heights and new creative ideas are explored. For some reason, Powell's high energy and Zimmer's thematic constructs really do merge well together and they went on to absolutely ace this score. Makes one wonder what the Pirates films would have sounded like had they teamed up for that at some point.

While I know it's from the Marvel camp, but the score to X-Men: First Class seems to hail from the Bizarro universe. Let me explain.

Having seen the movie, I left the theater assured that Henry Jackman's score missed quite a few golden opportunities and that the music itself didn't shine as brightly as I would have hoped. On album, however, an alternate universe was afoot for this is truly an entertaining soundtrack when heard on its own accord! The thematic highlights, for whatever reason, hit all the right spots in this presentation and the bittersweet movie-going experience was nullified in some way. Whether my in-film analysis is off the mark or not, cues like the "X-Training" and "First Class" cannot be denied on album. Those two cues, along with the imposing theme of Xavier and Magneto, really laid out the fun comic book score that proved to be elusive in the film itself. Perhaps the only grievance I have is that a stray Clash of the Titans motif found its way into the proceedings, which was a brief distraction in an otherwise excellent offering.

DC Showcase
Composed by the Track Team

The Track Team (Jeremy Zuckerman and Benjamin Wynn) is perhaps best known for their highly valuable contributions to the Nickelodeon series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, which garners the respect that the film didn't come close to matching. Through their impressive efforts on the series, the Track Team seems to have developed a nice fan base and it's easy to see why score fans have latched on. In their recent effort in which they've scored a set of DC animated shorts, they distinguish themselves with effortless versatility. Even though I wished they had more room to maneuver on this project, they did quite a nice job with the screen time allotted to them to usher out unique, versatile mini-scores for each short. The western palette of Jonah Hex and the retro vibe of The Spectre were my favorites, but the entire package is cohesively developed. That said, I felt a bit of restraint in place and it seemed that the nature of these shorts perhaps placed a cap on just how far the composers could go with their ideas. In all, though, it's certainly worthwhile entertainment for a score fan.

On Stranger Tides

The swashbuckle returns with, On Stranger Tides, but alas, it felt as if the audience members were the strangers given the fan reaction to both the film and score. My take on the soundtrack is perhaps slightly more forgiving than most, but that said, I still did not enjoy the album experience. There is too much in the way of familiarity with the score material and the techno mash-ups at the end were pretty brutal. Too much of the Daft Punk Kool-Aid, I would say. However, the bright spot of the album is that the material by Rodrigo y Gabriela got some extended play (a much needed cooling temperament to a brash score) and the theme of the Mermaids offers up a compilation-worthy extract.

Though I am on board with Hans where he indicated that he wanted to present more of a broader album experience, the end-result didn't match the vision here. We'll see if an extended score only release will restore some order. Until then, stick with the best score of the series, At World's End, for your fix of Pirate adventure.

SOCOM 4
Composed by Bear McCreary

Bear McCreary knows how to give the audience a show. Much like his other scores, SOCOM 4 is a testament to his skill and passion for music making as the double-disc affair from La-La Land records will take you on quite a rewarding expedition. Incorporating a bevy of exotic instruments, as is normally the case with this crafty talent, SOCOM 4 is a mighty impressive outing, offering nearly 100 minutes of music with nary an electronic influence to be heard. Though a strand of the main theme does appear a bit too often throughout the album, the bulk of this material is right up my alley. It tells a story with musical depth, it has "bad-ass" moments of orchestral glory, and the ethnic elements gave off a "Farewell to the King" vibe.

Though I know most, if not all composers in the industry work tirelessly to achieve their end product, I am often amazed at the depth that Bear is able to get to with his music. Here we have a score to a fairly standard videogame outing that is treated with an immense amount of care and respect and one can feel his energy and drive translate through the notes.

I'll end it with this -- given the devotion he displays each time out, I'd say that Bear McCreary scores each project as if it were his last. And one has to respect that.

Hoodwinked Too!
By Murray Gold

From a man who should definitely be scoring more of today's movies comes Hoodwinked Too, by Murray Gold. Though this was a project that had been wrapped up a couple of years back, legal troubles were overcome and the movie (and score) has finally made it to the marketplace. The soundtrack gives us a good glimpse at the energy and color palette that Murray can bring to a feature as he makes the most of brief snippets that the pace of animation has to offer. If you have no worries over brief cue times and enjoy quick blasts of focused melody, than you'll do well by this one.

Vendetta
Composed by Jo Blankenburg

While the advent of trailer music albums has received its fair share of supporters, I for one had never fallen into the fandom camp of such releases. For one, the stand-alone nature each cue offers on these albums renders a cohesive listening experience obsolete. In the case of Vendetta, however, Jo Blankenburg was able to craft a consistent voice across many of its tracks and it won me over. Release by Position Music, Vendetta will take you on a ride across a grand cinescape of themes, each of which is composed at a high level and makes for a tremendous campaign.

Hanna
Composed by The Chemical Brothers

It could be said that Hanna is a bit of a disaster. Assembled by The Chemical Brothers (who I hadn't heard of before this outing), there was a lot of hype around this release much in the same way Daft Punk rode into the scene behind the digital waves of Tron. Where Tron succeeded, however, was with a clear, consistent approach and with a style that was not altogether unfamiliar to movie audiences. Hanna is just the opposite, offering an eccentric strain of sound effects, carnival sounds, and occasional bursts of techno beats. While the driving tempo of the short-lived techno tracks is what I actually liked, the bulk of the scores is a bit too off-beat for me to endorse. In fact, some of it was just too weird and experimental sounding. But, as odd as the movie itself appears to be, perhaps this was indeed a perfect match.

Source Code
By Chris Bacon

Source Code is the type of gritty, suspenseful sci-fi score that is easy to root for. It's delivered quite capably by Chris Bacon, who is emerging in his own right after having collaborated for years with the esteemed James Newton Howard, and now seems to be taking on more projects of his own. And from the sounds of it, this has been a long time coming because he is quite a skillful composer! With Source Code, he snatches your attention right away with a stylish opening title cue that anyone who enjoys good sci-fi yarns can relate to. If you're checking in on the film music side of things, all the better! Perhaps the only drawback in a straight listening experience with this album is there is a fair bit of foreboding underscore that may or may not appeal to you. Other than that, it's all good! A mature score with a cool style all its own.