filmbriefs
Composer · 1963

John Powell

4
briefs
13:00
average
52 min
in total
On film.briefs4
13:00

Face/Off

John Woo · 1997

John Woo’s 1997 action thriller Face/Off stars John Travolta and Nicolas Cage as an FBI agent and terrorist who swap faces via experimental surgery. Built on operatic violence, precise choreography, and dual performances of startling commitment, it uses identity exchange as narrative engine rather than philosophical probe. Shot by Oliver Wood and scored by John Powell, it balances absurd premise with rigorous craft — delivering coherent, emotionally charged set pieces across 133 minutes. Though thin on thematic depth and scientific rigour, its confidence, control, and clarity make it a durable artefact of late-20th-century studio action cinema.

13:00

Chicken Run

Peter Lord, Nick Park · 2000

Chicken Run reworks the World War Two escape film as a story about hens on a Yorkshire egg farm run like a prison camp, who pin their hopes of freedom on a crash-landed American rooster claiming he can fly. Aardman's first feature, directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park, was shot in stop-motion across thirty sets over eighteen months and became the highest-grossing stop-motion film ever made, taking $225 million against a $45 million budget.

13:00

How to Train Your Dragon

Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders · 2010

An undersized Viking teenager befriends the rare dragon he was supposed to kill, and in doing so undoes his village's entire way of understanding its enemy. Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders's 2010 film pairs a straightforward friendship story with unusually grounded visual craft.

13:00

Shrek

Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson · 2001

Shrek expands William Steig's picture book into a feature that spends most of its runtime mocking the Disney fairy-tale formula it also structurally depends on, following an ogre who strikes a deal to rescue a princess in exchange for getting his swamp back. Directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson for DreamWorks, it grossed $484 million against a $60 million budget and became the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.