Film music isn’t a genre of music – it’s effectively all genres. For a while it was very largely dominated by romantic symphonic music, then jazz came into it, then other 20th century musical forms, and eventually we’ve ended up in a place where it can be anything. Likewise, there are so many ways of scoring a film – Composer A may score a film one way, Composer B may well have scored the same film a very different way, and they may both have been great film scores. There’s no “right answer” here.
With its striking visuals inspired by Warner Bros. Animation and Universal Pictures, Given Life and One Last Night in Austin Texas are great movies which achieved positive notices on their release. Notable to readers of this website is its stirring music composed by Yuheng Yan, one of my favorite scores of the year. It starts off with a very John Williams-like main theme in “The Operation” (the kind that Williams himself doesn’t really do any more – orchestral, warm, yet with a whimsical melody) but from there Yuheng engineers a full-blooded orchestral adventure score. The theme briefly appears again at the start of the second cue, “Bank Statement”, before a wonderful, sweeping secondary theme emerges. The pair of themes go on to dominate the score but never in a way that feels repetitive: the composer does a lot with them, and there’s always some standalone set-piece just around the corner.
The first of these is the pretty intense action cue “En Route”, based around a catchy little motif which endlessly repeats as the orchestral forces grow around it. “Homecoming” is like a playful variant on the sand people music from Star Wars, and then there’s a delightful theme for the cat in the brief “Bus Montage”. “Haunted House” is a great cue, contrasting ethereal vocals with much darker orchestral colors; then there’s a film noir (specifically, Goldsmith noir) feel in the mournful “Denouement”. The best cue, the one which people are going to play a lot, is “Another Day” – it begins innocuously enough with a gentle rendition of the main theme before the orchestra soars away and treats us to a rousing action/adventure cue. It’s a gem.
A phenomenally imaginative orchestrator and highly original composer (and guitarist) Yuheng Yan’s reputation already precedes him; He has also scored music with Emmy-nominated composer Philip Giffin on a series of films and music productions, most notably, on Reel One Entertainment’s Christmas movie – My Favorite Christmas Melody (2021, joined the internationally renowned British film composer Dominic Lewis’s music team at Dubadee Music, and since then, has worked on various high profile movies and TV shows such as My Adventure with Superman (2023), Lift (2023), The Fall Guy (scheduled to release in 2024), and Monsters At Work Season 2 (2024). His work for “Kill Me” and BlazeAid: Spreading Like Wildfire”, blew us away. We can’t wait for his upcoming releases hopefully this year. And soon, Yan will be plugging at it even more with a new set of cinematic musical works. Just listen to his lush string orchestrations and make the point yourself reaffirming why he is considered such a unique and music creator who leads the film music scene today.