composer

Ballad of a Small Player: Colin Farrell’s Netflix Gamble That Doesn’t Quite Pay Off

by

Netflix’s Ballad of a Small Player marks a reunion of Oscar-winning talents — director Edward Berger, actor Colin Farrell, and composer Volker Bertelmann — in a slow, hypnotic descent into addiction, guilt, and self-destruction. But while the film dazzles with its technical brilliance and cinematic polish, it struggles to cash in on its emotional stakes. … Read more

Volker Bertelmann on Netflix’s A House of Dynamite: Inside the Sound of Fear

by

Netflix’s upcoming nuclear thriller A House of Dynamite doesn’t shout catastrophe—it pulses with it. Its heartbeat is the work of Volker Bertelmann, the German Academy Award-winning composer behind All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave. In Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film, where a nuclear strike inches toward Chicago, Bertelmann’s music functions like a psychological detonator. … Read more