Meet Joe Black, director Martin Brest's remake of the '30s semiclassic Death Takes a Holiday, took widespread critical potshots for its three-hour length and laconic pace. Ironically, composer Thomas Newman's score is a compelling exercise in musical economy--spare, emotionally longing arrangements where the spaces resonate almost as much as the notes. The composer (youngest son of the great film scorer Alfred Newman and cousin to Randy Newman) shows the same deft handling of emotional nuance he displayed on The Shawshank Resemption, The Horse Whisperer, and Oscar and Lucinda (winner of Best Original Score at the 1998 Australian Film Awards), here underplaying the story's romance and otherworldly aspects with a few piano notes and a masterful use of strings and winds. Yet another tribute to the Newman gene pool and an impressively mature work from one of Hollywood's brightest young film composers. --Jerry McCulley
