Movies starring Sam Shepard
Brothers is arguably the most successful remake of a foreign film since Martin Scorsese reworked Infernal Affairs into The Departed and won the Oscar. By remaining rigorously faithful to Susanne Bier's 2004 Danish feature, Brodre, screenwriter Dav...
U.S. Release Date: 2009-12-04
MPAA Rating: "R" (Violence, Profanity)
Genre: DRAMA
Director: Jim Sheridan
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, ...
1998's Saving Private Ryan introduced a new era of war movies. Gone are the bloodless tales of gallantry which portrayed the battlefield as a place where the fruits of bravery are victory. Replacing them are stories steeped in the gritty reality ...
U.S. Release Date: 2002-01-18
MPAA Rating: "R" (Violence)
Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, ...
"You know what the problem with Hollywood is - they make shit." It is with that statement - not profound, but undeniably true - that Swordfish opens. And, while this movie isn't going to convince anyone that the major studios have suddenly turn...
U.S. Release Date: 2001-06-08
MPAA Rating: "R" (Violence, Profanity,Sexual Content, Nudity)
Genre: ACTION/THRILLER
Director: Dominic Sena
Cast: John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, ...
The ghost of Mark Twain looms large over Jeff Nichols' Mud, a modern-day homage to the settings and characters popularized in some of Twain's best loved works. The protagonists in Mud, a couple of 14-year olds, are named Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Ne...
U.S. Release Date: 2013-04-26
MPAA Rating: "PG-13" (Violence, Profanity, Sexual Content)
Genre: DRAMA/ADVENTURE
Director: Jeff Nichols
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Paul Sparks, Michael Shannon, ...
August: Osage County is all about the acting. That makes sense because the storyline doesn't offer much that could be considered new or remarkable. It's as big a downer as the pills popped by matriarch Violet Weston (Meryl Streep) but the quality ...
U.S. Release Date: 2014-01-10
MPAA Rating: "R" (Profanity, Sexual Content, Drugs)
Genre: DRAMA
Director: John Wells
Cast: Meryl Streep, Benedict Cumberbatch, Abigail Breslin, ...
One of the longest films of the fall (both in terms of title length and running length) is The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It seems every bit as long or longer than its 160 minutes. Parts of the movie are brilliant in a ...
U.S. Release Date: 2007-09-21
MPAA Rating: "R" (Violence, Sexual Situations)
Genre: WESTERN
Director: Andrew Dominik
Cast: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Mary-Louise Parker, ...
I have not read Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook, but I have heard good word-of-mouth about the novel. Sadly, the elements that made the book special did not survive the transition to the screen. The Notebook, as adapted by Nick Cassavetes from a sc...
U.S. Release Date: 2004-06-25
MPAA Rating: "PG-13" (Sexual Situations, Nudity)
Genre: DRAMA/ROMANCE
Director: Nick Cassavetes
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner, ...
Steel, once a bulwark of American industrial might, was transformed over a short span of decades from a thriving commercial enterprise into a fossilized shell of its glory days. Once an engine of prosperity and a provider of reliable employment, it...
U.S. Release Date: 2013-12-06
MPAA Rating: "R" (Violence, Profanity,Drugs)
Genre: THRILLER
Director: Scott Cooper
Cast: Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Casey Affleck, ...
For those who can't wait until June (and the arrival of Kenneth Branagh's Love's Labour's Lost) for their semi-regular cinematic Shakespeare fix, there's Michael Almereyda's Hamlet. Imagine the line "To be or not to be" delivered in the aisles of a...
U.S. Release Date: 2000-05-12
MPAA Rating: "PG-13" (Sexual Content, Violence)
Genre: DRAMA
Director: Michael Almereyda
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Sam Shepard, ...
Safe House is an overlong, underwhelming knock-off of The Bourne Identity - another generic spy thriller in which the "bad guy" (a traitor) is the good guy (because he's at war against corruption) and the "good guys" (government agents) are the bad...
U.S. Release Date: 2012-02-10
MPAA Rating: "R" (Violence, Profanity)
Genre: ACTION/THRILLER
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Cast: Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Brendan Gleeson, ...