Movies with music written by Bryce Dessner
Expectations can be an unfortunate thing. Over the years, my fondness for Ben Affleck’s 2016 thriller, The Accountant, has not waned so, when I learned that the character was returning for another outing after a nine-year gap, I was hopeful. Ala...
U.S. Release Date: 2025-04-25
MPAA Rating: "R" (Violence, Profanity)
Genre: Thriller
Director: Gavin O'Connor
Cast: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, ...
Generally speaking, the movie industry loves the concept of unrequited love…to a point. That point is, of course, that there’s a happy ending – a quality notably absent from Edmond Rostand’s play, Cyrano de Bergerac, upon which Joe Wright�...
U.S. Release Date: 2021-12-17
MPAA Rating: "PG-13" (Violence, Profanity)
Genre: Drama/Musical
Director: Joe Wright
Cast: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison Jr., ...
There are times when casting really does matter and A Good Person is an excellent example. Made with two lesser leads, this might have been no better than a Hallmark TV movie about addiction, recovery, and renewal. However, the participation of Fl...
U.S. Home Release Date: 2023-05-30
MPAA Rating: "R" (Profanity, Sexual Content, Drugs Use/Addiction)
Genre: Drama
Director: Zach Braff
Cast: Florence Pugh, Morgan Freeman, Celeste O’Connor, ...
At first glance, it might appear that Irresistible is going to be just another political comedy generated by progressive-leaning filmmakers to salve the still-stinging wounds left by the 2016 election. However, for those expecting a hatchet-jo...
U.S. Release Date: 2020-06-26
MPAA Rating: "R" (Profanity, Sexual Content)
Genre: Comedy
Director: Jon Stewart
Cast: Steve Carell, Chris Cooper, Mackenzie Davis, ...
The Kitchen is a scattershot, uneven attempt to tell a gritty gangster story in which three women are the primary characters. Based on the DC comics series of the same name, the movie plays like the highlight reel of a deeper, more compelling ...
U.S. Release Date: 2019-08-02
MPAA Rating: "R" (Profanity, Violence, Sexual Content)
Genre: Thriller
Director: Andrea Berloff
Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Brian d’Arcy James, Jeremy Bobb, ...
There’s something distinctly off-putting about Johnny Depp’s dying-from-cancer movie, The Professor (original title: Richard Says Goodbye). It has to do with the idea that someone, once given a death sentence resulting from metastatic lun...
U.S. Release Date: 2019-05-17
MPAA Rating: "R" (Profanity, Sexual Content)
Genre: Drama
Director: Wayne Roberts
Cast: Johnny Depp, Rosemarie DeWitt, Danny Huston, ...
The Revenant, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning Birdman, plays like a cross between Terrence Malick and Sam Peckinpah. As unlikely as such a conflation might seem, the result works - sometimes to stunning effect. In a...
U.S. Release Date: 2015-12-25
MPAA Rating: "R" (Violence, Profanity, Brief Nudity)
Genre: Adventure/Western
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, ...
Over the years, viewers have developed certain expectations about stories set behind prison bars. Those tropes, developed and exploited by the likes of the critically acclaimed TV series “Oz” and the less serious “Orange Is the New Black,”...
U.S. Release Date: 2024-07-12
MPAA Rating: "R" (Profanity)
Genre: Drama
Director: Greg Kwedar
Cast: Colman Domingo, Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, Sean San Jose, ...
I have never been a fan of big, bold tearjerkers – the kind that often function equally well as motion pictures or commercials for Kleenex. Despite great, lived-in performances from lead actors Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, We Live in Time ...
U.S. Release Date: 2024-10-18
MPAA Rating: "R" (Sexual Content, Nudity, Profanity)
Genre: Drama
Director: John Crowley
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Florence Pugh, Grace Delaney, ...