Movies with music written by John Barry

It’s hard to imagine any version of Richard Matheson’s 1975 novel Bid Time Return working. The level of suspension of disbelief is so high that, although can be achieved in a written work, where the imagination is engaged, the same is not true...

(Spoilers, as one might expect from a retrospective of a 50-year old movie.)Midnight Cowboy, the only X-rated film to win a Best Picture Oscar, is less shocking than its reputation might indicate. Essentially a two-character buddy film, the ma...

Common wisdom contends that Dino De Laurentiis' big-budget remake of Merian C. Cooper's classic 1933 film, King Kong, is a bad movie. And, viewed from a certain perspective, perhaps it is, but it's also a lot of fun. Certainly, this versi...

Watching Out of Africa a quarter of a century after its release, it's almost impossible to guess how it won the Oscar for Best Picture. There's little doubt that this is a feast for the eyes and ears. The pairing of John Barry's lush score with D...

Body Heat is Lawrence Kasdan's directorial debut. His role behind the camera was earned in large part because of his writing contributions to The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark, two of the biggest movies of the early '80s. And, i...

Welcome to Massachusetts, 1666, where Puritans, Indians, and adultery come together in Roland Joffe's overlong, overwrought re-interpretation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic, The Scarlet Letter. Literary purists will be aghast at some of the libe...

There was a time when the western was one of Hollywood's most popular genres. Whether it was Gary Cooper standing tall in High Noon, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas taking out the Clantons in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, John Wayne fighting the Apa...

If I were in a kind mood, I might say that The Specialist attempts to be an atmospheric, dramatic thriller. On the other hand, if I wanted to be truthful, I could note that this film has two obvious assets (both of which are used to maximum advant...

From Russia with Love, along with its successor, Goldfinger, represents Bond at his best. Although the series has run for more than thirty years with seventeen "official" entries, it has yet to better, or even equal, what it achieved in 1963-19...

Forever remembered as the "Japanese Bond", You Only Live Twice takes 007 to the Far East for his fifth screen adventure, Sean Connery's final consecutive appearance as the top British agent (the actor returned to the role twice more: 1971's D...