Movies with music written by John Debney

One of the most depressing movie-going experiences I can think of is to sit through about 90 minutes of a so-called "comedy" and not laugh once. Unfortunately, that is becoming an all-too-common occurrence. Rob Schneider's The Hot Chick is the mo...

Ice Age: Collision Course, the fifth installment in this lamentably long-lived animated franchise, is the last Ice Age movie I intend to see. In a way, this review is superfluous. That’s because Ice Age: Collision Course isn’t a movie. Oh...

For today's audiences, for whom the 1980s are ancient history, how is it possible to generate interest in a Prohibition-era period piece set in the town of Idlewild, Georgia? First-time director Bryan Barber has what he hopes is the answer: gather...

With superhero movies, it's almost axiomatic to state that the second film is the best of the series. The reason isn’t difficult to divine: having dispensed with the obligatory origin tale, the movie-makers can weave a more compelling yarn. So ...

Jobs could have been so much more but the desire to rush it into production and get it out fast (it started filming about six months after the ex-Apple CEO's death) has transformed it into a missed opportunity. A standard-order, scattershot bio-pic...

The process of transforming beloved animated classics into live-action versions has become a modern cottage industry. This self-cannibalization has included titles like Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and now The Jungle Book (with Beauty and...

While watching Liar Liar, it occurred to me that the chief problem with this film is that it has a script. If Jim Carrey had been unleashed without such silly, incidental constraints as plot and dialogue, who knows where things might have gone? A...

I went to Machete expecting an exploitation film and got a socio-political lecture instead. Although an exaggeration, that's the way it sometimes felt. Director Robert Rodriguez understands the exploitation genre and delivers everything one crave...

Once upon a time, there was an actress named Jennifer Lopez, whose performances in films like Out of Sight and Selena opened eyes and excited comment with their depth and authenticity. But Lopez wasn’t a one-trick pony and, as her multimedia pop...

Back in the 1980s, it wasn't uncommon to hear Eddie Murphy referred to as a "comic genius." 20 years later, the man who once made a concert film called Raw has become a purveyor of PG-rated pabulum. At one point, Murphy could deliver while collec...