Movies with music written by Mark Isham

The generic cop movie has become such a tedious bore that when something like The Departed comes along, it injects energy into a genre that, over time, has lost momentum to a dried-up wellspring of creativity. Even as recently as the '80s, when Di...

"Something changed with this [quiz show scandal]. It really marked the end of a period of innocence in our social history. No longer did people believe that what you saw on television was the truth... It may sound peculiar to us today that a...

Although perhaps a little unkind, the best description I can think of for Racing Stripes is that it's a "Babe wannabe." The new film has many of the same qualities, but it isn't as fresh, as witty, or as affecting as the 1995 movie or its 1998 seq...

It would be interesting to get a psychologist's perspective about why revenge/vigilante (two sides of the same coin) motion pictures are suddenly so popular. From The Brave One to Death Sentence to Before the Devil Knows You're Dead to Reservation ...

Running Scared feels like Tony Scott on barbiturates. From tone to approach, it's like a Scott-helmed movie, but the tendency to show off is limited, the camera movements are less frantic, and the editing occasionally allows shots to last for more...

Save the Last Dance, a movie about finding salvation on the dance stage, takes a little Pygmalion, a little Romeo and Juliet, and a lot of formula, wraps them up with a neat bow, and delivers a passably entertaining package. The film stumbles not ...

When it comes to movies that touch the heart, few have a more delicate yet undeniable impact than Gina Prince-Bythewood's The Secret Life of Bees. Adapted from the novel by Sue Monk Kidd, the production achieves something few literary interpretati...

Helicopters thunder through the air over Los Angeles, raining malathion on the city in an attempt to end the dreaded Medfly invasion. Below, in each house and apartment, an individual drama is being played out. As in any human settlement at...

The “hook” intended to lure in viewers to Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is the marquee-topping selection of Nicolas Cage as “Nick Cage.” The film gets a lot of mileage (perhaps too much) out of this meta casting....

Move aside, Dennis Hopper. Step down, Alan Rickman. I am now convinced that no one can match Jon Voight when it comes to playing a thoroughly detestable bad guy. With his calm, sinister demeanor and menacing facial expression, Voight has the abi...