Movies with music written by Stephen Trask

Creating a bio-pic of Linda Lovelace (nee Boreman) comes with its own series of challenges. The chief of these is that no one, not even Lovelace (who died in 2002), has a consistent view of the salient facts of her life. So, basing a movie on her s...

Numerous movies about grief miss the mark by a wide margin, sliding down a slippery slope of schlocky melodrama with overacting performers failing to convince us that their tears are real. Every once in a while, however, a film gets it right. In ...

Watching Little Fockers is a depressing experience. Rarely does a comedy bring such an overpowering sense of sadness. Admittedly, I laughed a few times and am willing to admit that the experience as a whole was more bearable than the trial of sitti...

Film critics love titles that imply something about the movie in question (either in a straightforward or ironic fashion). Thus, it might seem that The Back-Up Plan offers a perfect opportunity to play with the name; after all, as it applies to a ...

Is it too much to ask that a narrative film have a beginning, a middle, and an end? Apparently in the case of Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, a loose adaptation of Darren Shan's Vampire Blood trilogy, the answer is "yes." Developed with...

The Savages is being described in some corners as a "dark comedy," but such a designation does a great disservice to Tamara Jenkins' picture. This is not a comedy but a drama. To the extent that there is humor, it emerges from the uncomfortable s...

It's a little surprising to encounter a film like Feast of Love in multiplexes, because it is made for adults. After a summer of pyrotechnics and incredibly dumb scripts, it's a change of pace to find something that aspires to run for 100 minutes w...

In the Land of Women is enjoyable for a movie in which pretty much nothing happens. The things that occur during the course of Jonathan (son of Lawrence) Kasdan's debut feature are all subtle and character-based. This is the sort of motion pictur...

Is it possible to satirize something that, in and of itself, often crosses the line into self-parody? That's a question that American Dreamz attempts to address. The objects of Paul Weitz's lampoon are two ripe ones: American Bush and American Id...

Universal Pictures is touting In Good Company as being "from the producers of About a Boy." While that's a true enough statement, let's not forget that the team of Chris and Paul Weitz were also responsible for the popular American Pie series. Th...