“I think they’re f*cking losers,” spy veteran Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) says with characteristic brutal honesty to Mi5 superior Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) when asked if he really cares for his team of rejects, while they sit on a park bench at 2 am in the middle of a national crisis. “But they’re my losers,” he says with loyal punctuation. This moment might sum up “Slow Horses,” in a nutshell, a darkly humorous British espionage thriller featuring a rogue, insubordinate spy old-timer, who is the boss of Slough House: a punitive dumping ground shithole and spy division for banished agents, f*ck ups, and castaways who have been exiled from the main Regent’s Park M15 HQ for embarrassing career-ending blunders of one sort or another.

Continue reading ‘Slow Horses’ Review: Gary Oldman Leads A Crackling Old School John Le Carre-Esque Spy Thriller About Losers at The Playlist.

Somewhere between the transcendent Alfred Hitchcock original and a total misfire lies Ben Wheatley’s shiny new “Rebecca.” An innocuous adaptation of the 1938 novel by Daphne Du Maurier, the latest Net-flick should reignite debate over the reasons why certain properties are exhumed while others aren’t. For something like Hitch’s 1940 classic, a decent justification might be that the new version fleshes out latent meanings in a more satisfying way—the queer relationship between Mrs.

Continue reading ‘Rebecca’: Ben Wheatley’s Hitchcock Riff Is A Pale Iteration Of A Classic Gothic Horror at The Playlist.

Well, here comes Lara Croft. Again. Does anyone actually play “Tomb Raider” anymore, or is it just a piece of intellectual property Hollywood needs to exploit? Honestly, maybe it’s a little bit of both but this blockbuster reboot hasn’t been inspiring much confidence so far.

Alicia Vikander wears the sweat-stained tank-top playing a driftless bike courier (lol), she decides to search for her adventurer Dad’s last known location, and naturally, faces all kinds of challenges along the way.

Continue reading ‘Tomb Raider’ Trailer: Alicia Vikander’s Lara Croft Finds Her Destiny at The Playlist.

As such, director Sam Taylor-Wood and her collaborators are hamstrung in chronicling the life of John Lennon in “Nowhere Boy.” While there are documents, books and essays, written about the time period when Lennon was a rowdy lad, fans have constructed their own stories about where the titanic troubadour has come from thanks to a staggering body of work left behind, an unimpeachable legacy influencing every pop-centric mind of his generation and beyond.

Continue reading Review: ‘Nowhere Boy’ A Suspiciously Anti-Rock ‘N’ Roll Story Of John Lennon at The Playlist.

Deadline reports TWC has purchased all U.S. rights to “Sarah’s Key.” The French Film directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner stars Kristin Scott Thomas (who also stars in “Nowhere Boy”) and is based on the New York Times best-selling book by French journalist and literary critic Tatiana De Rosnay, which has been translated into 15 languages and published in 22 countries.

Continue reading Weinstein Company Makes First Toronto Purchase, ‘Sarah’s Keys’ Starring Kristin Scott Thomas at The Playlist.

The film stars the very respectable cast of Aaron Johnson, Thomas Brodie Sangster, Anne-Marie Duff and Kristin Scott Thomas. The Weinstein Company snatched up distribution to it just as it was commencing shooting in the spring of 2009, but the film wasn’t unveiled until last year at the London Film Festival, where critics pummeled it. To wit: our generally amiable and measured U.K.

Continue reading ‘Nowhere Boy’ Arrives In U.S. Theaters October 8, But Is It Being Dumped? at The Playlist.

Inferno Entertainment, who are evidently handling the film’s foreign sales at Cannes, now report that Kristen Scott Thomas, Jeremy Irons and Tony Shalhoub have also joined the project which follows “a young AWOL soldier [as he] jumps ship in Tangiers and is hired to look after a wealthy socialite whose husband appears to be involved in a terrifying espionage.” The genre tags on the film’s profile also add “sexy noir,” “intrigue” and thriller” to the brew; we presume that means they’re all rolled into one.

Continue reading Details On Sean Gullette’s ‘Tangier’; Kristen Scott Thomas, Jeremy Irons & Tony Shalhoub Joining Cast at The Playlist.

Continue reading ‘Twilight: Eclipse’ Trailer To Debut In Front Of ‘Remember Me’ & New ‘Kick-Ass’ Red Band Trailer at The Playlist.

*Dates listed next to titles are the year of the awards ceremony.

Continue reading Will These Women Ever Win Oscars? at The Playlist.

Matthew Vaughn recently discussed his screening of “Nowhere Boy,” the Sam Taylor-Wood film chronicling the adolescent days of John Lennon, and to a lesser extent, The Beatles, starring “Kick-Ass” lead Aaron Johnson.

“I just saw ‘Nowhere Boy,’ where [Johnson] plays John Lennon, and it is a ten-out-of-ten performance. The whole film is fantastic, but he is phenomenal in it. I actually feel like a juvenile moron for what I did to that kid compared to what he does in that film…” [ed.

Continue reading First Look: Aaron Johnson As John Lennon In ‘Nowhere Boy’ at The Playlist.