“Finestkind,” the new drama from “L.A. Confidential” and “Mystic River” screenwriter and “42” director Brian Helgeland, is not a great movie, but some of it is fascinating, even when it doesn’t work. Easy to dismiss because some of its broad, ridiculous, and suspension-of-disbelief turns—it’s essentially about a New England fishing community band of brothers that turn to drug dealers and spiraling criminal consequences in order to get out of the illegal activities jam they’re already in—the plot is fairly uninspired and breaks suspension of disbelief early.

Continue reading ‘Finestkind’ Review: Dudes, Feelings, Fishing & Drug Deals Awkwardly Mix In A Dad-Rock Family Crime Drama at The Playlist.

Fisherman, family, blue-collar life, debts that pile up, and crime all swirl together in the new drama, “Finestkind” from Oscar-winning writer/director Brian Helgeland, who won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for “LA Confidential” in 1998. Helgeland’s done a ton since, writing the Oscar-winning “Mystic River” for Clint Eastwood, “Man on Fire” for Tony Scott, and directing the Jackie Robinson biopic “42,” “Legend” with Tom Hardy, and now, “Finestkind.”

“Finestkind” stars Ben Foster, Toby Wallace, Tommy Lee Jones, and Jenna Ortega, and it’s a crime drama about a crew of fishermen who tread dangerous waters after their debts start piling up.

Continue reading ‘Finestkind’ Trailer: Bluecollar Fisherman Get Ensared In Crime Starring Ben Foster, Jenna Ortega, Tommy Lee Jones & More at The Playlist.

TORONTO – Considering the explicit gravity of her previous films, “The Burial” is an unexpected detour for filmmaker Maggie Betts. Likely considered a dramatic comedy by most, the MGM release centers on a 1995 lawsuit where a Mississippi small businessman, Jeremiah Joseph O’Keefe (Tommy Lee Jones), took the Loewen Group, a Canadian funerals services company, to court. It was a case that quickly transformed from what was assumed to just be a “he said, he said” contract dispute into a revelation of true corporate greed.

Continue reading ‘The Burial’ Review: Jamie Foxx Rules In This Uneven Courtroom Dramedy [TIFF] at The Playlist.

How can one small business stand up to corporations? It might seem an unlikely question for a funeral home, but even that industry faces these issues. Maggie Betts’ “The Burial” looks at what happens when a small funeral home encounters corporate entities determined to corner the market on death care. The film, premiering at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival, finds a skilled acting duo in leads, Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx.

Continue reading ‘The Burial’ Trailer: Oscar Winners Jamie Foxx & Tommy Lee Jones Lead A Legal Drama Debuting At TIFF at The Playlist.

The death of your family would definitely be enough to send any person over the edge. However, if you’re a private investigator that loses your family and then realizes that it might be linked to some grand conspiracy, it might drive you a bit insane, such as in the upcoming thriller, “Wander.”

READ MORE: ‘Dreamland’ Trailer: Margot Robbie Stars In A Dust Bowl-Set Dramatic Thriller

As seen in the trailer for “Wander,” the film follows the story of a gruff private investigator that has gone off the deep end a bit after the death of his daughter.

Continue reading ‘Wander’ Trailer: Aaron Eckhart & Tommy Lee Jones Are Investigating A Conspiracy In April Mullen’s Thriller at The Playlist.

Robert De Niro, bless his soul, he’s a national treasure and his career go something like this: De Niro does occasional prestige projects with people like Martin Scorsese and then most of the other time these days, he does movies like “Last Vegas” where he teams with other veterans/old-timer actors like Morgan Freeman and Michael Douglas in broad comedies. That seems to be the gist of “The Comeback Trail,” a ‘70s filmmaking comedy about a scam artist film producer who falls in debt to the mob, and then to get out of hock, finances a badly written Western movie in the hopes of the production killing its aging star.

Continue reading ‘The Comeback Trail’ Trailer: Robert De Niro, Zach Braff Are ’70s Scam Film Producers Making A Film With Tommy Lee Jones at The Playlist.

This week, 20th Century Fox, and by extension, Disney, put up a significant gamble, especially one from this new Fox/Disney era, James Gray’s “Ad Astra.” Yes, “Ad Astra” a grand space movie in the tradition of Stanley Kubrick with one of the biggest stars on the planet, Brad Pitt, in the lead role. But as epic and interstellar the movie can be, it’s also, intimate, reflective, melancholy; a father’s and son art movie set in outer space, that also borrows much of its Joseph Campbell-ian structure from “Hearts Of Darkness” and “Apocalypse Now.” And one that reportedly cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $80-$100 million.

Continue reading ‘Ad Astra’: Director James Gray Talks Space Movies, Doing Fellini For Trump & Much More [Interview] at The Playlist.

While the festival season has really only just begun—Telluride is over, we’re in the middle of Venice, and the Toronto International Film Festival just beginning—there are plenty of films being released in September that have already earned some well-deserved buzz or promise to entice audiences based on the trailers alone. And with all due respect to titles like “Blinded by the Light,” “The Farewell,” and “Ready or Not,” things are certainly looking up from the rather abysmal last two months.

Continue reading 10 Films To See In September: ‘Goldfinch,’ ‘Ad Astra,’ ‘Dick Long’ & More at The Playlist.

With the record-breaking box office numbers of Marvel Studios and the Oscar-winning success of Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy, it’s interesting to think about how, not too long ago, people were calling for the death of superhero films. And for many of those people, you can trace the fall of comic book filmmaking to one man: director Joel Schumacher. Thanks to “Batman Forever” and “Batman & Robin,” people throw the late-‘90s demise of superhero films directly at his feet.

Continue reading Joel Schumacher on ‘Batman Forever’ Star Val Kilmer: “He Was Psychotic” at The Playlist.

Futurist Arthur C. Clarke, the co-writer of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” famously said, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” That existential notion of our scary, insignificant place in the greater cosmos— and that in the end, no matter what’s out there, we are all we truly have— is the beating heart of director James Gray’s terrific, ambitious, sometimes esoteric new interstellar odyssey “Ad Astra.” Melding the anxiety of the unknown and the fear of who we truly are our core, all that we try and compartmentalize emotionally as human beings, Gray crafts a movie that is deeply personal, thought-provoking, and thrilling.

Continue reading ‘Ad Astra’: James Gray Takes Brad Pitt To The Stars In An Interstellar Tale Of Hope & Humanity [Venice Review] at The Playlist.

“It’s very ‘Heart of Darkness.’ It’s sorta like, if you got ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘2001’ in a giant mash-up and you put a little [Joseph] Conrad in there and you hope its as good. But it’s probably not. I’m being silly. But those were the influences,” director James Gray said earlier this year about his heady new sci-fi epic “Ad Astra.” The film has been in the works for years and sees Gray pulling further and further away from his roots in crime films set in New York.

Continue reading ‘Ad Astra’ Trailer: Brad Pitt Goes Interstellar For Director James Gray at The Playlist.

Another week, another major franchise film fails at the box office, leading to a tell-all postmortem pointing fingers as everyone tries to figure out what went wrong. Last week, it was with “Dark Phoenix.” Now, it’s “Men in Black: International” that is splayed on the autopsy table.

According to a new report from THR, there was no shortage of issues on the set of the latest ‘Men in Black’ sequel.

Continue reading ‘Men In Black’ Postmortem: Daily Rewrites, Personal Writers, Attempted Director Walkouts & More Reportedly Led To Failed Reboot at The Playlist.

One of the more mysterious titles of the fall film season, James Gray‘s sci-fi drama “Ad Astra,” has crash landed with a first look at the Brad Pitt-led star faring tale. The film captures a bit of a stoic, emotional glance into what Gray is cooking up with this one, the story of how a NASA engineer (Pitt) journeys across the solar system to discover his father’s (Tommy Lee Jones) whereabouts after the latter left 20 years prior to find alien life.

Continue reading ‘Ad Astra’ Trailer: James Gray Takes Brad Pitt Into Outer Space at The Playlist.

Once upon a time, Ron Shelton was a big deal in Hollywood thanks to his sports comedies “Bull Durham,” “White Men Can’t Jump,” and “Tin Cup.” But things have been pretty quiet for the filmmaker lately, and his last feature was 2003’s widely panned “Hollywood Homicide.” Now he’s back, working with some familiar faces and delivering a laffer that your parents might appreciate.

Continue reading ‘Just Getting Started’ Trailer: Morgan Freeman & Tommy Lee Jones Cause Retirement Home Mayhem at The Playlist.

While David Fincher might be confirmed to direct “World War Z 2“ with his old bud Brad Pitt, that project is probably some way off. The director is likely putting the finishing touches on his highly anticipated new Netflix series “Mindhunter” which drops this fall, so it gives Pitt the chance to work with another old pal, James Gray. The actor signed up to play in the lead in the sci-fi “Ad Astra,” and now he’s being joined by legendary veteran.

Continue reading Tommy Lee Jones Joins Brad Pitt In James Gray’s ‘Ad Astra’ at The Playlist.

This weekend sees the final episode of “Feud,” which stars Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange as Hollywood legends Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, respectively, as they scheme and catfight their way through the filming of “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?” It also sees the second weekend of “The Fate Of The Furious,” the eighth ‘Fast And The Furious‘ film which stars Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson, who reportedly fell out on set due to Diesel being a “candy ass” (Johnson’s words).

Continue reading 20 Great Movie Star Feuds & The Films That Spawned Them at The Playlist.

Roaring into theaters this Friday is “The Fate Of The Furious” (read our review!), the eighth (eighth!) in the enduring, and somehow ever-growing, “The Fast And The Furious” franchise. The series has consistently added new blood into the mix as a way of keeping things fresh, with Dwayne Johnson, Kurt Russell and Jason Statham among the big-ticket additions to the series, but the upcoming movie comes with something of a credibility boost, with not one but two Oscar-winning actresses getting in on the fun, in the shape of Charlize Theron and Helen Mirren.

Continue reading 20 Great Actors & The Roles They Probably Just Did For The Money at The Playlist.

“Mechanic: Resurrection” is a dumb movie. A bag of hammers might provoke more intellectual discussion than the latest from German director Dennis Gansel (“The Wave”). But it’s not oblivious. There’s a faint twinkle in its eye. There’s not a lot happening upstairs, but Gansel and screenwriters Philip Shelby and Tony Mosher are at least willing to keep things loose. The plot structure can best be described as flexible.

Continue reading Jason Statham’s Franchise Is Broken Beyond Repair In ‘Mechanic: Resurrection’ [Review] at The Playlist.

Accelerating forward with supercharged determination, “Jason Bourne,” the fifth installment of the spy action thriller series, might be a muscular and visceral chapter in the ‘Bourne’ saga, but it’s also a familiar collision. Perhaps less acrobatic overall and more of a bruising affair, both physically and, to a lesser extent, emotionally, while more brawny in its action, very little else has changed.

It’s easy to forget the impact that the ‘Bourne’ stories — the thinking man’s action film — has had on film culture.

Continue reading ‘Jason Bourne’ Concusses With Propulsion Once More, But It’s A Familiar Collision [Review] at The Playlist.

I’ll be completely honest with you, I’ve never seen a “Crank” film, I haven’t watched any film in “The Transporter” series, and I haven’t seen 2011’s Jason Statham-led remake of “The Mechanic.” Outside of Guy Ritchie or Paul Feig films, which always play up Statham’s underrated comic abilities, I’ve rarely seen a Statham film where he’s played a traditional skull-busting tough guy.

Continue reading ‘Mechanic: Resurrection’: Jason Statham Returns To Bust Skulls In The First Kick-Ass Trailer [Watch] at The Playlist.

As we all know, in today’s world there is no dispute more intractable, and no divide more impassable, than that which exists between devotees of Marvel and those of DC. Quite how it escalated to this borderline apocalyptic level — inarguably the defining conflict of our time — will be for future historians to piece together from the remnants of our shattered societies. But suffice to say these days, swearing fealty to one or either side is as fraught, yet vital, a process as choosing between the Crips and the Bloods in 1970s South Central, only on a far bigger scale.

Continue reading What ‘Civil War’? Actors Who’ve Played Both Marvel And DC Characters at The Playlist.

Watch: First Trailer For Thriller 'Criminal' Starring Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Alice Eve & Gal Gadot

Continue reading Watch: First Trailer For Thriller ‘Criminal’ Starring Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Alice Eve & Gal Gadot at The Playlist.

Tommy Lee Jones Gets His Spy Game Going By Joining 'Bourne 5'

Continue reading Tommy Lee Jones Gets His Spy Game Going By Joining ‘Bourne 5’ at The Playlist.

Review: Tommy Lee Jones' Unruly 'The Homesman' With Hilary Swank, Meryl Streep, And More

Continue reading Review: Tommy Lee Jones’ Unruly ‘The Homesman’ With Hilary Swank, Meryl Streep, And More at The Playlist.

Watch: Tommy Lee Jones & Hilary Swank Take A Dangerous Journey In New Trailer For 'The Homesman'

Continue reading Watch: Tommy Lee Jones & Hilary Swank Take A Dangerous Journey In New Trailer For ‘The Homesman’ at The Playlist.