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Hulu is kicking off 2025 with a bang by adding tons of new content for subscribers starting January 1. From popular movies like American Psycho, Heat, and John Wick to new series like Goosebumps: The Vanishing, there’s plenty to check out.

Here’s the full list of movies and TV shows coming to Hulu in January 2025:

January 1 Dick Clark’s Primetime New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2025: Special Premiere Kids Diana Show: Let’s Celebrate Together: Complete Season 1 Papa Jake: Epic Box Forts: Complete Season 1 After Earth (2013) American Psycho (2000) The Devil’s Own (1997) The Devil’s Own En Español (1997) Dirty Grandpa (2016) Empire Records (1995) Ender’s Game (2013) The Great Debaters (2007) Heat (1995) Insidious (2011) Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) Insidious: Chapter 2 En Español (2013) Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015) Insidious: Chapter 3 En Español (2015) The Intouchables (2011) John Wick (2014) John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) John Wick: Chapter 3 (2019) The King Of Comedy (1983) Little Manhattan (2005) Man of the House (2005) Man Of The House...

Hulu is starting 2025 strong as the platform will add a lot of new content for its subscribers starting January 1. From movies like American Psycho, Heat, and John Wick to new series like Goosebumps: The Vanishing, Hulu is bringing A Lot to watch.

Here’s every movie & TV show releasing on Hulu in January 2025:

January 1 Dick Clark’s Primetime New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2025: Special Premiere Kids Diana Show: Let’s Celebrate Together: Complete Season 1 Papa Jake: Epic Box Forts: Complete Season 1 After Earth (2013) American Psycho (2000) The Devil’s Own (1997) The Devil’s Own En Español (1997) Dirty Grandpa (2016) Empire Records (1995) Ender’s Game (2013) The Great Debaters (2007) Heat (1995) Insidious (2011) Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) Insidious: Chapter 2 En Español (2013) Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015) Insidious: Chapter 3 En Español (2015) The Intouchables (2011) John Wick (2014) John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) John Wick: Chapter 3 (2019) The King Of Comedy (1983) Little Manhattan (2005) Man of the House (2005) Man Of The House...

Ah, January. A new year, a clean slate, a fresh chance to… do what you’ve always done, maybe? Not that we at IndieWire don’t encourage personal growth, but we do support you if you decide to spend a lot of this month recovering from the holidays and melting into your couch in front of a watchlist.

On Disney+, that means new episodes of “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” and the premiere of “Goosebumps: The Vanishing.” If you’re into creepy crawlies.

Hulu will keep things busy as always with next-day premieres of network shows on ABC and Fox, including the new series “Going Dutch” starring Denis Leary and “Will Trent” Season. The streamer will continue to release standup under the banner “Hularious,” this time with the special “Roy Wood Jr.: Lonely Flowers.” On the originals side, look out for “Whiskey on the Rocks” set in Sweden during the Cold War,...

Tommy Lee Jones is known to audiences for his authoritative roles in movies during the 1990s. The actor later gained commercial success and fame with his role in the Men in Black franchise. Jones also nabbed an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford.

Tommy Lee Jones is known for the Men in Black movies (Credit: Sony).

Despite proving himself to be the definition of versatility, Jones has loved a particular type of cinema, which is a recurring element in his lengthy filmography. Although Jones initially refused to call these movies Westerns, he has since warmed up to the idea. As a result, Jones must join the modern renaissance of the genre brought about by Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone.

Tommy Lee Jones Is No Longer Bothered By His Movies Being Called Westerns

Tommy Lee Jones gained recognition for his role in the...

Exclusive: We can tell you that James Franco and Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones are leading the action thriller The Razor’s Edge from producer Corey Large and filmmaker Demian Lichtenstein (3000 Miles to Graceland).

Red Sea Media is handling international sales and will debut the film for buyers at the upcoming Marche du Film in Cannes. Cameras roll June 25 in Georgia.

Lichenstein is helming off a screenplay he wrote with Vance Duplechin. After a mob hitman vows to leave his deadly past behind, he faces an impossible choice when his daughter is kidnapped and the woman he loves becomes a target of the syndicate. He is forced to undertake one final, perilous mission while being pursued by an assassin even more lethal.

Pic is executive produced by Kirk Shaw. BondIt Media Capital is financing with Matthew Helderman, Luke Taylor and Jordan Nott also executive producing.

“I’m excited that we have signed the superbly talented actors James, Suki and Tommy Lee to bring The Razor’s Edge to the big screen. They are perfectly suited to embody the protagonists in director Demian’s script,” said Large. “We cannot wait to begin filming this taut thriller next month with an assist from our seasoned executive producer Kirk,” he added.

“We’ve worked with Corey on over a dozen projects throughout the years and always appreciate his ability to get projects made in many different industry climates. We’re excited for another adventure here with Corey and his team,” commented Bond It Capital co-founder CEO Matthew Helderman.

Large is producing through his 308 Enterprises. His other feature production, Assassination directed by Rain Man Oscar winner Barry Levinson and starring Academy Award-winner Al Pacino and BAFTA winning Shia Labeouf is shooting this fall.

Franco was Oscar nominated for Best Actor for 127 Hours and is a 2x Golden Globe winner for James Dean, in which he played the title role, and took home Best Actor in Miniseries, and for The Disaster Artist which he won Best Actor Feature Comedy/Musical. He starred in Sony’s original Spider-Man trilogy from Sam Rami.

Oscar, Emmy, SAG, Golden Globe, and Palme d’Or winner Jones counts an Oscar and Golden Globe supporting actor win for The Fugitive and starred in Sony’s Men in Black trilogy. Jones won a Lead Actor Emmy for NBC’s The Executioners’ Song, and a Cannes Palme D’Or for Best Actor for Sony Pictures Classics’ The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada which he also directed. He also directed The Homesman which starred Hilary Swank.

Franco is represented by UTA and Anonymous Content, Jones is represented by CAA and Jacobson, Russell, Saltz, Nassim & De La Torre.

The 49th edition of Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival, Spain’s largest confab for films from Latin America, Spain and Portugal, will honor Mexican star Cecilia Suárez with its City of Huelva Award.

With leading roles in Netflix’s “The House of Flowers” and HBO Latin America’s “Capadocia,” Suárez has also be seen in ABC’s drama “The Promised Land” and has worked on films by as Tommy Lee Jones (“The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada”), James L. Brooks (“Spanglish”), Ernesto Contreras (“Párpados azules”), Antonio Serrano and Fernando Colomo (“Cuidado con lo que deseas”).

The new edition of Huelva runs Nov. 10-18.

Andalusia’s oldest film festival, Huelva will also grant a Light Award to Spanish actress Natalia de Molina, a two-time Goya winner, delivering acclaimed performance in films such as David Trueba’s “Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed” and Juan Miguel del Castillo’s “Food and Shelter.”

Another...

Stars: Josh Lucas, Fernanda Urrejola, Venus Ariel, Carlos Solorzan, Julio Cesar Cedillo, Jorge A. Jimenez | Written by Carlos Cisco, Boise Esquerra | Directed by Adrian Grunberg

After the trainwreck that was Cocaine Shark and with the spectre of Jurassic Shark 3: Seavenge looming over me, The Black Demon, or any other shark film for that matter, may not have been an obvious choice. But this one caught my attention when it was announced and the idea of a finned fear film with enough of a budget to give it some bite was hard to say no to.

Paul Sturges is the safety officer for Nixon Oil, a corporate name that does not exactly inspire confidence. He has been sent to Baja to inspect one of the company’s rigs and has brought his family along. He may have to work but his wife Ines, daughter, Audrey, and son Tommy can have a vacation.

While Western movies were once the backbone of Hollywood, the genre has seen some great movies flop disastrously in the last few decades. The Western is not what it used to be. Some recent efforts in the genre have attempted to revive Western tropes, but this endeavor has been met with mixed results. For every critically acclaimed Western like Netflix’s 2021 outing The Harder They Fall, there is a high-profile flop like 2022’s Cry Macho. For every sleeper hit like 2012’s Django Unchained, there is a historic financial catastrophe like 2013’s The Lone Ranger.

However, the Western isn’t alone in this fate. There are a lot of great horror movies that bombed at the box office and plenty of stellar sci-fi efforts have faced the same fate. However, both horror movies and sci-fi movies are popular enough to weather a few flops. In contrast, despite occasional hits like The Revenant...

For three decades, Julio César Cedillo has been delivering authentic, nuanced, fully realized performances in films and television series such as Sicario, Cowboys and Aliens, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Narcos Mexico, and the new Netflix film Chupa, to name just a few. In this hour, he generously shares what he’s learned from being a “lunchbox actor,” doing this work he loves. He talks about why, as an actor who happens to be Mexican, his first read of a script is a “search for traps.” Through stories detailing his experiences on set, he explains why it’s better to ask for forgiveness […]

The post “You Alone Are Not Making Anything Happen; It’s a Collective Experience”: Julio César Cedillo first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

For three decades, Julio César Cedillo has been delivering authentic, nuanced, fully realized performances in films and television series such as Sicario, Cowboys and Aliens, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Narcos Mexico, and the new Netflix film Chupa, to name just a few. In this hour, he generously shares what he’s learned from being a “lunchbox actor,” doing this work he loves. He talks about why, as an actor who happens to be Mexican, his first read of a script is a “search for traps.” Through stories detailing his experiences on set, he explains why it’s better to ask for forgiveness […]

The post “You Alone Are Not Making Anything Happen; It’s a Collective Experience”: Julio César Cedillo first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“A Cielo Abierto,” the latest film from Oscar-nominated Mexican screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (“Babel”), is being brought onto Berlin’s European Film Market by Film Factory Entertainment.

Produced by Argentina’s K&s Films, whose credits include “Wild Tales,” “The Clan” and “The Summit” — the last by “Argentina, 1985” director Santiago Mitre — “A Cielo Abierto” is directed by Mariana Arriaga and Santiago Arriaga, Guillermo Arriaga’s daughter and son, making their feature film debut.

“A Cielo Abierto” turns on two teen brothers who take a road trip to the Mexico-u.S. border to track down the man responsible for the car accident that caused their father’s death.

Joined by their beautiful newly-met stepsister, their trip becomes a “tense revenge journey to adulthood,” the synopsis runs.

During the journey, the trio, from Mexico’s upper-middle class, will also encounter “violence, tenderness, a wild inclement landscape, instinct, animals and seriousness,” Guillermo Arriaga said.

“A...

Fernanda Urrejola and Julio Cesar Cedillo will star alongside Josh Lucas in “The Black Demon.” The survival thriller is the latest film from Adrian Grünberg, the director of “Rambo: Last Blood” and “Get the Gringo.”

The film centers on an oilman who finds himself and his family stranded on a rig where he is targeted by a megalodon, a prehistoric shark.

Urrejola is best known for her work in “Narcos: Mexico,” the “Party of Five” reboot and Clint Eastwood’s most recent drama, “Cry Macho.” Cedillo played the title role in “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” and also appeared in “All the Pretty Horses,” “Cowboys & Aliens” and “Sicario.” He recently starred in Netflix’s acclaimed film “The Harder They Fall.”

Also joining the cast are Jorge A. Jimenez (“Machete Kills”), Héctor Jiménez (“Nacho Libre”), Raúl Méndez (“Narcos”), Edgar Flores (“Sin Nombre”), Venus Ariel (“Dmz”) and Carlos Solórzano (“Flamin’ Hot”).

Written by Boise Esquerra,...

Jury includes ‘Amores Perros’ screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga.

Transilvania International Film Festival has revealed the 12 films that will screen in its official competition and its international jury.

Each title competing for the Transilvania Trophy will receive its Romanian premiere at the 20th edition of the festival, which is set to take place in-person in the city of Cluj-Napoca.

They include What Do We See When We Look At The Sky?, by Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze, which played in competition at the Berlinale, and Lili Horvát’s Preparations To Be Together For An Unknown Period Of Time, which was Hungary’s Oscar submission.

Cecilia Suárez and Augusto Aguilera have joined the ABC drama pilot “Promised Land,” Variety has learned.

The show is described as an epic, generation-spanning drama about two Latinx families vying for wealth and power in California’s Sonoma Valley. The pair joins previously announced cast members John Ortiz, Christina Ochoa and Mariel Molino.

Suárez will star as Lettie Sandoval, the matriarch of the Sandoval family, a wealthy vineyard-owning family in the Sonoma Valley. Lettie will do anything to keep her family, with all its fraying allegiances, intact. She is proud of the fortune the Sandovals have built, but the arrival of a figure from Lettie’s past soon causes her to question whether the cost of achieving the American Dream is too high.

Suárez is the first Spanish-speaking actress to be nominated for an international Emmy Award for her role in the “Capadocia” series for HBO. Her other credits include “3 Caminos,...

Kate: It’s not meant to be.Alex: No. Don’t say that. Something must’ve happened.A decade and a half is not really long enough to commemorate a film’s anniversary—but then again, bogus nostalgia for the immediate past is the main engine of pop culture discourse today. So here’s a wild proposition: what if 2006 was the last great year for adventurous, bigger-budget movies? It’s impossible to answer, of course, but consider these studio releases: Marie-Antoinette, Children of Men, Southland Tales, Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima diptych, Inside Man, Miami Vice, Idlewild, Crank, Idiocracy, The Holiday, The Black Dahlia. Millions were spent on bizarre highbrow and/or vanity projects like Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep, Soderbergh’s The Good German, Tommy Lee Jones’ (phenomenal) The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, or Ryan Murphy’s (excruciating) Running With Scissors. World Trade Center and United...

American composer Marco Beltrami will be the guest of honor at the World Soundtrack Awards, part of the Ghent Film Festival, on Oct. 18 in Belgium.

Beltrami, a two-time Oscar nominee (for “3:10 to Yuma” and “The Hurt Locker”), recently scored the horror hit “A Quiet Place” and the Oscar winner for Best Documentary “Free Solo.” Music from both will be performed in a concert by the Brussels Philharmonic.

Festival music director Dirk Brossé, who will conduct, called Beltrami “an all-around composer whose music moves within the most diverse musical styles and genres. Dedicating considerable attention to melody and obsessed by rhythms, Marco offers a rich palette of both acoustic and electronic colors.”

The Ghent Film Festival runs from October 8 to 18 this year. It is widely considered one of the world’s leading events devoted primarily to film music; past concerts have featured such leading composers as Hans Zimmer, Ennio Morricone,...

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.

#46 —Altha Carter, a minister’s wife who gives comfort to three disturbed women.

John: The Homesman is one of the best films Meryl Streep has ever had the good fortune to be in, and yet, she’s on screen for no more than five minutes. Set circa 1850 in the Nebraska territory, Tommy Lee Jones’ adaptation of Glendon Swarthout’s novel is a gorgeous and unsettling theatrical follow-up to his 2005 stunner The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

Hilary Swank stars as Mary Bee Cuddy, a self-sufficient spinster who volunteers to transport three insane women from their town to a church in Hebron, Iowa that cares for mentally ill patients...

'120 Beats per Minute' trailer: Robin Campillo's AIDS movie features plenty of drama and a clear sociopolitical message. AIDS drama makes Pedro Almodóvar cry – but will Academy members tear up? (See previous post re: Cannes-Oscar connection.) In case France submits it to the 2018 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, screenwriter-director Robin Campillo's AIDS drama 120 Beats per Minute / 120 battements par minute, about the Paris Act Up chapter in the early 1990s, could quite possibly land a nomination. The Grand Prix (Cannes' second prize), international film critics' Fipresci prize, and Queer Palm winner offers a couple of key ingredients that, despite its gay sex scenes, should please a not insignificant segment of the Academy membership: emotionalism and a clear sociopolitical message. When discussing the film after the presentation of the Palme d'Or, Pedro Almodóvar (and, reportedly, jury member Jessica Chastain) broke into tears. Some believed, in fact, that 120 Beats per Minute...

Oscar-winning cinematographer worked on Kes, The Killing Fields and The Reader among others.

British cinematographer Chris Menges is to receive a lifetime achievement award at Camerimage (Nov 14-21), the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography.

Menges will attend the 23rd edition of Camerimage in the Polish city of Bydgoszcz to accept the award, introduce screenings of his films and will meet with the festival’s audience.

Across a 50-year career, Menges has won two Academy Awards for Roland Joffé’s The Killing Fields in 1985, for which he also won a BAFTA, and The Mission in 1987.

More recently, he was Oscar-nominated (with Roger Deakins) for his work on Stephen Daldry’s The Reader in 2010.

Menges began his career in the 1960s as camera operator for documentaries by Adrian Cowell and for films like Poor Cow by Ken Loach and If… by Lindsay Anderson.

He returned to work with Loach on Kes, which marked...

Season 2 of the BBC’s acclaimed drama Happy Valley begins shooting this week with some new names among the cast. Among those joining Sarah Lancashire, James Norton and other returning actors are Downton Abbey’s Kevin Doyle, Harry Potter‘s Matthew Lewis, Mr Selfridge‘s Katherine Kelly, Coronation Street‘s Julie Hesmondhalgh, Filth‘s Shirley Henderson and Scott & Bailey‘s Amelia Bullmore. The BBC One drama is created by Sally Wainwright and won the Best Drama Series BAFTA Award last year, among many other prizes. Netflix has U.S. rights. Doyle, who’s been with Downton since the beginning, will reunite in Happy Valley with erstwhile ladies maid O’Brien (Siobahn Finneran), who plays Clare Cartwright on Happy Valley. Also returning are George Costigan, Karl Davies and Charlie Murphy. The six-part drama also is adding Con O’Neill (Cucumber) and Vincent Franklin (The Thick Of It). As S2 opens, Lancashire’s...

Our first episode since July (we know, we’re terrible) brings on discussion of two Tommy Lee Jones directorial efforts: First up is the director’s latest (which premiered at Cannes), The Homesman, which deftly tackles the rough and tough lives of pioneer women and a drunken drifter in 1850. The film stars Jones himself, Hilary Swank, Meryl Steep, and James Spader. Last on the docket is the neo-western The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), starring Jones, Barry Pepper, January Jones, and Melissa Leo. Joining hosts Ty Landis and Tom Stoup for this week’s chat is The Film Stage’s Danny King

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A rich slice of hardship and redemption from the unforgiving frontier.The opening scenes are as bleak as death itself. Parched plains, patched together clapboard houses, poverty so deep it rises up to greet you at the front door, and wind that never, ever, lets up. Tommy Lee Jones’ second feature film shows an America that promised its pioneers their own land and the mastery of their own destiny. What it gave them was a savage, untillable, untamable landscape that made the setting for Jones’ earlier “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” look like the Garden of Eden.Nebraska is the newfound […]...

Hollywood's most high-falutin' varmint must be Tommy Lee Jones. As difficult and humorless as he's perceived to be (and sometimes said to actually be), he's gone and built a career on imbuing a certain curmudgeonly ease into whatever films he appears in, from Coal Miner's Daughter to Captain America, from Men in Black to Lincoln. This was somehow true even in his younger days, before he started racking up Oscar nominations and securing the occasional director gig. The Homesman is Jones' fourth directorial effort, if you count his two made for TV movies, The Sunset Limited (2011) and The Good Old Boys (1995). Although I can't vouch for those two, his previous theatrical helmer, 2005's The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, stands as one of the...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

As that classic media intro says, “return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear”, for this new release is set in the old West. This was a classic backdrop for so many films, going back over one hundred years to The Great Train Robbery, but the Western has become a rarity in the last decade or so. Recent attempts at big budget revivals like Cowboys & Aliens and last Summer’s reboot of The Lone Ranger were box office sinkholes. But happily, more modestly budgeted independent films have taken up the reins. One of the stars that seems quite at ease on horseback is Oscar-winner Tommy Lee Jones, so it was no great surprise that his feature film directing debut nine years ago was a modern-day Western, The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada. For his film making return Jones has gone back, nearly a century and a half, to...

The Homesman

Written for the screen by Tommy Lee Jones, Kieran Fitzgerald, and Wesley A. Oliver

Directed by Tommy Lee Jones

France/USA, 2014

“That’s all there is, there ain’t no more.”

Set during the pioneer era, The Homesman subverts the usual trajectory of westerns set in this time by instead focusing on a journey from what will eventually become Nebraska territory in the West to more Eastern Iowa, wherein defeat via the frontier is a primary concern, whether it be a defeat of the mind, body, soul, or all together. Director Tommy Lee Jones’s last theatrically released film was The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), a contemporary neo-western with shades of Sam Peckinpah in its flavour. The Homesman may have the set dressing of a more traditional, old-school genre entry, but this film, adapted from Glendon Swarthout’s 1988 novel, is much more offbeat than one might expect.

Depression, madness and sympathy in 19th-century Nebraska make for a confident, insightful film

• Tommy Lee Jones on The Homesman: ‘It’s a consideration of American imperialism’

Tommy Lee Jones’s terrifically confident frontier western has inspired a variety of responses since its first appearance at festivals earlier this year. It has been suspected of misogyny – and then defended as feminist. Neither is quite accurate, although ideological responses have probably been amplified by critical shock at a certain late-breaking narrative development. The performances are great. Director Jones also stars as George Briggs, and awards himself plenty of closeups and big scenes. Briggs is a boozy, ornery old devil in mid-19th-century Nebraska. He fatefully encounters Mary Bee Cuddy: a respectable, courageous and heartbreakingly lonely unmarried woman superbly played by Hilary Swank. Like the decent woman that she is, Mary Bee has volunteered for the grim job of caring for three...

★★★★☆Tommy Lee Jones' second directorial effort following the underrated The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (which played at Cannes in 2005), The Homesman (2014) is something of a reverse western, with homesteader Mary Bee Cuddy (a sterling turn from Hilary Swank) and amoral old-timer George Briggs (Jones) heading from west to east with a cargo of three mentally-ill women, played by Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto and Sonja Richter. The characters have been variously defeated by the brutal reality of frontier life, with loneliness, diphtheria, child mortality and marital abuse having driven these women to the point of desperation and beyond into the realms of madness.

Just as he did with The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and The Sunset Limited, Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones takes on a variety of different duties with The Homesman. Based on the novel by Glendon Swarthout, Jones co-wrote, co-produced and directed the movie, and he also stars in it as George Briggs, a claim jumper who makes the acquaintance of the un-married, middle-aged Mary Bee Cuddy (Hillary Swank).

The movie takes place back in the 1850s, as Mary is escorting three women who show signs of insanity across the country. Realizing that she can’t transport these women on her own, she invites George along for the extra protection. Together, they make the oddest of couples as their journey proves to be very long and dangerous. However, it also turns out to be very transformative for them both.

On the surface, The Homesman looks like a western, but it...

This weekend’s onslaught of smaller new films will have awards contenders and big names to jostle with at the box office. Awards hopefuls Foxcatcher and The Homesman begin their theatrical runs in limited New York and L.A. rollouts, with the former a likely winner in the first weekend when the numbers come in Sunday. The films from Sony Pictures Classics and Roadside Attractions, respectively, tell particularly American stories, though from very different eras. The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart took time off in 2013 to work on his directorial debut. Open Road’s Rosewater, starring Gael García Bernal, will begin its theatrical rollout this weekend. It will be the biggest opener of this weekend’s cadre of specialty newcomers, playing in several hundred locations in the U.S. and Canada. Actor Chris Lowell also makes his filmmaking launch with Beside Still Waters. The project had smooth sailing until it came time for distribution,...

Jumping Claims: Jones’ Attempt at Revisionist Western Withers Under its Own Intentions

Try as it might, The Homesman, Tommy Lee Jones’ first directorial effort since his 2005 film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, fails to deliver an accurate rendering of the miserable plight of women in the Old West. While some are sure to embrace the superficial revisionist attempt at providing us with a feminist subtext, Jones actually manages to accomplish the opposite with a film that only highlights a male perspective’s well-meaning but misguided interpretation of a story about women. As it completely sells out on its main female protagonist, it’s clear that the project is merely a vanity piece where a multitude of characters are only utilized to compliment his presence, as well as a moment of convenient (and false pathos).

A thirty one year old spinster, Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) is a rare example...

Marco Beltrami’s soundtrack for "The Homesman" is like an old photograph. Stare long enough at an 19th century relic and the memories start reverberating through space and time (not to get too "Interstellar" about it). Recreating pioneer era music, mining that Western language, is only part of Beltrami's goal for "The Homesman"; There are twists of ambience and metallic pangs that give old-timey melodies a contemporary sound. Intertwined and layered into the soundtrack, Tommy Lee Jones' film starts feeling less like a transportive period piece than a look backwards from our fixed position in 2014 — an unnerving quality that fits the film’s arduous travelogue. To achieve these sounds, Beltrami (the composer behind "World War Z," "Snowpiercer," "The Wolverine," and "The Hurt Locker") and his sound design-minded collaborator Buck Sanders constructed their own instruments that would meld the archaic and new. The creations were as tiny as a refitted lap steel guitar to giant,...

Academy Award nominated composer Marco Beltrami brings raw emotion to The Homesman.

Directed by Tommy Lee Jones, the film’s all-star cast includes Jones, Hilary Swank, Meryl Streep, and Hailee Steinfeld. The unconventional western follows three women, driven mad by pioneer life, who are being transported across the country by covered wagon by the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy (Swank), who in turn employs low-life drifter George Briggs (Jones) to assist her.

The film marks Beltrami’s third collaboration with director Tommy Lee Jones, previously scoring The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and The Sunset Limited.

The film opens in select theaters on November 14th, 2014 and the score album will be released through Varese Sarabande digitally on November 17th, 2014 and on CD December 9th, 2014.

Director Tommy Lee Jones says of Beltrami, “He’s different, that’s what he brings. He’s original.” This originality stretches to their work on The Homesman.

This is a reprint of our review from the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Eight years ago (gosh, was it really that long?), Tommy Lee Jones made his long-awaited feature directorial debut with the contemporary neo-western “The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada.” The film premiered at Cannes, and proved a big hit there, winning a Best Actor trophy for Jones, and a Best Screenplay prize for “Babel” scribe Guillermo Arriaga. But the film never quite found an audience outside the Croisette, and perhaps for that reason, the only thing that Jones has made in the meantime was a modest HBO adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Sunset Limited.” Until now, anyway. The actor-director is back at Cannes with “The Homesman,” an adaptation of the novel by Glendon Swarthout, and while ‘Three Burials’ certainly nodded at the Western, this is the full-fat version, full of settlers and pioneers and wagons and Indians. It...

What more is there for Tommy Lee Jones to do with a Westernc We have seen him in a cowboy hat on screen so much it is almost part of his head. To my surprise, Jones has not made a film as a director set in the Old West since the 1995 TV movie The Good Old Boys, which I have not seen. I have seen his last two films, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and HBO's The Sunset Limited, and I have come to the conclusion Jones is a very underrated director. He knows how to expertly pace a scene to bring about the maximum amount of tension. This is particularly evident in The Sunset Limited, where he and Samuel L. Jackson talk for ninety minutes, and every second of it is riveting. For his latest film, The Homesman, Jones tries to make a traditional, epic Western centered on a strong woman.

Having received a warm reception at Cannes 2014 in May, The Homesman will be hitting theaters stateside in a prime awards season spot - November 14th.

In his Variety’s review, critic Peter Debruge wrote, the film is a “sturdy cross-country Western.”

The Homesman stars Academy Award-winners Tommy Lee Jones and Hilary Swank, with a supporting cast featuring Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter, Tim Blake Nelson, Academy Award-nominees John Lithgow and Hailee Steinfeld, James Spader and Academy Award-winner Meryl Streep.

When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task of saving them falls to the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank). Transporting the women by covered wagon to Iowa, she soon realizes just how daunting the journey will be, and employs a low-life drifter, George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones), to join her.

The unlikely pair and the three women (Grace Gummer,...

Known for roles in a variety of features such as Coal Miner’s Daughter, Natural Born Killers, and No Country For Old Men, actor Tommy Lee Jones stepped behind the camera for the big screen for the first time in 2005 with The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. For his next feature, Jones will be pulling triple duty, as he not only directed the feature, he also stars in it and has written the screenplay. Titled The Homesman, the movie revolves around two people in the Old West who work together to transport three insane women across dangerous terrain. Joining Jones onscreen is Hilary Swank, Meryl Streep, and John Lithgow, and the movie is set to open in limited release in American theatres on November 14, and screen at the Toronto International Film Festival. A new trailer for the movie has now been released, focusing on the relationship between the leads and...

The upcoming western The Homesman stars Oscar-winners Tommy Lee Jones and Hilary Swank as, respectively, claims jumper George Briggs and pioneer woman Mary Bee Cuddy – an odd couple who team up to transport three mentally-ill women from Nebraska to a mental hospital in Iowa. Jones also co-wrote the film’s script (based on the novel by Glendon Swarthout) and served as the helmsman. An international trailer for the film released earlier this year, but now a green-band promo (see above) has been unveiled, a couple months ahead of Homesman‘s U.S. theatrical debut.

Homesman marks Jones’ fourth time as director, following after a pair of TV movies (including the Cormac McCarthy play adaptation The Sunset Limited) and his previous theatrically-released feature, the modern-day western-inspired film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. The actor/filmmaker has put together an impressive cast for his latest ...

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As Oscar season picks up, we are beginning to see more trailers for fall films that will most certainly be in the running for the little golden statue. Whether or not Tommy Lee Jones’s upcoming Western The Homesman ultimately makes the cut, its latest trailer makes it look like a breath of fresh air for the always difficult Western genre.

The Homesman stars Hilary Swank as a frontierswoman tasked with taking three insane women (Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, and Sonja Richter) from Nebraska to Iowa, where they will be cared for by a minster and his wife (Meryl Streep). She enlists the aid of claim-jumper and grizzled everyman George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones) to help her brave the wilds and protect the women as they move across the dangerous and desolate landscape.

This latest trailer for The Homesman paints the most complete picture we have seen yet, showcasing the...

Nearly ten years after making the leap to directing with The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Tommy Lee Jones is back behind the camera with The Homesman. (In the interim, he made The Sunset Limited for cable.) The new film is a Western, like the last one was, but of a very different type. Hilary […]

The post ‘The Homesman’ U.S. Trailer: Tommy Lee Jones Returns to the Director’s Chair appeared first on /Film.

With The Homesman, Tommy Lee Jones follows his directorial debut, the 2005 neo-western The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, with a feminist riff on the same genre. Jones stars alongside Hilary Swank as a drifter who is recruited to smuggle three hysterical women from Nebraska to Iowa. Premiering to mixed reviews at Cannes, the film nonetheless exhibits an interesting inversion of the machismo outlaw, and the helpless damsels in distress, who intimate a threatening aura of their own. Roadside Attractions opens The Homesman on November 14.

With The Homesman, Tommy Lee Jones follows his directorial debut, the 2005 neo-western The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, with a feminist riff on the same genre. Jones stars alongside Hilary Swank as a drifter who is recruited to smuggle three hysterical women from Nebraska to Iowa. Premiering to mixed reviews at Cannes, the film nonetheless exhibits an interesting inversion of the machismo outlaw, and the helpless damsels in distress, who intimate a threatening aura of their own. Roadside Attractions opens The Homesman on November 14.

Composer Marco Beltrami collaborated with director Phillip Noyce to set the tone for the big screen adaptation of The Giver, the beautifully ominous, suspenseful score for director Bong Joon Ho sci-fi thriller Snowpiercer, and Tommy Lee Jones’ Cannes-hit The Homesman.

Beltrami’s new films include the Tom Hardy/James Gandolfini film The Drop and director Roger Donaldson’s latest movie, The November Man, starring Pierce Brosnan, Olga Kurylenko, and Will Patton. Based on Bill Granger’s novel There Are No Spies, the seventh of a thirteen part book series, The November Man centers on an ex-cia operative pitted against his former pupil in a race to find a valuable witness who is hiding from the past, and holds the key to an international conspiracy. Read Jim Batts’ review Here.

Adept to scoring both bone-chilling thrillers (World War Z, The Hurt Locker) and emotive dramas (The Sessions), the Academy Award nominated...

With James Franco’s recent test footage for his not-to-be Blood Meridian film adaptation now online, it’s time to think about what we want from a movie version of the landmark novel. Franco shot that test footage a few years ago and showed it to Scott Rudin, who owns the rights to the novel, but Rudin seems to have turned him down—and should continue to do so.

So Franco, instead, directed another movie adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel: Child of God. The movie comes out this week, and Franco wrote a piece for The Daily Beast explaining...

Haim Saban’s nascent distributor led by Bill Bromiley has struck up a one-off partnership with Roadside Attractions on the Cannes competition entry as the parties plot an awards run.

Tommy Lee Jones’ second outing as feature director will open on November 7 and stars Jones and Hilary Swank alongside Meryl Streep, Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter, Hailee Steinfeld and James Spader.

Saban Films will manage sales across all other Us distribution platforms, pursuant to what is believed to be its long-term focus of digital rights exploitation and day-and-date releases. EuropaCorp handles international sales.

Bromiley and his team are in talks with a studio partner to handle North American theatrical distribution going forward on an anticipated annual slate of eight to 10 films.

The Homesman marked Saban Films’ first acquisition and took place on the Croisette. Saban Films will put up the P&A and Roadside will take care of the disitrbution logistics and consult with Saban on marketing...

Haim Saban’s nascent distributor led by Bill Bromiley has struck up a one-off partnership with Roadside Attractions on Cannes competition entry The Homesman as the parties plot an awards run.

The Homesman, Tommy Lee Jones’ second outing as feature director, will open on November 7 and stars Jones and Hilary Swank alongside Meryl Streep, Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter, Hailee Steinfeld and James Spader.

Saban Films will manage sales across all other Us distribution platforms, pursuant to what is believed to be its long-term focus of digital rights exploitation and day-and-date releases. EuropaCorp handles international sales.

Bromiley and his team are in talks with a studio partner to handle North American theatrical distribution going forward on an anticipated annual slate of eight to 10 films.

The Homesman marked Saban Films’ first acquisition and took place on the Croisette. Saban Films will put up the P&A and Roadside will take care of the disitrbution logistics and consult...

 

The Austin Film Society continues its "Rebel Rebel" series this weekend with a brand new 35mm print of Jamaa Fanaka's 1976 film Emma Mae. Tonight's screening at the Marchesa is free to Afs members, and the movie will play again on Sunday afternoon. Afs is also sponsoring a screening of The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, starring Tommy Lee Jones, on Wednesday night at the Texas Spirit Theater (inside the Bullock Texas State History Museum). It's free for Afs members, as well as Aff, Cine Las Americas and Bullock Museum members. Julio Cedillo and producer Eric Williams will be there for a post-screening Q&A. Head back to the Marchesa on Thursday night for a 35mm print of Truffaut's Jules And Jim. The film is part of this month's Essential Cinema series on films Of World War I. 

Alamo Drafthouse Ritz has programmed a weekend of classic biker flicks to...

When Greg and I recently discussed the Oscar-season potential of the films we've seen thus far at the Cannes Film Festival, we were muted on the prospects for Tommy Lee Jones' western "The Homesman." It's not that the film is beneath consideration. It's heartfelt stuff, beautifully mounted and well acted (particularly by two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank), and has received generally respectable reviews (if few outright raves) from the Croisette critical collective. Any prizes from Jane Campion's jury on Saturday would be a surprise, but that rarely means much either way for the awards season ahead. Rather, it seemed the film might be just a little too low-key -- and, however interesting its female-hysteria premise, too tricky an audience sell -- to secure the backing of a big-name distributor. And that appears to have been the case: where Jones' acclaimed 2005 debut feature "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada...

Every few days, we'll be rounding up some of the latest buzz and reviews coming from the Croisette—our favorite takes from trusted sources on the latest films to make their debut at the 67th Festival de Cannes.

We already have two takes on Abel Ferrara's Welcome to New York here in our Notebook, but here's another worth checking out, from Peter Labuza of The Film Stage. Saint Laurent, the latest film from Bertrand Bonello, is dividing critics. Writing for Sight & Sound, Jordan Cronk claims the film verges on convention but...

"...is a seductive, often hypnotic article of sensuality for the senses. The female form, and the way bodies interact with and are often commodified for their surroundings, are constants. When, in one of the film’s best sequences, the screen is split between runway models descending an ornate stairwell and newsreel images of concurrent wartime atrocities, political protests and the May 1968 riots,...

Tommy Lee Jones rode into town nearly ten years ago with The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, a terrific neo-Western that marked the hangdog, sardonic actor as a director to watch. By contrast, The Homesman is much more traditional Western fare, and while it features another strong performance from Jones, his follow-up isn’t quite in the same league. Though heavy female presence brings to mind Clint Eastwood’s more thematically progressive westerns of the '70s – The Beguiled, Two Mules For Sister Sara – Jones’s film falls frustratingly short of the (admittedly high) bar set by his debut. As a comparison, Robert Duvall’s Get Low is a good benchmark in terms of sentiment and tone, since Jones – famous for his self-professed lack of a sense of humour – is in much lighter mood here. There’s also a slight misdirect, since the film opens not on his claim-jumper George...

Due to some unfortunate circumstances (laptop’s hard drive went kaput), I wasn’t able to update our grid for Day 3, but we’re finally back and will report back daily until the fest’s end. On day 4 of the comp, we saw Tommy Lee Jones return to the fest with his sophomore Croisette feature. He took home Best Director and Best Actor for 2005′s The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and didn’t deviate too far off with another Old West portrait – this one starring Hilary Swank, Meryl Streep and himself. We didn’t get enough grades to (just yet) to make a generalized opinion from our set on The Homesman, but that’ll surely correct itself shortly.

The second film of the day, which got an early screening the night befor,e was among the two true surprise selections of the Main Comp. The Wonders (aka Le Meraviglie...