For busy actor Brian Tyree Henry, a change between projects seems to be as good as a rest
If you ask Brian Tyree Henry about taking time off, he bursts out laughing.
Since breaking out as rapper Paper Boi in the FX series 'Atlanta,' he's become one of the busiest actors in Hollywood. He's worked consistently — with directors including Barry Jenkins, Steve McQueen and Chloe Zhao and big-name actors like Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Hemsworth and Melissa McCarthy. Henry's been nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Tony Award and an Oscar.
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
10 Must-Watch Action Movies on Amazon Prime Video Right Now (June 2025)
Ready to start throwing punches? Maybe you're yearning for an explosion or a death-defying stunt? If you're a (theatrical) adrenaline junkie, then you need to choose a streaming service that has an extensive library of action movies. Watch With Us recommends you check out Amazon Prime Video. In June, we're highlighting some of the classic, groundbreaking movies that have been added to the platform, including one of Tom Cruise's most memorable roles and a 1988 flick starring Bruce Willis that completely changed the game. Buckle your seatbelt, because the action is about to begin. Need more recommendations? Then check out the Best New Movies on Netflix, (HBO) Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime and More, the Best Movies on Amazon Prime Video Right Now, the Best Rom-Com Movies on Netflix Right Now and the 4 Underrated Movies on Netflix in April "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is a cocky Navy pilot with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. He and his radar intercept officer, Lieutenant Nick "Goose" Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards), get the chance to attend the elite Navy Fighter Weapons School, known as "Top Gun." Together, Maverick and Goose compete to be the best in a class of (equally cocky) pilots, including Lieutenant Tom "Iceman" Kazansky (Val Kilmer). Rivalry, romance, and action rule the day in this high-octane film. Filled with gripping aerial combat sequences, the story captures Maverick's journey of personal growth, camaraderie, and facing the ultimate challenges in the sky, making it a thrilling experience for viewers. In addition to incredible action sequences, Top Gun features a killer soundtrack, including Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone" and the Oscar-winning "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin. It's a staple for action fans everywhere. Bruce Willis' 1988 action movie (which also doubles as a Christmas movie, for when that season comes around) is one of his most beloved, and with good reason. Directed by John McTiernan and based on a novel by Roderick Thorp, the film follows NYPD detective John McClane (Willis), who becomes embroiled in a terrorist takeover of Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles during a Christmas party. As the terrorists, led by the charismatic and ruthless Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), take hostages and orchestrate their plan, McClane uses his wit, tenacity, and cunning to thwart their efforts single-handedly. It's one (relatively) ordinary man against a powerful terrorist organization in this groundbreaking thriller, and McClane takes plenty of hits as he attempts to save the civilians. But his resilience and determination to beat the odds are what make him such an exciting protagonist. Die Hard blends suspense, comedy ("Welcome to the party, pal") and explosive action. Willis performed many of his own stunts in this thrilling movie, so if you're a fan of the actor, don't miss him in the role he's still best remembered for. Among the James Bond movies, Spectre is an anomaly. It's not quite as beloved as Casino Royale or Skyfall, but it's not nearly as divisive as Quantum of Solace or No Time to Die. Instead, it's just very good — a Bond movie that's fun and a bit funny, with Craig channeling Roger Moore instead of Jason Bourne. After getting kicked out of MI6 for not following orders, Bond goes on a mission to infiltrate a secret terrorist organization known only as Spectre. But the secrets that Bond uncovers may be too big for even him, and he'll need the help of his old spy pals Q (Ben Whishaw), Monneypenny (Naomie Harris) and a new M (Ralph Fiennes, taking over from Judi Dench) to stop Spectre and its mysterious leader, Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), from taking over the world. The Mission: Impossible franchise is almost 30 years old, and each subsequent entry still can't match the original's irresistible combination of paranoid thriller and action spectacle. The Brian De Palma-directed movie remains the series' best due to a stacked international cast, still-impressive special effects and a fun story that doesn't make a lick of sense. After most of his team is killed during a botched mission and all the blame is pinned on him, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) goes into hiding and recruits other disreputable spies to help him clear his tarnished name. That's easier said than done, as whoever engineered the plot to frame Ethan also wants him dead. Can Ethan's rogue IMF team find the culprit and restore his reputation? Any reputable action movie list has to have a Liam Neeson film, and fortunately, In the Land of Saints and Sinners is one of the actor's best. Neeson stars as Finbar Murphy, a veteran contract killer who is looking to quit. His retirement is on hold when he discovers that a young girl in his Irish village is being sexually abused by her uncle. He kills him, but that man belonged to the IRA and one of its leaders, Doireanne (Kerry Condon), doesn't like it when someone kills one of her boys. In the Land of Saints and Sinners could've been a cheesy Assassins knockoff, but because it's set during the Troubles, the film has a more serious tone than its action movie brethren. Finbar loathes what he's done for a living, and Neeson expertly conveys the man's disgust with himself and others like him. After seeing his village burned down and his mother killed by corrupt police chief Rana (Sikandar Kher), Kid (Jatin Malik as Young Kid, Dev Patel as the older version) vows revenge. Years later, Kid works as an underground fighter to get closer to Rana, but after his failed assassination attempt, he'll have to ally himself with the criminal underworld to avenge his mother and stop Rana for good. Although Monkey Man's plot is your stock revenge tale, the film's visual style and on-location shooting in Indonesia sets it apart from the others. The movie embraces vibrant color and loud, thumping beats, and Patel, who also cowrote and directed the film, is an unexpectedly effective action hero. Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is a forensic accountant for criminals who uncovers suspected theft by examining their financial records. When he's hired by Lamar and Rita Blackburn (John Lithgow and Jean Smart) to investigate potential fraud in their robotics company, he soon encounters various hitmen trying to prevent him from finding the culprit. Fortunately for Christian, and to the detriment of everyone else, this accountant also knows his way around a gun and will find the truth no matter what. Released in 2016, The Accountant was a big enough hit to warrant a long-delayed sequel in 2025. Affleck is good as the autistic Christian, who doesn't want to use violence unless it's absolutely necessary. Anna Kendrick shows up as a peppy fellow accountant unaware of Christian's extracurricular activities, and Lithgow is appropriately shady as the CEO who knows more than he's letting on. Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a meteorologist who used to chase tornadoes before a traumatic incident forced her to quit. Five years later, she's persuaded by her friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) to do what she does best: cover dangerous storm systems and potentially save lives. But this time, she'll have to team up with charismatic YouTuber Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) to overcome her past trauma and somehow make it out alive. Twisters is a quasi-sequel to 1996's Twister (none of the original actors make an appearance), but it has the same qualities that made that movie so appealing: two charismatic lead actors, a straightforward narrative and realistic special effects. The movie is good old-fashioned summer blockbuster fun, and it doesn't pretend to be anything else. Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is a veteran Hollywood stuntman desperate for work. When his ex-girlfriend, film director Gail Meyer (Emily Blunt), hires him for her new action movie, Colt thinks his fortunes have improved. But when the film's lead star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), mysteriously disappears, it's up to Colt to find out what happened to him to save Gail's movie — and maybe rekindle their romance. Based on a 1980s TV series few people remember, The Fall Guy is a breezy, lightweight action-comedy that is like Romancing the Stone but with a little more violence. Gosling and Blunt have indelible chemistry together, and the stunts are legitimately impressive. It's the rare movie that will please both rom-com fans and action movie bros alike. Before there was Alan Ritchson in Reacher, there was Tom Cruise in the two Jack Reacher movies. Those films were modest hits, but because the 5 '7 Cruise wasn't as tall or big as the book version of the character, they were dismissed by some as not worthy. But Cruise excels at action, and he's really good in the Jack Reacher sequel, Never Go Back. When Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders) is charged with the murder of two Army soldiers, Reacher believes she's innocent and the victim of a cover-up. When Reacher is himself framed for the murder of Turner's lawyer, he teams up with her to escape prison and find whoever is behind the conspiracy.
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
Peter Brown rebooted ‘The Wild Robot' for the preschool set. His underlying message remains
There are rare moments in the culture when a children's book resonates with everyone. Parents who buy the book for their kids find themselves moved by a story that is not intended for them but somehow speaks to them. Peter Brown's 'The Wild Robot' is one such book. A tender-hearted fable about a robot who washes ashore on a remote island and goes native, the 2016 middle-grade novel from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers has spawned two sequels and last year's hit (and Oscar-nominated) adaptation from DreamWorks Animation, with book sales for the series topping 6.5 million worldwide. Brown has now created a picture book titled 'The Wild Robot on the Island,' a gateway for those still too young to read the original work. 'This new book gave me a chance to create these big, colorful, detailed illustrations, while still maintaining the emotional tone of the novel,' says Brown, who is Zooming from the Maine home he shares with his wife and young son. 'I've added some little moments that aren't in the novel to give younger readers an introduction and when they're ready, they can turn to the novel.' The new book's mostly-pictures-with-some-words approach is a return to Brown's earlier work when he was creating charming fables for toddlers about our sometimes fraught, sometimes empathetic attitude toward nature. In 2009's 'The Curious Garden,' a boy encounters a patch of wildflowers and grass sprouting from an abandoned railway and decides to cultivate it into a garden, while 2013's 'Mr. Tiger Goes Wild' finds the title character longing to escape from the conventions of a world where animals no longer run free. This push and pull between wilderness and civilized life, or wildness versus timidity, has preoccupied Brown for the duration of his career, and it is what brought Brown to his robot. 'I was thinking about nature in unlikely places, and the relationships between natural and unnatural things,' says Brown, a New Jersey native who studied at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design. 'And that led to the idea of a robot in a tree.' Brown drew a single picture of a robot standing on the branch of a giant pine tree, then put it aside while he produced other work. But the image wouldn't let him go: 'Every couple of months, I would think about that robot.' Brown began researching robots and robotics, and slowly the story gestated in his mind. 'Themes began to emerge,' says Brown. 'Mainly, the idea of this robot becoming almost more wild and natural than a person could be. That was so fascinating to me that I wanted to let this thing breathe and see where it took me.' Brown knew the involved narrative he had imagined wouldn't work in picture book form; he needed to write his story as a novel, which would be new territory for him. 'When I pitched the idea to my editor, she basically said, 'Pump your brakes,' ' says Brown. 'If I was going to write, I had to include illustrations as well. The publisher thought it was a bit of a risk. They wanted pictures in order to sell it, because of what I had done in the past.' Brown locked himself away out in the wilds of Maine, in a cabin with no Wi-Fi, and got down to it. 'I was nervous, and my editor wasn't sure, either,' says Brown, who cites Kurt Vonnegut as a literary influence. 'I realized there was no other option but for me to do it. And once I got into it, I had a blast.' Like all great fables, Brown's story is deceptively simple. A cargo ship full of robots goes down in the middle of the ocean. Some of these robots, still packed in their boxes, wash ashore on a remote island. A family of otters opens one such box, which turns out to be Roz, Brown's wild robot. As Roz explores this strange new world, she encounters angry bears, a loquacious squirrel and industrious beavers, who regard her as a malevolent force. But the robot's confusion, and the animal's hostility, soon dissolve into a mutual understanding. Roz is the reader's proxy, an innocent who acclimates to the complex rhythms of the natural world. Eventually she is subsumed into this alien universe, a creature of nature who allows birds to roost on her chromium shoulder. 'Roz has been programmed to learn, but her creators, the men who built her, don't expect her to learn in this particular way,' says Brown. 'And so she uses that learning ability to mimic the animals' behavior and learns how to communicate with them. Roz is the embodiment of the value of learning, and part of that is adapting, changing, growing.' The story isn't always a rosy fairy tale. There are predators on the island; animals are eaten for sustenance. Real life, in short, rears its ugly head. 'It gets tricky. Life is complicated, right?', says Brown. 'But thanks to Roz's influence, all the animals discover how they are all a part of this interconnected community.' Roz adopts an abandoned gosling that she names Brightbill, and the man-made machine is now a mother, flooded with compassion for her young charge. Their relationship is the emotional core of Brown's series. At a time when the world is grappling with the increasing presence of robotic technology in everyday life, Brown offers an alternative view: What if we can create robots that are capable of benevolence and empathy? Roz reminds us of our own humanity, our capacity to love and feel deeply. This is why 'The Wild Robot' isn't just a kid's book. It is in fact one of the most insightful novels about our present techno-anxious moment, camouflaged as a children's book. 'Technology is a double-edged sword,' says Brown. 'There's obviously a lot of good that is happening, and will continue to happen, but in the wrong hands it can be dangerous.' He mentions Jonathan Haidt's bestselling book 'The Anxious Generation,' and Haidt's prescriptions for restricting internet use among children, which Brown endorses. 'I don't have a lot of answers, but I just think we need to reinvest in our own humanity,' he says. 'We have to make sure things are going in the right direction.' In subsequent books, the outside world impinges on Roz's idyll. 'The Wild Robot Escapes' finds Roz navigating the dangers of urban life and humans with guns, while a toxic tide in 'The Wild Robot Protects' leaves the animals scrambling for ever more scarce resources. None of this is pedantic, nor is it puffed up with moral outrage. Brown knows children can spot such flaws a mile away. Like all great adventure tales, Brown's 'Wild Robot' stories embrace the wild world in all of its splendor, without ever flinching away from it. 'In the books, I just wanted to acknowledge that the world is complicated, and that people we think are bad aren't necessarily so,' says Brown, who is currently writing the fourth novel in the 'Wild Robot' series. 'Behind every bad action is a really complicated story, and I think kids can handle that. They want to be told the truth about things, they want to grapple with the tough parts of life.'
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
How Jon Bernthal Became Hollywood's Most Dependable Bruiser
When Jon Bernthal was cast as a petty drug dealer in 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' Martin Scorsese's 2013 white-collar crime epic, the actor wasn't even supposed to have many lines. But Bernthal went into that film intending to take his shot. So he came in for a wordless B-roll scene in which the script had him lifting weights in a backyard, asked the second-unit director to mic him and riffed for 45 minutes. Scorsese wasn't there that day, but here's what he saw in the footage: a shirtless Bernthal curling dumbbells, tormenting some teenage boys with a baseball bat and peacocking his virility. 'Bring some of them chicks around here sometime,' he says. Then Bernthal makes a brilliant little decision about his tough guy's whereabouts. 'Hey, Ma, we got chicken or what?' he yells toward the house. 'Ma!' There was no 'Ma' in the script. No one even said he lived with his mother. The role introduced Bernthal as an excellent character actor. Since then, he has become the guy who shows up onscreen unexpectedly, delivers the most memorable performance in a scene or two and then vanishes. This is perhaps why he's so often playing dead men in flashbacks. He's the dramatic center of gravity in FX's 'The Bear,' appearing just once or twice per season as the deceased family patriarch, and the tragic romantic in the 2017 Taylor Sheridan film 'Wind River.' Bernthal was so good in 'The Accountant,' an improbable 2016 Ben Affleck-led movie about an autistic accountant turned gunslinger, that the filmmakers made this year's sequel a two-hander. Bernthal has had leading roles too, most notably in 'We Own This City,' the HBO miniseries about Baltimore police corruption in which the actor's performance was criminally overlooked. But for the most part, he has carved out a career of supporting roles. So it made perfect sense when he told me that one of his favorite movies is 'True Romance,' Tony Scott's 1993 adaptation of Quentin Tarantino's first script. Christian Slater may have been the lead, but it was the supporting characters played by Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt and Dennis Hopper who stole the film. 'There are so many people who are in it for a scene or two,' Bernthal said, 'but you could have made a movie about any one of those characters.' We were having breakfast in Ojai, Calif., where Bernthal lives. The previous day, he returned from New York where he was promoting 'The Accountant 2.' Before that he was in Greece and Morocco, filming a role in 'The Odyssey' with Christopher Nolan, which is perhaps the greatest honor that can be bestowed on a dramatic actor these days. In front of him was a pile of egg whites, spinach, fruit and gluten-free toast. 'I'm like a gorilla,' he said. 'I eat a lot.' Most actors, once they get lead roles, are advised to turn down anything smaller. But Bernthal is allergic to strategizing about how to become a leading man or listening to agents and managers who want to find him a 'star vehicle.' The only real mistake he made in his career, he told me, happened because he let that sort of thinking get in his head. But he has switched agents since then. He knows he has become the guy who everyone calls for a favor, but then again 'The Bear' was a favor. And that turned into one of the most rewarding experiences of Bernthal's career. The intensity he brought to the role won him an Emmy, and now he has even co-written an episode in the upcoming season. 'I can't imagine deciding what you're going to do in this super-tenuous field while being so dependent on some businessman's strategy,' he said. Image Jon Bernthal, right, with Jeremy Allen White and Abby Elliott in the 2023 episode of 'The Bear' that earned him an Emmy. Credit... Chuck Hodes/FX, via Everett Collection Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
