Tag Archives: Nicholas Hoult

Born Again

Nosferatu

by Hope Madden

It’s a funny idea, revisiting Nosferatu. F. W. Murnau’s 1922 original is itself a reimagining of Dracula (criminally so, as the filmmaker was successfully sued by Bram Stoker’s estate and all prints of the film were believed destroyed at the time).

But Murnau’s changes to the vampire fable and his approach to the story were compelling enough to motivate Werner Herzog to put his own magnificently bizarre spin on Nosferatu in 1979. And the fascination and horror surrounding the forbidden original inspired E. Elias Merhige’s brilliant 2000 horror comedy Shadow of the Vampire (for which Willem Dafoe earned a much deserved Oscar nomination).

So, there is obviously something there. Something in the criminal DNA of Murnau’s macabre fantasy arouses the most fascinating reincarnations. Since the 1922 masterpiece, none is as assured, as complete or as clearly stand-alone from Stoker’s source material as Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu.

In collaboration with longtime cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and The Northman composer Robin Carolan, Eggers conjures an elegant, somber, moody Austria breathlessly awaiting death.

His film pulls in the shadow play that made Murnau’s film so eerie, as well as the plague-infested storytelling that gave Herzog’s film its touch of madness. But Eggers’s script fills in narrative gaps with a backstory that diverts from any previous tellings, enriching characters with a ripe darkness that influences the entire fable.

Eggers centers his tale on a love triangle, as so many have, but he invests in two characters the other storytellers, including Stoker, mainly wasted. Nicholas Hoult (having a banner year) plays Hutter, the intrepid real estate man sent to Transylvania to finalize accounts with an eccentric nobleman, leaving behind his beautiful bride, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp).

Hoult may be the first actor in any version—Nosferatu or Dracula—to give the Hutter/Harker character real depth. He is flawed, terrified, earnest, insecure and loyal. It’s a standout performance in an impeccable ensemble.

Depp mines for something primal, and her performance is unsettling. Isabelle Adjani’s turn in Herzog’s version hints at what obsesses this desperate bride, but Depp is given the space to create a solid, haunted character to hang the movie on.

There are three other characters that every filmmaker has fun with, and Eggers finds ways to freshen up the monster, his minion, and the mad doctor who would be his downfall. Willem Dafoe’s Professor Albin Eberhert von Franz (the Van Helsing stand in) is just manic enough to be alarming.

As Knock (known in Dracula as Renfield), Simon McBurney is a menacing, manipulative lunatic with a far meatier and messier role in society’s unraveling.

Eggers keeps the Count (Bill Skarsgård) shrouded in darkness long enough to build excitement. What the two deliver is unlike anything in the canon. It’s horrifying and perfectly in keeping with the blunt instrument they’ve made of this remorseless monster.

His monstrousness makes the seductive nature of the tale all the more unseemly. This beast, the rats, the stench of contagion infesting the elegant image of Austria and her beautiful bride—it is the stuff of nightmares.  

It makes you grateful that Eggers was not intrigued by Stoker’s elegant aristocrat and his tortured love story, but drawn instead to the repulsive carnality of Nosferatu.

The Hills Have Lies

The Order

by George Wolf

Director Justin Kurzel announced his presence with authority in 2011 via The Snowtown Murders, a debut that showed the Aussie in full command of crafting a true crime story that pulsates with tension and simmering evil.

Kurzel’s setting is now the U.S., but he’s on familiar ground – and delivering similar results – with The Order, based on the violent domestic terror movement profiled in the 1990 book The Silent Brotherhood.

Jude Law is fantastic as Terry Husk, an FBI agent sent to Idaho to investigate a series of violent bank robberies across the Pacific Northwest. With some help from local lawman Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan), Husk becomes convinced that the heists are meant to bankroll the work of domestic terrorists planning to wage a race war and eventually overthrow the U.S. government.

He’s right, of course, and Marc Maron’s early appearance as talk radio host Alan Berg will help jog some memories. The crimes were the work of The Order, a white supremacist group led by Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult, who’s having a helluva year). Mathews broke away from Aryan Nation founder Richard Butler to pursue a more violent agenda, and connecting these two faces of the same evil is just one of the ways Kurzel keeps the history lesson gripping and vital.

“Just be patient,” Butler implores Mathews. “In ten years we’ll have members in Congress. That’s how you make change.”

You bet that line hangs pretty damn heavy in the air, but screenwriter Zach Baylin (King Richard, Creed III) never overplays his ominous hand. The relevance of this case hardly needs a neon sign to mark it, and Baylin and Kurzel favor a more nuanced reflection that can attack the present that much harder.

That’s not to say the film is not intense. Even if you could ignore all the true in these crimes, the procedural and manhunting layers of the story (especially once Jurnee Smollett arrives with FBI backup) make for a compelling thriller on their own. Kurzel engineers some crackling car chases and shootouts, while the entire ensemble – led by Law’s tortured outrage and Hoult’s sociopathic charm – boasts grit and authenticity.

In short, The Order is another example of Kurzel’s skill as a craftsman. He again re-imagines case history with the taut instincts of a narrative storyteller, leaving nothing but hard, compelling truths behind.

Bloody Good

Renfield

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

So, two Robot Chicken writers and the guy who directed The Lego Batman Movie got together and said, I bet they’d let us make a movie if we could get Nic Cage to play Dracula.

I mean, maybe it didn’t go down like that, but it could have and if it did, it worked. They totally made a movie with a very saucy Nic Cage as Dracula. And a saucy Nic Cage is the best Nic Cage.

Through inspired cinematic homages, we’re whooshed through a little backstory. Robert Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult – who played Cage’s son in Gore Verbinski’s 2005 dramedy The Weather Man) is an ambitious real estate agent who sells his soul to Dracula. Fast forward 150 years or so and he’s grown weary of the co-dependent relationship.

The blood sucker’s insatiable appetite means that his reluctant manservant is forever finding a new place for them to lay low. Right now, it’s New Orleans, where an angry cop (Awkwafina) is fighting a losing battle with a corrupt city.

But enough about the story. Honestly, if you’re here for the story, you’ve come to the wrong place. Not that co-writers Ryan Ridley and Robert Kirkman do a poor job. They do a fine job of serving Cage opportunities to ham it up, while director Chris McKay wows with Story of Ricky levels of carnage, except here it’s intentionally funny.

And the blood-splatter here is much more accomplished then Ricky, as it’s woven through a spicy gumbo of action set pieces that mix Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead with a dash of Matrix. But as fun as this all often is, the film never fully commits to any of its multiple directions.

There’s at least one bloody toe in waters that send up rom-coms, satirize narcissistic relationships and homage a classic horror character while it’s also modernizing the themes that built him.

But experiencing Count Nicula alone is worth it. Plus, Hoult is perfect as the put-upon sad boy with access to anti-hero superpowers and Awkwafina can wring plenty of humor from simply telling a guy named Kyle to F-off.

Renfield might be bloodier than you expect, but it’s just as much fun as you’re hoping for. Call it bloody good fun.

Fire Starter

Those Who Wish Me Dead

by Hope Madden

Michael Koryta’s heart-thumping YA adventure tale Those Who Wish Me Dead comes to the big screen. Well, mainly—it’s also on HBO Max—but the mountainous, fiery, wooded adventure is better suited to the largest screen you can find.

Koryta himself adapted his novel, along with co-writers Charles Leavitt (not very good—Warcraft, Seventh Son, In the Heart of the Sea) and Taylor Sheridan (very good—Hell or High Water, Sicario).

It should even out.

Sheridan also directs, dropping a young boy (Finn Little) in a burning forest, hunted by two murderers (Nicholas Hoult and Aiden Gillen), with only Angelina Jolie to help.

She does have a way with children, though.

Jolie’s Hanna Faber is a damaged Hotshot (those firefighters who parachute into forest blazes). She failed her psych eval after those fatalities last season and now she’s stuck in a lonely fire lookout tower miles from anywhere with nothing to keep her company but her own haunted thoughts.

So what I’m saying is, Those Who Wish Me Dead is now about Hanna rather than being about the kid who is wished dead. I just want fans of the novel to be prepared for this.

It’s still a perfectly satisfying if not particularly inspired adventure tale.

Little delivers an emotional blow as the newly orphaned youth who’s trying to be brave, trying to be smart, and sincerely in need of a hug. The biggest issue is simply the way he becomes a side character in his own story.

He’s not as discarded as the couple who run the survival camp (Jon Bernthal and Medina Senghore – though the latter does look glorious riding horseback with her rifle through the flames).

The basic backstory does suit this cinematic vehicle, though, and Jolie proves a charismatic central figure who can sure take a beating. As the bad guys close in from one direction, the fire from the other, Sheridan and team build a perfectly reasonable and structurally sound thriller.

Performances are strong and locations are gorgeous, but Those Who Wish Me Dead doesn’t take a lot of risks and that’s unfortunate.

The Wizard of Meh-nlo Park

The Current War

by Matt Weiner

Isn’t there a rule that you shouldn’t make a movie about a subject that sets itself up for so many electricity-related puns if the final product is going to be so dim?

That’s the fate that befalls The Current War, a diverting but disjointed biopic that relies on an impeccable cast and flashy style to make up for its confused substance.

The bright spot: The Current War is much better than its protracted release history would suggest. After an expected holiday release in 2017, the movie was put on hold after the Weinstein Company imploded when news broke about Harvey Weinstein’s rape allegations.

Two years and a fresh re-cut from director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon later, The Current War briskly takes us through key moments leading up to the competition between Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon, excellent as always but maybe even better suited for Edison—or better still, just playing all the leading weirdos for an even more interesting gonzo edit) to power the Chicago World’s Fair.

The contest was the culmination of the War of the Currents, which pitted the world-famous inventor Edison and his direct current against the alternating current favored by Westinghouse, with an assist from Edison’s former employee and eccentric futurist Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult).

The historical details alone should have made for an unusually exciting biopic. Edison might not deserve the blame for Topsy, but his animal body count is still high enough to start his own abattoir.

But whether it’s the invention of the electric chair or Westinghouse’s (stylized) backstory, the film lacks either the interest or the courage to pursue any of the subplots with any real depth.

Which would be surmountable, but the main action participants suffer the same neglect. As much as The Current War’s quick cuts and glassy sound effects try to ape the frenetic spirit of invention, the film is neutered when it comes to having anything of substance to actually say about these people and the trajectory they put the world on.

That’s a bizarre oversight for a script by Michael Mitnick that at least attempts some hand-waving toward a dark reflection of the very same world we’re now living in over a century later: a Gilded Age redux, the foundational mythmaking that has always been tied up between this country and the Great Men doing what it takes in the name of creation, even the vaporware of Silicon Valley (er, Menlo Park) luminaries.

But how about the powerhouse acting! That distraction alone coupled with the film’s tortuous journey to screens suggests that while The Current War isn’t the most insightful biopic, it has a good claim to the one we deserve at the moment.

Forming the Fellowship

Tolkien

by George Wolf

Better confess right now: the whole Hobbit, Lord of the Rings thing just isn’t my bag. God bless you if you love the books, films and all, but the whole story just leaves me cold.

That’s not to say I can’t respect and admire the incredible imagination of author J.R.R. Tolkien, or the biopic about him that’s full of so much respect and admiration.

But what’s strangely missing in Tolkien is the wonder, the spark of endless creativity so abundant in the author’s expansive literary landscapes.

Writers Stephen Beresford and David Gleeson anchor Tolkien’s pre-Hobbit life in the trenches of WW1. As Officer Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult) searches the battlefield for a boyhood friend, flashbacks fill us in on his upbringing as an orphan adopted into wealth.


With an eye on “changing the world through the power of art,” Tolkien forms a “Dead Poets” – type secret society with his mates at Oxford, where he impresses esteemed language professor Joseph Wright (Derek Jacobi in a wonderful cameo) as well as the lovely Edith Bratt (Lily Collins).

Both Hoult and Collins are committed and pleasing, but the courtship becomes just another informative but less-than-engrossing leg the film stands on.


Though director Dome Karukoski keeps things well-assembled and plenty reverent toward his subject, this film never quite conveys the spirit of inspiration it seeks to celebrate. With a frustrating lean toward safety over enlightenment, Tolkien turns an ambitious quest into a rather pedestrian journey.

Something’s Up with Jack

By Hope Madden

Have you ever wanted to see a nose so big you might be swallowed whole by its gaping pores? In 3D, no less? Director Bryan Singer (X-Men) hopes so, because he means to shake up our chilly moviegoer blahs with an enormous adventure filled with ill-tempered, poorly groomed giants. It’s Jack the Giant Slayer, Singer’s attempt to cash in on teen romance, 3D, and the dearth of late winter entertainment.

The story veers a bit from the nursery school fable, in that there’s an adventurous princess, a back stabbing egomaniac suitor, a crown made of giant heart, and no golden goose at all. Plus, there are an awful lot more giants than I remember.

Wisely, Singer sees the opportunity for medieval battle on a grand scale. Like a giant scale. And once we finally get to some action, the film’s a lot of fun. But beware: its prelude is a long slog.

Singer’s first foray into the third dimension bores. Giants look like unconvincing cartoons, the views are nice but not spectacular, and the action sequences – though entertaining – benefit in no way from the technology.

Nicholas Hoult finished Twilight-ing zombies for Warm Bodies just in time to pull that same shit with this old fairy tale. While he’s a very likeable soul, he brings too little energy or magnetism to the screen.

A sly Ewan McGregor, on the other hand, charms as the princess’s main guardian, his ever wackier hairstyle (who knew so much product was available in days of yore?), captivating smile and over-the-top gallantry injecting the flick with some much needed vibrancy.

The great Stanley Tucci finds himself underused – a particular shame because he makes such a great villain, and his comic timing could have helped the film find more enjoyable footing. Also underutilized is Bill Nighy, voice of one of evil giant General Fallon’s heads. Plus, the usually wonderful Ian McShane just looks silly in that suit of gold armor.

Singer’s pace is leaden, and his patchwork script puts off action far too long to keep your attention. The film’s slightly too violent and far too slow for very young viewers, yet too earnest and lumbering for anyone else. The FX can’t even impress.

There’s nothing especially awful about Jack the Giant Slayer (though, I, for one, was hoping for a slightly different ending). Maybe Hollywood thought that good was enough for late winter at the movies.

2 stars (out of 5)