Coster-Waldau, Nikolaj

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    Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Wonders About the Past 2 Million Years

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    The “Game of Thrones” actor, now hosting a documentary series on climate change, is captivated by genetics research, algorithms and tiny art.Nikolaj Coster-Waldau wants people to step away from the abyss when it comes to climate action.“It’s a very difficult balance,” said the Danish actor, who portrayed Jaime Lannister in “Game of Thrones.” “You want to get people aware, you want to inspire change. But I think we’ve gone overboard by making it into this doomsday.”“It’s exhausting for everyone,” he added. “And it’s not quite true, actually.”In “An Optimist’s Guide to the Planet,” a documentary series from Bloomberg Originals, Coster-Waldau meets with scientists, activists and ordinary folks who have developed ingenious solutions to global issues — things like sargassum that captures carbon on St. Vincent, worms that eat plastic in Spain and a zero-waste village in Japan.It’s an insane endeavor, Coster-Waldau said, but he predicts bluer skies ahead.“The biggest resource, and we keep forgetting that, is that we need each other,” he said. “What humans can do when we pull together, it’s incredible.”In a video call from his home north of Copenhagen, Coster-Waldau — who will play William of Normandy in the upcoming “King and Conqueror” series — discussed why George the Poet’s podcast, miniature art and “3 Body Problem” have captured his attention.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Eske Willerslev and His Genetics ResearchWhat he’s doing is understanding who we are by looking back in time. Now they can actually extract DNA from soil samples, so they picked down in northeast Greenland and were able to go back 2 million years. And that means now you can see how this world of ours has changed dramatically many, many times.2‘We, the Drowned’ by Carsten JensenIt’s an amazing novel that I just revisited about Marstal, a small town in Denmark — a seafaring town, a fisherman’s town — and the riders of freight ships from this town. It’s a historical novel, but it’s incredibly well told.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.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. More

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      ‘God Is a Bullet’ Review: Cult, but Not Classic

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      A kidnapping cult regrets making off with a detective’s daughter in this wearyingly unsavory movie.I didn’t count the number of times a woman’s face is smashed — by a fist, a boot, a brick wall — in “God Is a Bullet,” Nick Cassavetes’s first feature in almost a decade. But the misogyny of the movie’s risibly sadistic villains is only one distasteful thread in this sleazy saga of rescue and revenge.Adapted by Cassavetes from Boston Teran’s 1999 novel of the same name, the plot centers on Bob Hightower (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a mild-mannered detective, as he searches for the child-trafficking cult that has murdered his ex-wife and abducted his daughter. Impassive behind a despairing mustache, Bob welcomes the foulmouthed assistance of Case (Maika Monroe), a battle-hardened cult escapee. Case possesses intimate knowledge of the gang’s degenerate leader, Cyrus (a crazy-eyed Karl Glusman), for whom she has sacrificed several teeth and most of her self-respect.The searchers don’t have much of a plan, drifting through the dim rooms and dusty outposts where Cyrus and his acolytes might be found. Jamie Foxx, inexplicably named The Ferryman, is around to provide Bob with tattoos and ammunition, and an almost unrecognizable January Jones appears briefly as a sneering drunk whose pertinence remains vague — at least to anyone as numbed by the film’s viciousness as I was.Coming in at an interminable 155 minutes, “God Is a Bullet” has a punishing implacability. The acting is workmanlike, the settings are often ugly and the special effects — especially a grisly stomach-stapling — can only be described as strenuously specific. For Cassavetes, this may be as far from “The Notebook” as he is ever likely to get.God Is a BulletNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Against the Ice’ Review: Snow Buddies

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      A hard-core first half is deflated by sleepy melodrama and a formulaic script in this adventure film about the Danish explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen.Streaming on Netflix, “Against the Ice” gives the mission to secure Denmark’s claim to Greenland the survival flick treatment, and the explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen a glow up in the form of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (“Game of Thrones”).Though set in the early twentieth century, this Danish production by the filmmaker Peter Flinth has a slick digital sheen that makes the absence of technology feel like an accident. This anachronism looks cheap, and the script by Coster-Waldau and Joe Derrick (based on Mikkelsen’s memoirs) checks all the boxes you might expect from an arctic adventure story — polar bear showdowns, starvation blues, yearning hallucinations of a woman.In other words, it’s perfectly formulaic.The film opens jarringly when a comrade returns to base camp from a failed expedition with his feet grossly frostbitten and swollen like plums, to which the steely Mikkelsen takes a machete. Dashing patriot that he is, Mikkelsen refuses to abandon the cause, though none of his men care to join him aside from Iver Iversen (Joe Cole), a chipper volunteer who doesn’t know what he’s in for.In an effective, if transparently manipulative narrative element, the duo’s sled dogs are the prime casualties, and we witness their ranks whittle down in a variety of horrifying ways. Dog lovers beware: In one scene, a fazed Iversen must sacrifice one of the pups to provide food for the rest. Mikkelsen embodies this unapologetic survival instinct, and he’s not impressed with his sentimental partner.The saintly younger man, however, puts up with his captain when he experiences visions of his girlfriend, and Flinth confusingly skips past swaths of time to cram in more moments of brotherly friction. Disappointingly, this shift from a relatively hard-core first half to a second bogged down by desultory dramatic beats significantly lowers the stakes. It’s a known fact that Mikkelsen and Iversen made it home, but “Against the Ice” doesn’t succeed in making us feel anything when they do.Against the IceNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘A Taste of Hunger’ Review: A Relentless Pursuit of Perfection

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      A husband and wife pour everything into their restaurant in a quest for a Michelin star, heedless of the other dimensions of their lives.In the Danish drama “A Taste of Hunger” infidelity and unyielding ambition threaten to derail the relationship between a married couple of restaurateurs.The kitchen at the heart of the Danish drama “A Taste of Hunger” has none of the warmth of home cooking or jovial dinner parties. Cold blue lights bear down on the restaurant workers as they tend to dressed oysters and fermented lemons. The restaurant, called Malus, in reference to the genus for apples, the original forbidden fruit, seems designed with a minimalism that borders on the brutal.Malus belongs to Carsten (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Maggie (Katrine Greis-Rosenthal), a married couple whose dream is to earn a Michelin star. The movie follows their romance in flashbacks, showing the early sweetness that prevailed before ambition infused their relationship with bitterness.In present-day sequences, the couple faces a crisis after a man they believe to be a Michelin critic is served a spoiled ingredient at their restaurant. Carsten is the head chef at Malus, and Maggie has fallen into a support role, raising their children and managing business. And it is Maggie who makes it her goal to track down the disappointed diner, determined to secure a second shot at a starred review. But Maggie’s quest is complicated by the emergence of Frederik (Charlie Gustafsson), a man with whom she once had an affair. Sensing the couple’s fragility, Frederik is determined to twist their crisis to his benefit.The director Christoffer Boe works to balance the story’s overripe dramatics with images that remain cool even in the heat of the moment. He shows Copenhagen’s spare architecture and the restaurant’s near-medical sterility, emphasizing the geometric order of the world that Carsten and Maggie wreak havoc upon. The effect is a movie that resembles nothing so much as the centerpiece of the Malus menu — a hot dog made with elevated ingredients.A Taste of HungerNot rated. In Danish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More