Stevens, Dan (1982- )

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares179 Views

    ‘Cuckoo’ Review: Never Has a Movie Been More Aptly Named

    by

    Dan Stevens and Hunter Schafer face off in this unexpectedly fun and undeniably nutty horror-comedy about cross-species pollination.“Is this normal?” a bewildered hotel guest in “Cuckoo” inquires after witnessing a fellow guest stagger, vomiting, into the lobby. Viewers might be wondering the same thing about a movie whose title could reveal as much about the sensibility of its director as the nature of its plot.Possessed of a singular, at times inexplicable vision, the German filmmaker Tilman Singer proves once again — after his experimental debut, “Luz” (2019) — that he’s more drawn to sensation than sense. Liberated from logic, his pictures dance on the border between bewitching and baffling, exciting and irksome. Sidling several steps closer to an identifiable plot, “Cuckoo” flaps around Gretchen (an excellent Hunter Schafer), a grieving, unsettled 17-year-old whose mother has died and whose father (Marton Csokas) has brought her to live with his new family in a resort in the Bavarian Alps.From the moment she arrives, nothing seems quite right. Missing her mother and her life in America, Gretchen is slow to connect with her brisk stepmother (Jessica Henwick) and her much younger half sister, Alma (Mila Lieu), who is mute and suffers from unexplained seizures. Adding to Gretchen’s uneasiness is the resort’s touchy-feely owner, Herr König (Dan Stevens), who seems weirdly fixated on Alma. Strange screechings fill the woods, and a frightening figure in white appears to be stalking Gretchen as she walks home from her job at the resort’s reception desk. Maybe that switchblade we saw her unpack will come in handy, after all.A tale of human-avian experimentation with phantasmagoric flourishes, “Cuckoo” is unsubtle and frequently unhinged. The narrative may be blurred, but the mood is pure freak show, and Stevens, bless him, immediately grasps the comic possibilities of the movie’s themes and the nuttiness of his character. Reprising his flawless German accent from the charming 2021 sci-fi romance “I’m Your Man,” he gives König a seductive creepiness that’s less mad scientist than horny ornithologist. Obsessed with replicating — in unspeakable ways — the breeding behaviors of the titular bird, König requires the cooperation of willing young women. Gretchen is not eager to become one of them.Shooting on 35-millimeter film, Paul Faltz, backed by Simon Waskow’s whining, fidgety score, leans into the surreality of Gretchen’s predicament with bizarre close-ups. Ears jerk and twitch in response to mysterious calls; throats flutter with a rapid, stuttering pulse; slimy secretions are passed from one woman to another. And as the resort’s dangers escalate and Gretchen’s injuries multiply, the film’s bonkers, body-horror ambitions become the means by which she will overcome her grief and heal her emotional dislocation.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

    More stories

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Dan Stevens and the Allure of Kooky Characters

      by

      Despite his “Downton Abbey” roots, the co-star of “Godzilla x Kong” and “Abigail” likes the kind of role “that makes the filmmaker smile.”The kookiest characters onscreen this season may be the ones played by Dan Stevens.This batch of charismatic weirdos joins the collection of peculiar roles he has amassed since the 2014 thriller “The Guest,” his post-“Downton Abbey” breakthrough. Stevens, 41, lands somewhere between leading man and character actor, and he revels in the mischievous tone required for these offbeat parts, some of which he describes as “funcomfortable.”Right now in theaters he can be seen as a winning monster veterinarian in “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” and as a corrupt cop turned bloodsucker in the horror comedy “Abigail.” This summer, he will appear in “Cuckoo,” a sci-fi horror mash-up set in the Alps, in which he plays a German scientist whose welcoming facade hides a fascination with a bizarre endangered species.Stevens with Rebecca Hall and Kaylee Hottle in “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.”Legendary EntertainmentStevens, who is British, recently spoke with The New York Times over coffee in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. He wore a long-sleeved T-shirt bearing the defining image of “The Holy Mountain,” Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 cult classic: a man seated and wearing a pointed hat, framed by two women. During the interview, Stevens talked about his interest in genre movies and why his goal is always to make a director laugh. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.I have to ask about your “Holy Mountain” shirt. That’s a great, trippy midnight movie.I’m a huge fan of Jodorowsky. He’s a true visionary dreamer. I absolutely love filmmakers who present you with unforgettable imagery. He’s a common touchstone with a lot of great filmmakers I admire. 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

    • 63 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Abigail’ Review: Horror by Numbers

      by

      In this cheerfully unambitious vampire movie, a bloodsucker is shut up in an old mansion with some nitwit criminals. Will there will be gore? You bet.A cheerfully obvious splatterthon, the new horror movie “Abigail” follows a simple, time-tested recipe that calls for a minimal amount of ingredients. Total time: 109 minutes. Take a mysterious child, one suave fixer and six logic-challenged criminals. Place them in an extra-large pot with a few rats, creaking floorboards and ominous shadows. Stir. Simmer and continue stirring, letting the stew come to a near-boil. After an hour, crank the heat until some of the meat falls off the bone and the whole mix turns deep red. Enjoy!That more or less sums up this movie, a horror flick that’s serviceable enough to make you occasionally giggle or flinch, yet is also so aggressively unambitious that it scarcely seems worth griping about. It centers on the kidnapping of the title character (a fine Alisha Weir), an outwardly self-possessed 12-year ballerina who’s snatched one night by a half-dozen genre types. A formulaically diverse cohort of underworld bottom feeders (played by Dan Stevens, among others), these Scooby-Doo-ish chuckleheads come with divergent skills, histories and expiration dates, and are largely tasked with padding the reed-thin story and dying horribly.The filmmakers — it was written by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick, and directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett — have outfitted the story with the usual particulars. Much of the movie unfolds inside a sprawling labyrinthine mansion that looks like it was imagineered by an amusement park designer who scanned some old horror movies while thumbing through picture books on the history of the European aristocracy. There are suits of armor flanking the front door, a bearskin rug on the floor, an empty coffin tucked in a corner and oddly, given the genre circumstances, some fresh garlic in an otherwise derelict kitchen.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

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘I’m Your Man’ Review: Living Doll

      by

      Dan Stevens plays a dreamy, pleasure-driven android in this delightful near-future romance.“Your eyes are like two mountain lakes I could sink into” is a compliment most women would be disinclined to take umbrage at. But Alma (Maren Eggert) is not most women: A prickly scientist and cuneiform expert, she’s interested neither in flattery nor the man who’s delivering it. His name is Tom (Dan Stevens), he’s gorgeous, and he’s available. He is also a robot.Inspired by a short story by Emma Braslavsky, “I’m Your Man” is a cool and clever sci-fi love story. Alighting on weighty questions with disarming playfulness, the script (by the director, Maria Schrader, and Jan Schomburg) never overreaches. Alma is lonely, but not desperate; brisk, but not unromantic. (She sees poetry in the ancient texts she’s studying). So when she’s asked to test-run a synthetic soul mate in exchange for a donation to the Berlin museum where she works, she reluctantly agrees.More gentle and droll than joke-a-minute, “I’m Your Man” — like the excellent TV series “Humans” — muses over the barriers to human-android partnerships. Tom, like much of the internet, is algorithmically designed to give Alma increasing amounts of what she likes; yet her exasperation over these attentions is as confusing to her as to him. Flirting, we learn, is the most difficult skill to program, but adjusting for human cussedness must run a very close second.Edging now and then into the surreal, this unusual and tender little movie gingerly interrogates the gulf between digital and biological wiring. Stevens, speaking fluent German, is fabulous, giving the character unexpected depth and delicacy. Tom can quote Rilke and dance the rumba, whip up brunch and a rose-petal bath, but so what? He had me at those mountain lakes.I’m Your ManRated R for cross-life-form canoodling. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Blithe Spirit’ Review: Dead, but Not Loving It

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Blithe Spirit’ Review: Dead, but Not Loving ItDan Stevens stars as a writer taunted by the ghost of his dead wife in this grating adaptation of the 1941 play.Dan Stevens and Leslie Mann in “Blithe Spirit.”Credit…Rob Youngson/IFC Films Feb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETBlithe SpiritDirected by Edward HallComedy, Fantasy, RomancePG-131h 35mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.A comedy that’s more screw-loose than screwball, Edward Hall’s “Blithe Spirit,” a ludicrous adaptation of Noël Coward’s 1941 stage play, reimagines its source material as little more than a slip-and-fall farce.Dan Stevens stars as Charles, a near-parody of a blocked writer who’s introduced literally eating the words he has just typed. Commissioned to write a screenplay of one of his best-selling novels, Charles is desperate: Bedeviled by bedroom dysfunction (“Big Ben’s stopped chiming,” he whines to a friend), he hopes to find inspiration by inviting a disgraced psychic (Judi Dench) to host a séance in his imposing Art Deco mansion.[embedded content]What gets released, though, is not what Charles expects as the ghost of his first wife, Elvira (Leslie Mann), killed in a riding accident years earlier, moves in and takes umbrage at her replacement (Isla Fisher). Elvira, visible only to Charles and the audience, and blessed with a well-stocked ghostly wardrobe, is anything but blithe: Wrecking the garden and throwing knives at the help, she proves as hard to get rid of — and about as entertaining — as black mold.Propelled by tiresome characters and tortured setups, “Blithe Spirit” (originally filmed by David Lean in 1945) is a dated curiosity. Merging upper-crust twittery with hocus-pocus nonsense not even Dench can sell, the dialogue encourages Elvira to nag and everyone to over-emote. Surplus buffoonery and a new ending add nothing to the original, leaving us with a movie that obsesses over death while showing all too few signs of life.Blithe SpiritRated PG-13 for spiked drinks and saucy dialogue. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play and Vudu. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More