Relatively familiar with the gothic tale of obsession with a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake in 19th-century Germany.
Robert Eggers directs this master tale of mystery and horror, starring Bill Skarsgard, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe, Nicholas Hoult and Emma Corin.
Other films directed by Eggers:
The Lighthouse
The Witch
Yorgos Lanthimos directed Kinds of Kindness, which he calls a triptych fable. It begins with the story of a man without a choice who tries to take control of his own life.
A police officer becomes alarmed that his wife, who was missing at sea, has returned and seems like a different person. A determined woman wants to find someone with special abilities who will become a prodigious spiritual leader.
I am sure there is more to the story, but Lanthimos films appear skewed with abbreviated characters. As the reviews appear, the storyline becomes hashed out.
The cast includes Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, and Hunter Schafer.
Other movies by Lanthimos:
The Lobster
Dogtooth
The Killing of a Scared Deer
Vasilis Katsoupis directs Willem Dafoe in the movie Inside. Katsoupis makes his feature debut directing Dafoe. Katsoupis’s documentary My Friend Larry Cus received the Best Documentary Film nomination from the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival 2016.
Inside tells the story of Nemo, an art thief who enters a collector’s penthouse apartment hunting for valuable works of art. As he enters, the security system locks everything down. And then malfunctions. He’s locked inside.
At first, he expects his partner-in-crime to arrive, then the security guards or the police. Or the owner. But no one comes. Then he hopes and prays for a cleaning lady to come. A servant. Anyone. But no one comes. And days stretch out into weeks and months.
He’s locked inside a prison adorned with exquisite, strange, even eerie works of art: works that he both covets and admires but which are now, for him, useless.
Instead, he must use all of his cunning and invention to survive. He must break into all the locked spaces to find all the food and liquid.
The luxury penthouse—this location of perfection and aspiration — has become a prison. A desert island. A torture chamber. And then a place of revelation.
Directed by Robert Eggers, who wrote the screenplay with Sjon, The Northman follows a Viking prince, Amleth, played by Alexander Skarsgard. Amleth’s mission is to revenge his father’s murder, which becomes his journey from a child to an adult.
The movie takes place in Iceland during the turn of the tenth century.
Young Prince Amleth, played by Oscar Novak, is on the cusp of becoming a man when his father, played by Ethan Hawke, is brutally murdered by his uncle, Claes Bang, who kidnaps the boy’s mother, played by Nicole Kidman. Fleeing his island kingdom by boat, the child vows revenge.
Two decades later, Amleth, played by Alexander Skarsgard, is a Viking berserker raiding Slavic villages, where a seeress, played by Bjork, reminds him of his vow to avenge his father, save his mother, and kill his uncle.
Traveling on a slave ship to Iceland, Amleth infiltrates his uncle’s farm with the help of Olga, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, an enslaved Slavic woman — and sets out to honor his vow.
Eggers also directed The Witch, Anya Taylor-Joy’s first movie, The Lighthouse, comes an immersive Viking epic featuring an ensemble cast including Willem Dafoe.
“This is a big, muscular adventure, grander in scale than his previous films,” says Willem Dafoe, who co-starred in The Lighthouse and played the court jester Heimir the Fool in The Northman. “But Robert approaches it with the same kind of detail, creating sets, props and even shots that are made with such precision and care that the pretending on the part of the audience becomes effortless. Inside each shot of this movie, there is a rhythm and a story and a dynamic that’s beautiful on its own. Everything’s there on (the) screen; you don’t simply enter Eggers’ worlds — you get folded into them.”
Written and directed by Paul Schrader, The Card Counter follows William Tell, played by Oscar Isaac. He’s a gambler and former serviceman who sets out to reform a young man seeking revenge on a mutual enemy from their past.
Tell just wants to play cards, and his spartan existence on the casino trail shatters when he is Cirk, played by Tye Sheridan, approaches him. Cirk is a vulnerable and angry young man seeking help to execute his plan for revenge on a military colonel.
Tell sees a chance at redemption through his relationship with Cirk. He tries to gain backing from mysterious gambling financier La Linda, played by Tiffany Haddish.
“La Linda’s game is like pimping without the sex; she has a lot of personality and her job is to make money for her investors,” says Haddish. “I felt as a comedian — since my job is to tickle people’s souls and convince them to go on a journey with me as I tell them a story — that I could bring the necessary charisma and personality to get audiences aboard for this ride.”
“La Linda is vibrant, she has vitality, and she has a life of purpose. William sees all this and finds himself drawn to this strange little trio, including Cirk,” says Isaac. “They become a lifeline or surrogate family for him.”
Tell takes Cirk with him on the road, going from casino to casino until the unlikely trio set their sights on winning the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. But keeping Cirk on the straight-and-narrow proves impossible, dragging Tell back into the darkness of his past.
“My aim is to create a crack in the viewer’s skull, opening up a rift between what they desire and expect of my characters and what they feel after spending time with them,” says Schrader. “How they make that adjustment is up to them, but to get the viewer engaged in this kind of conflict is what every artist seeks. It’s not so important what my viewers think, but that they do think.”
Source: Variety/IMDB/Production Notes
Directed by Abel Ferrara, Tommaso is about a man, played by Willem Dafoe, as an older American living in Rome with his young wife and daughter.
Tommaso is Ferrara’s first dramatic feature film since Pasolini, which Dafoe also starred. Disoriented by his past misgivings and next, unexpected blows to his self-esteem, Tommaso wades through this late chapter of his life with an increasingly impaired grasp on reality as he prepares for his next film.
Directed by seasoned cinematographer Ericson Core and screenplay by Tom Flynn, Togo is about the story of the sled dog, Togo, who led the 1925 serum run but was considered by most to be too small and weak to lead such an intense race.
The movie will leave you feeling good about survival and giving the underdog a chance to prove him or herself.
The adventure movie stars Willem Dafoe, Julianne Nicholson, and Christopher Heyerdahl.
The following four clips are pure entertainment, especially the last one is intense.
Co-written and directed by Julian Schnabel, At Eternity’s Gate is a journey inside the world and mind of Vincent van Gogh, played by Willem Dafoe.
Gogh is a person who, despite skepticism, ridicule and emotional turmoil, created some of the world’s most beloved and stunning works of art.
The movie is not Gogh’s life story but rather vignettes based on Vincent van Gogh’s letters, common agreement about events in his life that present as facts, rumors, and moments that are just plain invented.
Dafoe is meant to play the brilliant but troubled artist. Rounding out the cast are Mads Mikkelsen, Emmanuelle Seigner, Amira Casar, Niels Arestrup, and Oscar Isaac.
The two movie clips get under my skin. I am interested in the movie and look forward to seeing it.
Schnabel other directing talents include The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Before Night Falls, and Basquiat.
The two movie clips show how the movie is formulated, and it more of a revelation than a linear story. The camera work is amazing. I have an interview with the cinematographer on my YouTube Channel.
Here is the second poster, which is not all that different but the first poster. The cast list is larger and on the left side of the poster instead of almost centered. Quotes from reviewers or critics are included as well.
The second trailer shows the magnificent cinematography by Benoît Delhomme, who also shot The Theory of Everything.
The screenplay is co-written by Jean-Claude Carriere, who won an Oscar in 1963 for Best Short Subject, Live Action Subjects sharing it with Pierre Etaix. He also won a BAFTA for Best Screenplay – Adapted for The Unbearable Lightness of Being shared with Philip Kaufman in 1989.
Directed by Kenneth Branagh and based on the novel by Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express arrives again on the silver screen.
As we climb aboard the prestigious train that starts as a lavish train ride through Europe, it quickly unfolds into one of the most stylish, suspenseful and thrilling mysteries ever told.
The movie tells the tale of thirteen strangers stranded on a train where everyone’s a suspect. One man must race against time to solve the puzzle before the murderer strikes again. A veritable director leads them with a stellar cast, including Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley and Josh Gad.