Dan Stevens - Screen Love Affair

SLA at Fantasia: Cuckoo – Spoiler Free Review

I went into Cuckoo with as little knowledge about it as possible, only really knowing that it starred Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens, and what a wild ride it was! Cuckoo first premiered at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, but Shea and I were lucky enough to catch it for its Montreal premiere at Fantasia. It was a packed house, and a really responsive, engaged crowd, making this a blast to experience. The audible laughs, gasps, and cheers really reminded me how great it is to see a movie with people who love movies. This film is, as I’m sure many reviews will put it, completely cuckoo (I know, I know—I’m sorry). The story follows Gretchen (Schafer), a seventeen-year-old girl, who moves to the German Alps with her father and his new family and begins to experience unsettling things in the small resort town in which they find themselves. I won’t spoil what happens, but the bird-related title may give you some indication, although I would bet you won’t be able to predict exactly where it goes. There are some high-concept ideas that writer-director Tilman Singer is playing with here, and while I don’t think all of them quite cohere, I will say that I was never bored while watching Cuckoo. The movie is a bit all over the place tonally, but it has a sense of oddball style and confidence in its imagery and ideas that I found really refreshing in a horror movie. While Midsommar may have breathed new life into creepy European towns as a setting for horror, the isolated and wooded Bavarian setting here, along with vintage-style costumes and set design, make Cuckoo feel like it was ripped out of another era, in a good way. Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens were by far the biggest highlights for me, though. Stevens gives a riotous performance, complete with silly German accent, as the mysterious and creepy Herr König, stealing scenes left and right. Every time he appears on screen, he’s a joy to watch, and, as he did in Abigail earlier this year, he provided some of the biggest laughs of the night. But, really, this is Hunter Schafer’s movie. If you’ve seen HBO’s Euphoria, you already know she can act her face off in a dramatic role, but it’s great to see her in something even more outside the box. Here, she gets to play a fairly wide range, from teenage angst to bloody desperation, and it’s a delight to see her in a role with plenty of physicality, digging into the genre muck to get bloodied, battered, and bruised—if you’ve ever wanted to see Hunter Schafer as a butterfly knife-wielding final girl, you won’t be disappointed. But she also gets to demonstrate some deadpan comedic chops and gives Gretchen plenty of heart. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but the mix of tones, along with the subject matter (think bird-related reproductive horror?), makes Cuckoo feel pretty unique. Not every idea or creative choice lands, but there are some truly laugh-out-loud moments, alongside some tense atmosphere and body horror, not to mention a beating heart running through it, with a surprisingly tender and affective payoff (there’s one scene in particular that even had me getting a bit misty-eyed). The film is very well-shot, too, with a great soundtrack and excellent use of music and sound design. The pay-off to everything the movie tries to set up and to its unsettling early moments may not be to everyone’s taste. It goes to surprising places and, at the same time, some people will probably feel that it doesn’t really go far enough. What all that means is that the movie also feels like it’s juggling too much. It wants to be an over-the-top creature feature, a disturbing horror/thriller, but also a quirky deadpan comedy and a meditation on grief and parenthood. To its credit, though, the result is a movie that’s dark and disturbing and gross and bloody and tender and funny and weird—in short, it feels quite singular. I can’t deny how fun a ride this was, even if it doesn’t really come together to form a coherent and meaningful whole. But when you’re having this much fun, does that really matter? Verdict Cuckoo – ❤️ Cuckoo is an uneven but undeniably entertaining thriller. There’s gore and gross-outs and blood and scares—but also plenty of laughs and even some tender moments that are surprisingly effective. That the movie can juggle so many different threads and tones, and still (mostly) work, is really a testament to writer-director Tilman Singer and stars Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens. Stevens is always a blast to watch, and he’s absolutely in his element here as an eccentric German resort owner with something to hide. And Schafer gets to bloody her hands as an iconic final girl, complete with a sick bomber jacket and butterfly knife. These elements of style may stand out more than any coherent thematic concerns, but who cares when the pieces are this fun?

Spoiler Free Movie Review Roundup: MaXXXine, Hit Man, The Bikeriders, & More

Reviews / Shea Angus

Adriana and I have been watching more movies than we can write full reviews for, so it’s time for our second ever Review Roundup! These will be shorter than our typical reviews, but will still give you enough information to gauge whether these movies are worth checking out or not. Also, stay tuned for individual reviews for I Saw the TV Glow and Furiosa from Adriana and Thelma and Longlegs from me! Anyways, these movies will appear in order from least enjoyable to the most enjoyable for me. Let’s dive in! The Fall Guy So flat out, I really disliked this movie. It had a good cast and a solid budget but I was less than enthusiastic about the rest of the team. Helming this movie was David Leitch. The best thing Leitch has done as a director was when he co-directed the first John Wick movie with Chad Stahelski. Since they parted ways, Stahelski has continued to make John Wick movies that, at least in my opinion, have consistently gotten better with each entry. Leitch on the other hand has made, what I consider, to be perfectly forgettable slop that you may enjoy enough when you watch it, but you’ll never think of again. The writer didn’t do much to excite me either, as his credits include movies like Hobbs & Shaw and Iron Man 3. This is a movie about a stuntman and is supposed to be a love letter to stunt performers. I will take a quick second here to note that the Academy Awards still do not have a category for stunt performers and this is an egregious omission considering the history and importance of stunt work to cinema. However, what Leitch clearly lacks as a director when compared to Stahelski is the ability to really make stunts in his movies shine. I know from clips that there was significant stunt work required for this movie, but they can’t help but make it look and feel as bland and fake as possible. The real tragedy of this movie though for me is the wasted potential. When it comes to top-tier action cinema these days, it’s coming from the team behind the Mission: Impossible and John Wick films like Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, Christopher McQuarrie, and Chad Stahelski. I would much rather have seen people like them given this budget and cast to make a movie that’s supposed to be a love letter to stunt performers. At least in their hands it would have been pleasant to look at and fun to watch, none of which this movie was. Verdict I will acknowledge that I might be a bit of a “hater” on this and general audiences that did turn out for this seemed to enjoy it more. I really did want to like this one, but there just was nothing noteworthy or special here for me. When Ryan Gosling isn’t even able to make your movie good, that’s a big problem. You may have more fun with this movie than I did, but you won’t remember it after you watch it and there are plenty of better movies out there if you’re looking to kill a couple hours. Arcadian This was another one Ty and I watched together because it featured one of our all time favourite actors, Nicolas Cage. Unfortunately, this one falls into the more forgettable of the bunch. There really isn’t much here to enjoy beyond the creature designs, which are admittedly pretty cool. The child actors are fine too, but I just never got really invested in anything that was happening. The biggest issue for me though is that typically in movies like this, Cage is able to elevate the experience so you can at least have a fun time. Without spoiling anything, Cage is not given much time throughout the movie to do a whole lot. His role could have been played by anyone and the experience would be the same and that should never be true about a role played by Nicolas Cage. Verdict You can definitely skip this one. The reason it doesn’t get a worse score is because this is a really small movie that has at least some redeeming factors, including the creature designs and the serviceable performances. I wanted to like this one more, there just wasn’t enough of anything there for me to really sink my teeth into. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare Have you ever wondered what Inglorious Basterds would be like if it was worse in every conceivable way? Well wonder no more, because this is the movie for you! Does this mean the movie is bad though? Not exactly. Now sure, it’s really unfair to compare this to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, but if you do watch this you will be blown away by just how similar they are narratively. It even has one of the actors from Basterds as the main bad guy in the film! However, if you can let that go, this is a perfectly fine movie. There is a big ensemble cast here including the likes of Henry Cavill and Alan Ritchson who were the standouts here for sure. The movie never really aspires to be more than it is and that’s definitely to its benefit. Nothing really stands out as particularly memorable or exceptional, but there are some fun action scenes and good chemistry from the main cast. Verdict It’s definitely not my favourite Guy Ritchie movie, in fact it’s not even close, but if you just need to throw something on that is fun and you don’t mind it being forgettable, you can do a lot worse than watching Cavill and Ritchson slaughtering some Nazis! Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 Oh boy, where do I start with this one? I guess it makes sense to properly set your expectations. This is perhaps the most “part one” movie ever. To provide a score here is difficult because this is not a complete movie in

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