Moviefone Editorial

Tag: dane-dehaan

  • What Movies Are Out: Fist Fight, A Cure for Wellness

    A Cure for Wellness
    A Cure for Wellness

    What Movies Are Out – Fist Fight and A Cure for Wellness

    A variety of scares await audiences at the box office this weekend, from Ice Cube‘s menacing glare in the comedy “Fist Fight” to hide-your-eyes shocks in the horror flick “A Cure for Wellness,” and Made in Hollywood has all the behind-the-screen details in this week’s episode.

    On the receiving end of much of Cube’s patented intimidation was costar Charlie Day, who wonders whether the rapper-turned-actor was born with that mean look.

    “You think he came out scowling?” Days jokes to Made in Hollywood reporter Patrick Stinson. “It was intimidating. The stuff that we had to do face-to-face, I had a hard time looking him in the eye and keeping a straight face. But he can just lock own that scowl and stare you down.”

    More movie scares come from “A Cure for Wellness,” described by star Dane DeHaan as “the kind of movie that will have a ton if different reactions. I think it’s the kind of movie that, yes, they’ll be terrified, yeah, they will go on this wild ride.”

    Director Gore Verbinski tells reporter Damaris Diaz where he finds the frights.

    “For something to be scare it has to tap into the: What is it about us? What’s a contemporary fear? Why are we vulnerable to the pharmaceutical industry?” he says.

    And if all goes according to plan, says costar Jason Isaacs, “You’ll go on a journey full of dread and creepiness and fear and surprise and shock, and by the end you’ll have one of those big experiences like a workout.”

    Now in its 12th season and airing every week in syndication across the United States, Made in Hollywood takes you to the set with directors, writers and producers, gives you an inside look at what’s new in theaters and on the home screen, and shows how special effects and tech wizards pull off their complex magic to bring the biggest blockbusters to life. Made In Hollywood is produced and distributed by Connection III Entertainment Corp.

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  • ‘A Cure for Wellness’: Gore Verbinski, Dane DeHaan Reveal First 35 Minutes of the Movie

    Dane DeHaan in A CURE FOR WELLNESS“It’s gonna f*ck you up.” That’s how director Gore Verbinski teased “A Cure for Wellness” to a theater full of press in New York City earlier this month. “We want to do what ‘Jaws’ did to a day at the beach for the health spa.”

    Much was still unknown about the horror-thriller when the first preview debuted, except for a basic premise: Dane DeHaan, who co-leads Luc Besson’s “Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets,” plays a young executive sent to retrieve his company’s CEO from a mysterious wellness center in the Swiss Alps. Once he arrives, it becomes impossible to leave as he begins to unravel the secrets of the unique treatment and the curious illness that seems to be holding all the patients hostage.

    More answers to the plot of this tale were revealed at the Fox Showcase event, which previewed a few of the studio’s films coming in 2017. In addition to a brand-new trailer, which you can watch for yourself below, attendees viewed the first 35 minutes of the film, which comes across as Verbinski’s take on “Shutter Island.”The film begins with the death of an executive. He’s working frantically at his desk, long after everyone else has left for home, when he clutches his chest in pain. When the feeling persists, he goes to get a drink of water, but that seems to exacerbate the symptoms and he falls to the floor — dead.

    Cut to DeHaan’s Mr. Lockhart, who himself is typing furiously away in a spreadsheet while sitting on a train heading for the Alps and bossing a subordinate on the phone. Present and past blend in flashback as the screen is peppered with striking imagery, highlighting the artistry of cinematographer Bojan Bazelli.

    Lockhart was called in by his bosses at his financial firm. Thinking he’d be congratulated on his recent success, he’s instead called out for his nefarious dealings that could put the entire company at fault. Lucky for him, he’s quick to recognize they have a bigger fish to fry: Mr. Pembroke, their CEO, fled to a wellness center and left behind a letter with a message about a sickness in all of them. Believing him to be unhinged, the executives wants Lockhart to retrieve him so they can put the blame on Pembroke, leaving a spot for him to rise in the ranks.

    As he heads closer to the center, which is deep into the wild of the Alps, we see another flash of his mother, who dies and leaves him alone without a family — meaning, there’s no one who’ll come to check up on him. Lockhart learns from his driver that the center doesn’t have a peaceful relationship with the neighboring town, which seems to view the patients as “wealthy people” who have “wealthy problems.”

    The center itself seems cultish. Verbinksi shot the scenes at a real location called Hohenzollern Castle, in Germany, which stands as a nod to Dracula’s Transylvanian lair. DeHaan further noted how the director wanted him to watch films like “The Shining,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” and “The Tenant” to get into the mood he was trying to achieve.

    The patients are much older and treating the spa as a retreat. Reality begins to blur with more bold imagery — the eye of a deer head hanging on the wall reflects DeHaan’s conversation with one of the facility’s doctors, the spiral staircases and ocular architecture play with perspective, and Lockhart falls into hallucinations as he stumbles through the steam room.

    It all seems to come back to the water. The center specializes in hydrotherapy, and even the doctors are known to consume droplets of something out of vials. When Lockhart is unable to see Pembroke upon arrival, he has his driver take him to his hotel, but along the way a deer runs out in the street and causes the car to tumble down the mountainside.

    “My arm popped out of its socket, real quick, and then popped back in,” DeHaan revealed of that scene, adding, “I just said, ‘You have to use that take.’” And Verbinski did.

    Lockhart wakes up days later in a hospital bed at the center, his leg wrapped in a cast. The head of the spa, played by Jason Isaacs, says he notified his work and they all agree he should recuperate here. There were other, more subtle clues that suggest Lockhart won’t be leaving anytime soon, but the biggest question is what’s in the water?

    After Lockhart takes a drink in his hospital room, he plucks something from the glass: it’s a small, wormy spec — and it’s moving.

    The footage, though intriguing, offers some healthy skepticism. The frame work and cinematography are both gorgeous to bold and foreboding of worse things to come, but some of the hints at what’s to come seem obvious and the resemblance in story to “Shutter Island” are difficult to ignore. At the end of the day, the presentation did it’s job: our interest is piqued.

    “A Cure for Wellness” hits theaters February 17, 2017.

  • The ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’ Trailer Will Blow Your Mind

    It’s very easy to say that something is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, especially since it’s very rare that something (especially a major motion picture) can be all that different. But after watching the trailer for Luc Besson‘s upcoming sci-fi extravaganza “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” it’s very clear that the movie, which opens next summer, will be unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne in Valerian and the City of a Thousand PlanetsIf you’ve never heard of “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” you’ve still probably been exposed to it (at least tangentially) — the French comic books that the film is based on (Jean-Claude Mézières and Pierre Christin) are said to have influenced George Lucas when he was crafting the “Star Wars” series. So, you know, there’s that. Based on this teaser trailer, though, it’s a lot more outrageous, wacky, and fun than anything George cooked up.

    The trailer is brief and mostly dialogue-free. There’s a truly incredible song backing the action that will probably blow your mind when you hear it, but Besson asked that we keep it a secret (for now). But pretty much from the very beginning your jaw will be on the floor. This movie looks like it crams an almost incalculable amount of science fiction-y stuff in it: robots, aliens (dozens of different species), monsters, glittering futuristic cities, spaceships (the main characters’ signature ride was designed with the help of Lexus), characters running on beams of energy, different planets, and, of course, ray guns. There’s one shot that’s looking down towards the city and I swear to god there are flying carpets zooming past. (For those wondering, the majority of the visual effects were split between Weta and Industrial Light & Magic.)Alpha Space Station Docking Bay Extras K-Tron Warriors sets from "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets"You get a sense of the playful, almost-romantic banter between intergalactic peace-keeping agents Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne), without ever getting into the narrative nitty gritty. And almost as eye-popping as the various aliens, spaceships, and robots, is an appearance by a positively radiant Rihanna, who as we all know is so perfect she might as well be an android.

    At the end of the tease comes a very delicious tag line: “A universe without boundaries needs heroes without limits.” Aaaaaand is it Summer 2017 yet?

    After watching the trailer, we mingled with Besson, who was on hand to answer any questions and also to have some wine and cheese with a small assortment of journalist (he’s French, after all!) The filmmaker said of “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” “It’s my dream sci-fi movie.” And there’s a sense that he has been working towards this film his entire career — “The Fifth Element,” which will be 20 years old by the time “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” hits the big screen, felt like an initial stab at this kind of material. It, too, was inspired by French comic books (Mézières was often cited) and had a similarly decadent, larger-than-life aesthetic (those Jean Paul Gaultier costumes!)

    But it’s not just “The Fifth Element” that “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” calls to mind. There’s also echoes of the absurdist humor that ran through things like “Angel-A” and “The Family,” and the kind of harmonious one-love message of his brilliant “Lucy,” which was sort of like Terrence Malick’s contemplative “Tree of Life” but remade as a late-night direct-to-Cinemax action movie. And someone from Besson’s EuropaCorp told us that the original comic books that inspired “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” have largely informed Besson’s entire career, from the way he writes rat-a-tat dialogue between actors to his fascination with a strong female central character.Star Dane DeHaan, director Luc Besson and star Cara Delevingne team up for EuropaCorp's Valerian and the City of a Thousand PlanetsWhen I asked Besson about Alexandre Desplat‘s score for the film (which, honestly, seems like an odd tonal fit considering the composer’s rather somber proclivities), since it was announced that he would be handling the music shortly after leaving similar duties on “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” Besson said he hadn’t heard anything yet. “He starts this week,” Besson explained. So while things that he had been tinkering with for “Star Wars” could end up in the mix for “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” (and given how long Desplat was a part of “Rogue One,” that seems likely), Besson hasn’t heard a note.

    Besson has secured the rights to nine of the comic books in the series and will have a script for the second film by the time “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” hits screens next summer (a trilogy has been fully mapped out, as of now), so if the movie turns out to be as awe-inspiring as the trailer suggests, there should be a lot more from the franchise coming your way very soon.

    But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here; for now let’s all get really excited about “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.” (Between this and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” Summer 2017 is going to be full of really crazy space operas.)

    If two minutes of “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” leaves you borderline speechless, imagine what the whole movie will do.