items tagged with Nicholas Hoult

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

If you had told the 10-year-old me that Hollywood would one day release a series of big-budgeted, serious-minded films based on the X-Men comic books, he probably would’ve done cartwheels for about a week. And if you told that same mini-me that he’d one day grow almost completely apathetic toward this film series, he probably would’ve laughed in your face.

INSOMNIA

In Christopher Nolan’s moody, atmospheric thriller Insomnia, based on a 1997 Norwegian film of the same name, Al Pacino plays Will Dormer, a famed Californian detective now under investigation by Internal Affairs. To escape the surrounding publicity, he and his partner (Martin Donovan) are sent to a remote Alaskan town to investigate the murder of a teenage girl, found beaten to death by a killer who apparently went to great lengths – washing her hair, trimming her fingernails – to maintain the dead girl’s beauty. Dormer finds his suspect relatively early, but after he becomes the catalyst in a tragic shooting accident, Dormer is increasingly haunted by feelings of guilt and remorse – egged on by the endless Alaskan sun, which shines even at night – and finds the tables turned on him; the suspected killer (Robin Williams) has witnessed the shooting, and threatens to end Dormer’s career if he is fingered as the girl’s killer.