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Though he’s had a busy year having been featured in “The Garfield Movie,” “The Order,” “Juror #2,” and Robert Eggers’ reimagining of “Nosferatu,” Nicholas Hoult still had a few minutes to scour the Criterion Closet for a few of his favorite films and some he hasn’t seen in quite some time. One such choice was Danny Boyle’s “Shallow Grave,” starring Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston in one of their first on-screen roles.
“This movie I haven’t seen, probably, since I was a kid. I shouldn’t have been seeing it as a kid,” said Hoult. “There’s a scene in this, I’m fairly sure, where someone, like, power-drills into someone’s forehead, and it’s seared into my memory. It’s, like, one of the most traumatic things I’ve ever seen on film.”
Shifting to something more kid-friendly, Hoult picked up the animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which includes voice work from George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, and many more. Unlike most animated films, some of their scenes were recorded in the wild, outside of a studio booth.
“Wes Anderson killed it with this,” Hoult said of the filmmaker’s first foray into feature animation. “And this is a film that my kids haven’t gotten into yet, but I keep putting on because I know one day they will and I’m going to enjoy watching it with them when they do. So this one’s for the boys.”
Highlighting how deep his film appreciation goes while selecting the Coen Brothers’ Best Picture-winning “No Country for Old Men,” Hoult recalled watching it a few years back in a way few get the chance to.
“Christien, who did my makeup on ‘Renfield,’ worked on this movie, and he had the script and the storyboards still, and he knew I was a massive fan of this movie, so he brought them in for me,” he said. “And I got to watch this movie whilst reading the script and looking at the storyboards, which, as a little film geek, that was exciting because I got to see exactly what the Coen brothers were imagining and how it all came together.”
In discussing the 1957 legal thriller “12 Angry Men,” Hoult payed homage to two highly influential filmmakers, shouting out not only the director of the film, Sidney Lumet, but also Clint Eastwood, the man behind one of this year’s fan favorites “Juror #2.”
“[’12 Angry Men’], going in to shoot ‘Juror #2,’ was a movie that I watched quite a few times because I was just inspired by it, love it,” said Hoult. “And also I know that Clint knew Sidney and spent time with him, so I feel like there was kind of an element of him being part of that process through Clint and just cinema history, I guess.”
Watch Hoult’s entire Criterion Closet visit below.
English (US) ·