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Tag: Paul Walter Hauser

  • Screening at NYFF: Scott Cooper’s ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’

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    Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

    The first and final scenes of any film are vital, and contained within these bookends you can find the entire story of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. Unfortunately, nearly everything in between is standard biopic filler and reinforces filmmaker Scott Cooper’s unique position in the Hollywood landscape: he’s a tremendous director of actors and quite unremarkable at most other parts of the job.

    Based on Warren Zanes’ Bruce Springsteen biography of the same name, the film (which Cooper both directed and wrote) tells the story of how the famed heartland rocker created Nebraska—perhaps his most time-tested album—but it seldom has anything to say beyond observing his emotional troubles during this period, often at great dramatic distance. Despite this contained focus on a one-year period, Deliver Me From Nowhere is very much a decades-spanning saga in the tale of most by-the-numbers “true stories” about revered figures and begins with a monochrome depiction of a young Springsteen (Matthew Pellicano Jr.) listening to his father (Stephen Graham) abuse his mother (Gaby Hoffmann) in the next room. A hard cut from his haunted expression to the adult Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White) delivering a full-throated, thoroughly embodied performance of “Born to Run” in 1981 creates a strange but appropriate thematic link between these childhood events and Springsteen’s ’70s mega-hit. Regardless of what the song was actually about (in short: a girl), its lyrics become an obvious cipher here for a man escaping his past at lightspeed. If only the rest of the film had maintained this momentum.

    As mentioned, Deliver Me From Nowhere does in fact conclude with a touching gesture toward catharsis, so in theory one could string these brief opening and closing acts together to create a much more impactful short film without losing very much by way of story. However, viewers then wouldn’t be treated to the real delights of a Scott Cooper joint: broad caricatures who become imbued with beating humanity in a way so few American filmmakers tend to manage. As Springsteen begins work on his next album, he sees the process as a long-overdue exorcism of personal demons, while his record executives et al. want more hits for the radio. The Boss, however, is largely shielded from these demands, leaving his manager and producer Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) to advocate on his behalf.

    This side of things—the logistics of creating the next big hit or cultural phenomenon—features little by way of discernible drama despite the many arguments that play out in the confines of various offices. And yet it can be intriguing to watch in its own way, as Landau becomes the de facto point-of-view character for lengthy stretches, talking up Springsteen’s genius to anyone who’ll listen (including and especially David Krumholtz’s Columbia record exec) while barely giving any pushback to the artist himself. There’s a sense of inevitability to Nebraska coming into being (and the iconic Born in the U.S.A. after it, which used many of his original concepts for the former). On one hand, this rarely affords the movie any meaningful stakes. On the other, it allows Strong to create a cautiously eager version of Landau who practically bleeds adoration for Springsteen. Similarly, Paul Walter Hauser plays an eager recording engineer who goes along with Springsteen’s intentionally lo-fi plans for Nebraska, while Marc Maron plays a mostly silent studio mixer who, despite a few incredulous reactions, largely goes along with things. After all, who is he, and who are any of them, to question the Boss?

    A man with curly hair and a sweat-soaked shirt sings passionately into a microphone on stage, one arm raised in the air under bright concert lights.A man with curly hair and a sweat-soaked shirt sings passionately into a microphone on stage, one arm raised in the air under bright concert lights.
    White’s conception of Springsteen is joyful to witness. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

    This kind of idolatry is usually the raison d’être for jukebox “IP” biopics like Deliver Me From Nowhere, and there’s a refreshing honesty to the hagiography refracted in Strong’s doting gaze. Granted, the film is prevented from veering into full-on Boss propaganda by the personal half of the story, in which he enters a romance with radiant single mother Faye Romano (Odessa Young), a relationship that feels doomed by the very same inevitability that colors the movie’s making-of-Nebraska half. He offers her, up front, a premonition of what will inevitably happen—that he won’t be able to commit himself to loving her so long as this album and its ghosts hang around his neck—but with the movie’s parameters all clearly established, in the studio and behind closed doors, there remains little reason to watch it beyond its performances. Springsteen will prioritize his work, people will laud his musical talent and he will eventually confront the wounds of his past, but none of these are framed as part of a story where Springsteen’s or anyone’s human impulses threaten to derail the inevitable for even a moment.

    White’s conception of Springsteen is joyful to witness, not just for the way he impersonates the Boss’s gravelly voice and vein-popping performances but for the way he conjures Springsteen’s spirit through exaggeration. He crafts a sense of mood (and moodiness) where the film might not otherwise contain it, brooding to the extreme and sitting in Jersey and New York diner booths hunched over to the side, leaning so far that he threatens to keel over. He doesn’t so much play Springsteen as he does an imaginary, effortlessly cool, deeply tormented version that James Dean might have portrayed, and Deliver Me From Nowhere is slightly better for it. In tandem with Masanobu Takayanagi’s cinematography, which subtly silhouettes the superstar and turns him into an icon even in mundane settings, the film has tremendous physical architecture even if its emotional architecture is practically null.

    SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE ★★ (2/4 stars)
    Directed by: Scott Cooper
    Written by: Scott Cooper
    Starring: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, David Krumholtz, Gaby Hoffmann, Harrison Sloan Gilbertson, Grace Gummer, Marc Maron, Matthew Pellicano Jr.
    Running time: 114 mins.

    Clichés abound in the form of flowery dialogue, but the kind that, when imbued with enough cinematic gusto—Springsteen speaks of “finding silence amongst the noise”—can transcend their trappings and become jubilant. Unfortunately, here they end up as overwritten pablum that struggles to convey meaning.

    There are movie references aplenty, from Springsteen discovering dark subject matter through a Terrence Malick film and flashbacks of him enjoying Charles Laughton’s sumptuous The Night of the Hunter with his father. But these only serve as mood boards, presented as-is when Springsteen watches them, rather than becoming stylistic or thematic influences for the artist or for the film at large. They become reminders of how comparatively little by way of style or philosophy Cooper puts into his work, even if his protagonist can be seen watching them, enjoying them and being influenced by them in a way that makes his wheels silently turn. But what that influence leads to, and the synapses it fires, remain something of a mystery.

    At the end of the day, Deliver Me From Nowhere is a film worth looking at and observing from the same distance that Cooper frames his impenetrable version of Springsteen, whose troubles hover over his creative process like a gloomy cloud. But the camera seldom looks past the pristine surfaces it creates in order to explore those problems or Springsteen’s connection to the many lyrics we see him jotting down throughout the runtime. “Double album??” he scrawls at one point, underlining it twice in a gesture that hilariously ends up with about as much weight and meaning as any of Springsteen’s actual lyrics—in a film nominally about the lifelong pain that fuels them. Sure. Double album. Why the hell not?

    Screening at NYFF: Scott Cooper’s ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’

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    Siddhant Adlakha

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  • Paul Walter Hauser Joins Austin Abrams in Zach Cregger’s ‘Resident Evil’ Reboot

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    Paul Walter Hauser is joining the cast of director Zach Cregger‘s new Resident Evil movie.

    The busy actor, who appeared this summer in such films as Naked Gun and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, will star alongside previously confirmed castmember Austin Abrams in Sony Pictures‘ new take on the franchise. The feature hits theaters Sept. 18, 2026, and adapts the popular video game series about an elite task force battling zombies.

    Cregger, who had a hit this summer with Warner Bros.’ Weapons, will helm Resident Evil from a script he is co-writing with Shay Hatten. Plot details have not yet been disclosed for the project that hails from Constantin Film.

    Producers include Robert Kulzer for Constantin Film, Roy Lee for Vertigo Entertainment and Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan for PlayStation Productions. TriStar Pictures president Nicole Brown oversees the movie for the studio.

    Based on the Capcom video games, the Resident Evil film franchise launched with Sony’s original 2002 feature that starred Milla Jovovich. The movie series has surpassed $1.2 billion at the global box office.

    During an interview last month with The Hollywood Reporter, Hauser explained why he tends to be choosy about his projects. “I feel way too competitive and way too hungry to eat garnish and pretend it’s a meal,” the actor said about waiting for interesting roles. “I would rather hold out for the right thing. On the day, I’m just going to be all hungry, and then I’m going to look stupid, and then I’m going to feel awkward.”

    Deadline was first to report on Hauser’s casting.

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    Ryan Gajewski

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  • Inside Out 2: Perhaps Even More Anti-San Francisco Than Inside Out Due to Entirely Excluding the City From the Narrative

    Inside Out 2: Perhaps Even More Anti-San Francisco Than Inside Out Due to Entirely Excluding the City From the Narrative

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    While the first Inside Out was a patently anti-San Francisco movie, the sequel has proven to perhaps be even less generous—dare one even say, actually crueler—toward the city by choosing to ignore its presence altogether. Although San Franciscans might have thought the presentation of their city couldn’t possibly be worse in the second movie than it was in the first, it has to be said that the full-stop refusal to acknowledge its existence is probably even more insulting. Because, apparently, so “non” is San Francisco at this point that the Inside Out 2 creators and animators—based, by the way, right near San Francisco “suburb” Emeryville—could barely bother to provide a few background scenes of the milieu as Riley Andersen (Kensington Tallman) is on the way to a weekend hockey camp.

    And yes, for the rest of the movie after that brief scene of Riley’s parents, Mrs. Andersen (Diane Lane) and Mr. Andersen (Kyle MacLachlan), driving her to the camp with her friends, Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green), there is nary a sign of San Francisco anywhere. Unless one grasps at the straws of Riley wearing a “Bay Area Skills Camp” jersey. Although one might have anticipated more play for SF now that Riley is a teenager and is theoretically supposed to be coming into her own vis-à-vis exploring the city a little bit more independently than she used to, Inside Out 2 totally misses the opportunity to, at the very least, employ San Francisco for the task of ramping up Riley’s latest emotion to enter her puberty-fueled headspace: Anxiety.

    Of course, this being a “kids’” movie, co-screenwriters Meg LeFauve (who also co-wrote the first movie) and Dave Holstein likely didn’t want to rock the boat too much in terms of what types of “stimuli” might prompt Riley to have an anxiety flare-up. Like, say, the sight of some zombie-esque homeless people hobbling toward her at a steady clip on the sidewalk. Or overhearing her parents talk about the unaffordability of the city and how maybe they, too, should join the others who supposedly comprise what is called the “California Exodus.” Indeed, that latter threat would surely send Anxiety into overdrive, seeing as how Riley has finally gotten her bearings in her formerly new city. The last thing she would want to do now is move to Austin, Texas (where all the Californians have reportedly disappeared to).

    The total absence of any sense of place in Inside Out 2 is what marks the most noticeable change in the film’s “setup” after almost a decade has gone by. What it says probably has less to do with San Francisco and more to do with the fact that our entire existence is increasingly “lived” solely in non-places. This being the term coined by French anthropologist Marc Augé in his seminal work, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. It is in this work that Augé discusses the characteristics of the average non-place (e.g., supermarkets, airports, hotel rooms, metro stations and, in this case, hockey rinks): cold, clinical, lacking in any unique identifying characteristics. In short, it is a transitional space (sort of like adolescence itself) designed to evoke no sense of belonging whatsoever due to being devoid of any personal touches—what is known as “having character.”

    When applied to the feeling—or, rather, “non-feeling”—that San Francisco evokes in Inside Out 2, it can perhaps be interpreted “poetically” in that Riley has never truly felt as though she belongs there. And now, with her only two friends abandoning her after the summer to attend a different high school, Riley is panicking all the more about her “sense of place,” about where, exactly, she’s supposed to fit in.

    While some might say that San Francisco’s absence is “nothing personal,” or that the storyline of the sequel is intended to be less about the city and more about Riley’s fresh trials and tribulations as a teenager navigating the increasingly murky waters of friendship, it cannot be overlooked that where one lives as a teenager is a large part of what forms their emotions and identity. Needless to say, Riley would be a totally different person if she had remained in Minnesota. Excluding the more urban landscape of San Francisco from this new “snapshot” of her teenhood is, thus, an odd choice. Others still would posit that because the mind itself is the milieu in which Inside Out and Inside Out 2 take place, there’s not much need to incorporate a “real” environment. Fine, keep it “minimal” then—but don’t oust a tangible setting altogether. But, again, this likely doesn’t register with or bother that many people when taking into account that the majority is, at this juncture, well-accustomed to seeing and experiencing non-places. It just comes across as particularly shade-throwing that, now, San Francisco is a “non-place,” too. Not even worth making fun of anymore, as far as Inside Out 2 is concerned.

    In the past, there would have at least been the usual mockery about how “generic” the city has become, how “corporatized.” Not just thanks to the long-ago tech infiltration, but as a result of the collective adherence to globalization itself. Everywhere is everywhere. But, in all honesty, that’s not really true of San Francisco, which still possesses its unique, indelible aspects—not least of which is its signature topography and landmarks. And, as the usual haters would waste no time in parroting, “All the homeless people!” The seemingly lone condemnation that detractors can think of to consistently lob at the Golden City (and yes, it is golden, despite what the naysayers might quip about that gold being of the “fool’s” variety). Either that or, where conservatives are concerned, it’s “too gay.” In fact, one of its other rotating nicknames is Gay Mecca. This perhaps being yet another reason that Inside Out 2 opted to shirk San Francisco altogether during Riley’s teen years. After all, what if Riley is a lesbian? San Francisco is the perfect place to unearth such a sexual revelation. But, in terms of including SF in all its (gay) glory for a teenager, Pixar seemed to be channeling Regina George insisting, “I couldn’t have a lesbian at my party. There were gonna be girls there in their bathing suits.”

    Whatever the reason (or “non-reason”) for choosing to give San Francisco absolutely no play apart from tacking on three arbitrary exteriors (including, of course, the Golden Gate Bridge) during the credits, it seems that the opinion of the town is so low at the moment that Pixar favored largely disavowing its presence entirely. And, as Oscar Wilde said, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Thus, San Francisco’s (non-)representation in Inside Out 2 is what makes the movie even harsher toward the city than Inside Out.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Inside Out 2: When You Grow Up, Your Heart Dies

    Inside Out 2: When You Grow Up, Your Heart Dies

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    The world was a vastly different place nine years ago, when the first Inside Out was released. Though, at the time, it might have felt like a world that was dangerous and unsafe for children to grow up and develop in, the truth is, they were probably better off doing so in 2015 than they would be in 2024 (good luck to the sociopaths that have to do that now). And so, yes, 2024 feels like the “perfect” moment to introduce a “new” emotion to Inside Out 2: Anxiety! Of course, even though nearly a decade has passed since last we saw Riley Andersen (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias in the original, and presently, Kensington Tallman), she’s still only just now turning thirteen. Better known to most parents (and teachers…or anyone else subjected to the horrors of interacting with a teenager) as: the Scary Age.

    Incidentally, “Terror” doesn’t appear as a more nuanced emotion than “Fear” in the complex range of new ones that are rolled out with a brand-new console that gets installed by the “mind workers” the night before Riley “hits puberty.” A previously uncharted era during which, suddenly, the limited range of five primary emotions—Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Tony Hale), Disgust (Liza Lapira) and Anger (Lewis Black)—are hardly sufficient enough to convey all the confusing, disordered feelings Riley is having at any given moment now that she’s thirteen. Enter Anxiety (Maya Hawke), the key emotion freshly presented into the fray that best encapsulates all those crippling, inexplicable sentiments that go hand-in-hand with an increasing fixation on social status. Granted, Anxiety isn’t alone in terms of being part of a new burst of emotions that only get introduced once a person enters teenhood. Especially when that person is a girl.

    Thus, she is joined by Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Envy (Ayo Edebiri). For a brief instant, even a new emotion called Nostalgia (June Squibb) pops out, stylized as an old lady with glasses. But Anxiety tell her she’s much too early to be there, and she’s promptly sent away from headquarters. Unfortunately, Joy has to admit that Anxiety does seem, in contrast, to be right on time—to know much more about Riley’s new set of concerns and worries than Joy does. And yet, that doesn’t stop Joy from fretting over the fact that Anxiety is negatively impacting the meticulously crafted “Sense of Self” that Riley currently has…thanks to some clever manipulations from Joy via filing memories with unpleasant associations to the back of her mind. Which is for Riley’s “own good,” of course. In fact, all Joy wants is for Riley to think and feel that she’s that wonderful thing: a good person.

    Alas, as someone becomes a teenager, all sense of “goodness” tends to go out the window if it means interfering with how that adolescent wants to be perceived. And, no matter how much time goes by or what changes occur in technology, how a teen always wants to be perceived is: cool. Accepted. Well-liked. Best of all, popular. For while Gen Z might think such concerns went the way of the dodo after millennial teenhood, it’s still very much alive and well on an even worse scale thanks to social media and its impact on self-esteem. Riley is a victim of her own intense desire to feel embraced by an older group of girls once she learns that her best friends, Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green), are going to be attending a different high school when the summer is over.

    And so, instead of seeing the hockey camp they’re invited to attend (and as the only junior highers, to boot) as an opportunity for a last hurrah together, Riley, under Anxiety’s so-called guidance, takes it as a chance to gain the favor of a popular star player named Val Ortiz (Lilimar). And, when Val actually seems to take a liking to Riley despite how awkward and socially inept she is (in the 00s, Riley is the girl who would have been freely referred to as a “spaz”), the latter can’t help but jump at the chance to “rebrand” in order to better fit in with Val and her older crew of friends.

    Horrified at the way Riley is ignoring the carefully crafted “Sense of Self” Joy worked so hard to create, she can’t understand that Anxiety is part of a larger phenomenon that comes with growing up (particularly in a world that, increasingly, prides itself on desensitizing youths): kindness and empathy being stamped out, your heart dying. This being the very accurate and eloquent phrase Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy) from The Breakfast Club wields when she laments, “When you grow up, your heart dies.” An aphorism delivered in reply to Andrew Clark’s (Emilio Estevez) question of whether or not they would become like their parents (that is to say, assholes). Allison also insists, “It’s unavoidable. Just happens.” For Riley, she might not be becoming like her wholesome, largely checked-out parents, per se, but she is becoming more impervious to the notion of “morality.” Of whether or not what’s “good” is necessarily good for her.

    Anxiety only serves to fan those flames of sociopathy, prompting Riley to do whatever it takes to achieve “her” goals (though, all along, one has to ask: are they really “hers” or merely what she thinks should be hers due to societal and peer pressures?). In this case, getting onto the Firehawks team as a freshman so that she can have a secured group of friends in her teammates, including Val. When the other girls tell Riley that Coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown) always holds a scrimmage on the last day of camp and it’s what ended up getting Val on the team as a freshman, Anxiety sends Riley into peak panic mode about doing well enough the next day so that the coach puts her on the team for next year. Of course, Val tells her that all she has to do is stop stressing and “be herself.”

    In response to that notion, Envy asks Anxiety a fair (and slightly philosophical) question: “How do we be ourself if our ‘self’ isn’t ready yet?” Anxiety, ever the “problem-solver,” reacts by putting more anxiety-ridden memories into the Sense of Self bank that will supposedly propel Riley to act in a way that secures the best possible future. Naturally, what Anxiety doesn’t understand is that Riley won’t be securing much of anything if she’s a tightly-wound ball of panic that can barely function because of all her crippling worries. Nonetheless, Anxiety can’t be bothered with considering how she’s actually hurting Riley, remarking to Envy, “I wish we knew what Coach thought about us.” It’s then that, while Riley is just trying to fucking sleep that Anxiety plants the idea in her head to sneak into the coach’s office and look at the notebook where she writes down all of her “hot takes” about the players. Thus, Riley commits yet another act that goes against what Joy would call her true Sense of Self (even if it was manipulated by Joy): breaking and entering. Oh, an obtaining information that’s supposed to be “confidential” by any means necessary.

    As Anxiety has turned Riley into someone she isn’t—someone whose core Sense of Self repeats, “I’m not good enough”—Joy and her “follower emotions” finally make it to the back of Riley’s mind, where the Sense of Self Joy had originally created was exiled by Anxiety. Initially relieved to have recovered the trophy-looking structure, Joy can’t help but take notice of the literal mountain of bad memories she’s stockpiled back here, in a place that suppresses what Riley’s true self might actually be. And when she calls upon Sadness to launch them back to headquarters through the pipe Joy built to jettison those bad memories there in the first place, Anxiety manages to destroy the pipe so that Joy and co. are stuck there. Needless to say, this smacks of the same pickle Joy was in during the first Inside Out, when she got booted into the Memory Dump—a location of the mind where any memories that get deposited there are doomed to fade out for good. Feeling hopeless and defeated, she can no longer even fake a plucky attitude to the other emotions, telling them, “I don’t know how to stop Anxiety. Maybe we can’t. Maybe this is what happens when you grow up. You feel less Joy.” In other words, “When you grow up, your heart dies.”

    This is exactly why so many memes about Riley as an adult have come about in the wake of Inside Out 2. For example, Depression as an emotion stamping out all the other ones. Or alcohol being used to briefly chase the emotion of Euphoria before it quickly disappears. And yes, it’s obviously true that there’s no place for Joy in the adult mind. Her presence becoming nothing but one of those faded memories in the Memory Dump (this is perhaps why that incident in Inside Out was nothing more than foreshadowing for Joy’s inevitable disappearance during Riley’s adulthood).

    And yet, none of the adults involved in the making of Inside Out 2—and certainly none of the adults who control the system in place—would ever stop and think that perhaps there’s something very, very wrong with how it’s simply accepted that to grow up is to experience the death of Joy. The loss of “heart” a.k.a. any sense of humanity. And all in the name of getting “ahead.” As Anxiety phrased it, “It’s not about who Riley is, it’s about who she needs to be.” But why does anyone “need” to become an asshole in this life? To adhere to the subjugating “tenets” of capitalism, duh.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Marvel’s Fantastic Four Casts Ralph Ineson as Galactus

    Marvel’s Fantastic Four Casts Ralph Ineson as Galactus

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     Ralph Ineson attends the BAFTA Games Awards 2024 Nominees’ Party at the Langham Hotel on April 10, 2024 in London, England.
    Photo: Scott Garfitt/BAFTA (Getty Images)

    After some recent casting announcements that came with no details attached (Paul Walter Hauser, John Malkovich), Marvel’s Phase Six entry Fantastic Four—which already has Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the main heroes, plus Julia Garner as Silver Surfer—has just unveiled a doozy: geek god Ralph Ineson will play the villain Galactus.

    Who Should Be the New Doctor Doom? io9 Picks

    The Hollywood Reporter broke the news, writing that “Ineson is said to be playing Galactus, an intergalactic being who eats the life force of planets. And now he just picked the wrong planet to nosh on.” The Jack Kirby and Stan Lee-created character was last seen on the big screen (sort of) in 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer—but fans can hope, especially with Ineson aboard, the new movie will present a much more satisfying take on the character.

    Directed by Matt Shakman, and set in the 1960s, Fantastic Four is due to hit theaters July 25, 2025. As for Ineson, his other upcoming genre projects cover some important monster bases: vampire horror Nosferatu, which reunites him with The Witch writer-director Robert Eggers, and Guillermo del Toro’s made-for-Netflix Frankenstein.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Cheryl Eddy

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