Hotel

Well I read the reviews of this film after I had seen it, which was a mistake. I should have read them before because I would have saved myself $5 and 45 minutes of my time (the movie is infinitely longer, but 45 minutes was all I could get through). Truly, this was the worst movie I have ever seen. One of the previous reviewers referred to it as 'pretentiously incoherent' and that's exactly right. Tons of swearing, jiggly camera angles, incoherent plot, bad acting, cannibalism, no closed captioning available, horrible sound quality...I could go on, but surely you get the idea. Bad, bad, bad. Please don't waste your time or money!!

The sniggering from the video store staff should have alerted my attention to the poor choice I had made in deciding to rent "Hotel." Is it really the worst film I've ever seen? Without doubt... and I say this having watched "Bogus Witch Project" (now relegated to the number 2 spot in the all time worst films). Sometimes films are so bad, they're good. This however is so bad it's dug deep, used some industrial mining equipment and broken through to a whole new kind of Hell that no-one knew existed. Truly awful. Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves. Let us never speak of it again.

This movie is severely lacking in the artistry that it claims to be all about. I feel it is as artistic as a the so-called art created by people who fling paint randomly onto a canvas or getting on a stage and doing various things to hurt themselves or shock the audience. I can't believe that the people involved with this are the people involved with this. I was deluded just as other people who wrote comments about this movie by the cover of the DVD (don't judge a DVD by its cover I know, but still, what else do you have to go on usually? Besides, its intentionally deceptive in my opinion)which makes it sound like a sleek little independent mystery/horror or something like that. I liked many of the cinematic decisions made in regards to photography and lighting, but these can only help so much. The rest of the movie serves only the purpose of trying (key word: trying) to prove that these actors are truly "artists" and are so adept and creative that they can improvise an entire movie. Not the case here. This is equivalent, in my opinion, to a group of expert, yet overindulgent scientists trying to get their faces on The Journal of Science and instead blowing up the lab. Hopefully this movie will serve an unintentionally good purpose of proving there is a reason great artists like Van Gogh or Monet painted artistic "impressions" of life and the world with some measure of design and structure, a blueprint if you will, and there is a reason why movies need (i'd underline need if I could

Having enjoyed Mike Figgis' earlier efforts, "Loss of Sexual Innocence", "Timecode", and "Leaving Las Vegas", I entered the Varsity theatre at the Toronto International Film Festival in high spirits, also excited by the opportunity to hear Figgis introduce his film and take part in a question-answer program afterwards.

After sitting through literally 2 and 1/2 hours of assaulting pretentious montages and amateurish camera work (not to mention editing), I was even more appalled by Figgis' own take on his work.

The man brags openly about not having any script, storyline or characters to speak of. He then goes on to talk about how he is the "actor's director", giving his cast the "freedom" to indulge themselves and improvise. What I'm thinking was how could you do this to your producers, to your cast?!--people who put their reputations on the line and end up looking utterly ridiculous (the only one to emerge from this wreck unscathed is John Malkovich, obviously smart enough to pull-out from the project just in time, only to appear in the opening 2 scenes)!

My question for him would have been something along the lines of "why did you want to make this film?".

For that matter Figgis didn't even seem to know what his film was about. I've never before seen such a soulless, self-indulgent piece.

Making a good, meaningful film should be a labor of love for the director. When you ask an actor to put their names and invest their abilities on your project you must show them the same respect.

In the end, when I think of `Hotel', I think of Figgis standing before a microphone making a complete ass of himself, going on about the brilliance of his work. But others not fortunate enough to have that experience will more likely remember David Schwimer barking like a dog at the camera or Burt Reynolds entering and smiling for the camera and then having literally nothing to say for an entire scene, never to appear in the movie again.

If it were up to me the film would end with a still, black-and-white head shot of its "director" Mike Figgis, superimposed above all the credits.

Just finished *trying* to make sense of the DVD, and then watching the making of documentary in the special features, and at the moment what stands out most in my mind is that they show a cast meeting where Burt Reynolds fairly pointedly says to Mike Figgis "Well I got here yesterday and I've spent quite a bit of time looking at what's been shot so far and I can't tell who the characters are what their names are and what the relationships between them are so I want to know do you expect us actors to work that out between us? I'm just saying this because I've already got the job, or I don't, whatever." (this is not exactly what he said btw just paraphrasing the gist of it from memory).

Mike Figgis reply to him is basically "don't worry about it that will all come out in the editing".

Honestly I'm not a Burt Reynolds fan - something about his manner comes off as arrogant to me - but after trying to watch this confusing movie I sure wish Mike Figgis had paid more attention to what Burt was trying to tell him!! The only scene that worked well for me in the whole movie was the scene of the Flamenco dancer. Which I think is telling because it's the closest thing to a music video in the movie - i.e. the 4 screen technique I don't think works well for trying to tell a story. But for something like the flamenco dancer it's interesting visually to have closeups of her feet and her pretty face, etc. all juxtaposed on the screen at the same time. To overwhelm the viewer with the flash and fury of all this motion and music at the same time. But when trying to tell a story it's just frustrating really, as a viewer you don't know where to look and if you're missing something important.

I *love* Leaving Las Vegas obviously Mike Figis has incredible gifts as a film maker. But for me this movie was pretty much an experiment that failed.