The Million Dollar Hotel

This for sure one of those movies where you will "get it" or you won't. I liked The Million Dollar Hotel right from the first time I watched it and I did rewatch it a few times.

A rating of 5.9 (at the moment of writing my review) is of course a sad fact - if I compare that rating with all those top-ratings of 8+ for all those shallow, boring, at most mediocre and artless blockbusters Hollywood and companies like Marvel/DC mass publish in our days.

There is a chance you will enjoy The Million Dollar Hotel a lot - if you like sometimes an unusual dish served with some humor and melancholy - if not, well, I take any bet you wasted your time on far worse movies.

For those of you who are big Mel Gibson fans. This is not your movie. This is for Wim Wenders and U2 fans. This is an art film, though it is made accessible by the performances of Davies, Jovovich and Gibson. It is a very simple, character driven film with a host of great actors. (It is nice to see that Bud Cort is doing something interesting.) The best films usually take a simple story and do it very well. Such are the films of Kubrik and Kurosawa, two of the greatest film-makers of all time (if you don't agree there is a good chance you wont like this film). This film (as opposed to just "movie") has a very simple story, but it does it beautifully. I recommend it to any film lover.

PS: If you like this one check out "Dersu Uzala" by Kurosawa and "Purple Noon" (trans.) by Clement.

Million Dollar Hotel is a beautiful movie, and one of Wenders' best recent efforts, considerably better than The End of Violence or Lisbon Story, but with a smaller worldview than Until the End of the World or Wings of Desire. The State of Things is also one of my favorite Wenders.

I can understand how many people might not like this movie. It's a young person's story about suicide and first love at the very moment when you know it's the best moment in your life as it ever will be, before you get jaded and caught up with the familiar chase after sex, money and power, when your sensations become dulled and your body not as agile because now you're older. It is concerned with poetically defective mentalities and has a drug-like sensibility to it, so you may not get it if you're a normal social conformist with a happy childhood. But then, I had this kind of youth, too, living in drug-addled international student hostel dives around Greenwich Village in the Eighties, purposefully unemployed because it seemed more open to possibility and potentiality than the unphilosophic nine to five. Suicide can really be a statement of momentary happiness rather than the mundane postmortem understanding of a troubled youth, the movie seems to say.

Jeremy Davies gives a fantastic, inspired performance, reminding me a bit of Leonardo DiCaprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, but much more nuanced as to require second viewings, or Johnny Depp in Benny and Joon. Admittedly, the story is not completely credible, because while the Million Dollar Hotel seems real enough (think Chelsea Hotel if it were in downtown LA), how all these misfitting characters can survive financially and end up living together in this amazing place cannot be scrupulously pondered. At the same time, it's good that Bono helped write the story, because Wenders' plots tend to be otherwise somewhat inchoate. So in the end, it's an atmospheric fantasy. (Why do so many movies of the late Nineties-early Thousands have people jumping off of roofs? : Open Your Eyes) Nor is all the acting uniform, although Davies especially, Jovavich and notably Stormare stand out. Although Gibson is focused big on the center of the video box, it's really not his movie, as he's just along for the chance to ride with Wenders. The dialogue mixed in with the Beatles lyrics is quite clever. The camera effects for those moments where Tom-Tom and Eloise seem to move in slow motion for several parts of a second are neat, as if the two of them are not completely in the same dimension of our reality and are in danger of somehow being shaken loose from this world. I can't believe this movie was never widely released, as I just found it on the shelf in the video store, don't know how I ever missed it, and I agree that it is destined to be a Wenders cult favorite.

The Million Dollar Hotel is quite literally, one of the weirdest movies I have ever seen that features a two time oscar winner such as Mel Gibson. Gibson plays a beyond straight arrow of an FBI agent named Skinner, sent to investigate the mysterious suicide of a millionaire's son (an unbilled Tim Roth) in a seedy hotel that is host to a group of the poor mentally ill. Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies, eschewing Private Upham completely from "Saving Private Ryan), is a half wit delivery boy for the hotel with odd hair who's got a thing for a screw up (Milla Jovovich). Skinner performs a drastic investigation on the hotel who's inhabitants include the Fifth Beatle (a convincing Peter Stormare playing a good guy), an Indian (LA Law's Jimmy Smits!), an old lady (Gloria Stuart, far from her Titanic role), Harold, oops! I mean Bud Cort as a recurring alcoholic, a weirdo (Amanda Plummer, in another fine character role), and others. Definitely an eccentric film that is far from Hollywood. Gibson is quite, to describe it lightly, strange as an FBI agent not to be trifled with. His face alone is that of something that's out of a Stephen King novel. Jeremy Davies seems as if he's had way too many No Doz pills to fulfill the lead role, one that requires him to barely speak. Filled with small roles from recognizable character actors, this is a film that's for an acquired taste, because this is very out there for a movie.

Subject: Million Dollar Hotel (2000)

A lovely, lyrical, magical film about many ideas, not the least of which is the strength of the weak. The plot revolves around several "loonies" in a hotel for those with no where else to go. Billed as a murder mystery, I suppose it is that, too. Barely. I had no interest in who the killer was. Just wanted these people's lives to unfold before me forever. Mel Gibson does a very interesting and funny parody of his cop persona; the actor who plays Tom Tom is terrific as a presumably dim-witted gopher to the various inhabitants (he calls himself "the beggar's butler"),Milla Jovovich is a leading lady of sorts, a constant smoker and reader who describes herself as fictional; and, Jimmy Smits as Geronimo, a Latino Indian-chief wannabe, an artist in hiding and up-front scam artist. I'm not a film reviewer, and I have always been partial to Wenders' films. That being said, I'm going downstairs now to watch the film again. P.S. Bono! Who knew?