New Rose Hotel

This movie seem to go all out for the ambience of what it could be like in the near future, giving us a look of the cold and bleak world that is set out for us. It doesn't quite succeed like in Blade Runner, probably due to its small budget, limited settings, which were mostly indoors, but it gave it a good run for the money.

On the plot side, I think it might have been better if the flashback method of the original story were used. This will avoid the replay of the first 2/3 of the film onto the final 1/3. Plus it would have also lead us to see how X (William Dafoe), being a person who frequents high caliber hotels all over the world, ended up in a porta-crypt.

Also, there seem to be too many ambiguous plot lines or cues that's either meaningless or completely open to interpretation. What's the significance of the tattoo on Sandii's (Asia Argento) belly? Was her deception both ways toward X? If it was, it was not implied at the end.

Christopher Walken, William Dafeo were both good in the film, with Walken putting his quirky improvisations to his character and Dafeo serious and troubled as usual. The surprise was Asia Argento, who's sultry performance proves that not all non English speaking actresses has to act as if they are reading lines like the way Penelope Cruz does.

Overall, a satisfactory film, giving a good visual and feel, but not dense enough in plot to make complete sense or to fill out the 90 minutes the movie takes.