New Rose Hotel

New Rose Hotel captures the bleakness and despair of the short story that seems common to William Gibson's writing. I enjoyed the performances of Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe and the babe was sufficiently babeish to hold my interest though her acting was just OK. The movie peaked too soon and the flashbacks to the film's beginning were too long and repetitious. The short story didn't have enough depth to fill out the movie. William Gibson is heavy on description and atmosphere, a master at it. "Neuromancer", his best book, is enthralling even if you don't know what is happening. The screenplay for the movie should have been padded out more in the beginning maybe showing some history of X and some of the babe's motivations clearer. The story was somewhat obscure. If you didn't listen carefully you missed the plot. The movie was flawed but atmospheric and moody enough to be of interest. William Gibson's fans should see it to see how the book's mood was captured.

This is a decent Abel Ferrara movie,with Walken turning in another memorable performance.I figure any movie with Walken's name listed in the credits first is worth watching.It did feel like the most important scenes were not filmed, and the rehashing of earlier scenes in the third act is really tedious. Overall, I think this movie would have been great with a bigger budget, but as it stands, I'd only recommend this to Walken fans.

With a solid plot basis (William Gibson short story), two excellent actors (Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe) and an interesting director (Abel Ferrara) this movie could have well turned out to be a real hidden gem. Dario Argento's daughter posing as the female lead doesn't have any other qualification for her role than an Italian accent and a nice body -- no screen presence, no femme fatale charisma, no "edge" -- and the budget has obviously been someone's lunch money for a week, but those things alone would not have done too much damage. However, there are some bigger issues with this film.

In the beginning of the movie there's way too much singing in the bars, and it's all bad. I've been to karaoke bars where the performers have been significantly more talented. All of them. No kidding. And near the end the movie falls apart, mainly thanks to way too many flashbacks -- they are not of just one or two key scenes, but of umpteen, in a peculiar "here's the movie again in case you missed it" fashion. They are annoying as such, and as a result you probably lose your focus and, consequently, your grasp of the plot. What you end up having instead of a real movie is a 90 minutes long artsy collection of insubstantial sleazy moving pictures with nudity.

In short, the first half of the movie does not get your hopes up too high, yet the latter half is disappointing. Kind of an achievement, I suppose. For better or worse, Walken's cool charisma and Argento's numerous nude scenes may still keep you awake through the whole thing. 4/10

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.

Although New Rose Hotel isn't perfect, it's my favourite adaption of Gibson's work to the screen, even more so than the episodes of The X-Files that he co-wrote. I actually really like the structure of this film. It's just like remembering an intense event in real life. The key parts keep coming back over and over, but are a little different each time because it's in your mind. My only real complaint is that (like all of Ferrara's work that I've seen) the ending seems too quick and unsatisfying. As for Gibson's feelings on the film, I took part in an interview with the man himself right before the premier at the 1998 Vancouver Film Festival. Here's how he described it: "[The cinematography] is very beautiful." "It's amazingly close to the original short story. I can't think of too many films that are as true to the material, and consequently it's a very dark and somewhat claustrophobic experience."