Hotel

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.

I came across this movie in the local rental outlet, where it has a fashionable DVD jacket, a cast list that seems to never end the names of celebrities and famous actors, and a text on the back of the cover that suggests this movie is a very smart, eery horror movie.

Well. It is not. I watched it, and after about five hours - or was it just 2? time distorts with boredom... - it ended, and I also watched the "making of". Which explained a lot. The concept: The director wanted to shoot a movie. In Venice. With lots of famous actors that receive equally small salaries. Using only digital cameras and his own handheld camera rig inventions. Without a script, entirely improvised. Without. A. Script.

That should explain it all. Let's just describe one scene, somewhere in the movie: A hotel maid pours white liquid into two cocktail glasses that are placed in front of a business man on a cell phone. She undresses, dipping her breasts into both glasses in front of the - now just mildly distracted - business man, who continues to bark orders into his cell phone. She dips them in again. She stands up and gets dressed. The guy drinks the white liquid from the glasses. The sequence lasts a few minutes, is completely without reference or context, and just sits there, eager to provoke an audience reaction, but failing (in my case).

Or, the 10-minute flamenco dance shot simultaneously with 4 cameras. Impressive, but useless. There are many such scenes - out of context, without purpose, done purely for the joy of doing them.

Now don't get me wrong - the movie (if it can be called a movie) has its moments. Yes, with a lot of effort, you can almost make out a story (a film crew shooting a cheap movie in Venice, sticking to a weird dogma of guerilla-movie-making). There is a murder - or at least an attempted murder. And, the most memorable scene of the movie has to be the 15 minutes or so that we see the shot director lying on the ground, only able to move his eyes, while his cast come to him and talk to him, too self-absorbed to notice he's dying. The three other (sex) scenes playing in the other split screen windows at the same time look pale in comparison. (Note to director: 4 split screens is just too much!) Or the scene where a woman undresses, whispering comments to the audience ("Now, why should this be particularly interesting to you?" she asks, while removing the first item of clothing) before engaging in sex with the comatose director.

But do 2 memorable scenes make up for all the rest? After all, the DVD jacket sleeve promised thrills, chills, and cleverness. There was nothing thrilling about the entire movie at all. And, while it may think it's clever, it just isn't. The actors, left to improvise a story out of nowhere, fail to achieve much. In the beginning, Rhys Ifans (playing the director) grabs the screen, eager to be the centre of attention, and shouting so much that no one else gets noticed at all. No wonder they "improvised" his assassination - they must have been sick of not being noticed. Then, the rest of the cast fail to do anything creative, and most of the pleasure is in watching their movie-in-a-movie, which has more dialogue and more of a storyline, and more displays of acting skills than the rest of the story. Then, Salma Hayek tries to steal the show (by being incredibly annoying) and is improvised away, just as she becomes unbearable. Is there a pattern here?

The moral is, a movie without a script cannot be entertaining. Film students and artists may appreciate it, but the rest of the population won't. And, with 20-odd egos, it's impossible to make a good movie.

Quite frankly, only watch this if you are looking for material to write a bad review or a bad arts essay about. Or if you need something to satirize - the entire movie feels like an extended version of the short film that the arts teacher presents to her class in "Ghost World" - a bad joke at art's expense....

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

Halfway through this movie I wanted the wasted hour of my life back. The plot is absolutely inane. To make it worse, the director though it would be clever to split the screen in four from time to time. So instead of watching one bad movie, you had to try and keep an eye on four. Not even completely gratuitous sex scenes could save it. I considered smashing the DVD to save anyone else from watching it, but it was a rental and I refused to invest any further money or time. Heard it was the same director as Leaving Las Vegas. Does anyone know if he has suffered a severe brain injury recently? Seriously, I like lots of off-beat movies. This was the absolute worst movie I have ever seen. Save yourself, don't rent it, if you've rented it already, don't watch it. If you own it, take it out and bury it in the back yard.

There have been a few times when I've watched a bad film and said the words, "Oh, God, that was the worst film I've ever seen", but I knew I never really meant it, I couldn't possibly make a serious judgement like that. Until now. This film remains the worst film I have ever seen. Even now, years later, when I watch some load of crap and say that it's the worst, this one comes back to me and I always have to add, oh no, apart from "Hotel", now that really was THE worst. It is pretentious. It is boring. God knows how they managed to get good actors to lower themselves to this wanky rubbish. You cringe and you squirm, just at the thought of how painful it must have been for all involved to have rammed their heads that far up their own arses. I watched this film ages ago, but I have come here, years later, and I still have the urge to shake my head at people over the internet, and say, no. No, don't do it. Don't watch it. There is absolutely no worth in it at all. Nothing.