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.

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.

I've stayed in many hotels. The movie Hotel reminds me of the worst hotels. Someone suggested film students should see this film. And yes, they should. So they know what it takes to make a boring film. I think the majority of movie watchers like a film they can follow, even if it is a bit confusing. But Hotel goes way beyond confusing. There was some interesting film work but most of the story was void of meaning on first watch. And there was such a void of story that I would not watch it again. Too boring in so many ways to make me want to watch it again to figure out the meanings. On the DVD container it says Roger Ebert called it "Bold, funny, delightful!". I think he meant boldly boring, funny for one scene, and delightful to eject from the DVD player. But then again, I think we all know Ebert is a little unreliable with his thumb up.

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!!

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.