New Rose Hotel

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."

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

It's hard to believe that a movie directed by Abel Ferrara based on a story by William Gibson and starring Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe and Asia Argento would be anything less than great, but this movie is just OK. It has a lot of moody atmosphere. Asia A., the lovely Eurobabe who is supposedly ogre-ish horror-meister Dario Argento's daughter (I, for one, won't believe it until I see the blood tests), spends most of the movie in various states of undress (unfortunately, so does Dafoe). Walken is great as always. But literally nothing happens. It's all atmosphere, eerie music, and occasional bursts of softcore groping. Neither Ferrara's visuals, Walken's acting presence, or Argento's tatooed nether regions can ultimately carry a film so totally devoid of conventional plot, suspense, or action. Not a bad film, just a disappointing one.

After reading a number of reviews at imdb--and elsewhere--I have to come-down-on-the-side of the director, Abel Ferrera's

vision. This is a GREAT science-fiction film, and for those who are

generally-disappointed with it, I have to ask whether they

understand what sci-fi IS. If science-fiction isn't about the present

(as-filtered through an imagined-future), it generally isn't good, but

New Rose Hotel fits this criteria. This is a pretty-old story from the

80s that Gibson had published in "Omni Magazine," it might-have

been his first-acceptance. While it is a minor-story, it has

dramatic-elements to it that are very-pleasing within-the-structure

of the "Ferrera" universe: a metropolitan-dystopia, urban and

moral-decay, the eternal quest by many for "power," official- corruption, the consequences of murder, sexuality, drugs, how

memory works, they all mesh-well with Ferrera's thematic-styles.

There are no great moral-lessons here, this is about the aftermath

of that paradigm. The only-complaint I have is that the future has

caught-up a bit, due to the age of the original-story. With our

human-society growing more-restrictive, with the rise of corporate- statism, and the subsequent-decline of the Nation State, New

Rose Hotel seems almost "quaint." That should give-us-pause.

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.