Hotel

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!!

Everything you have heard about this film is true. It is horrible, it is an experiment that went terribly bad. I think Mike Figgis has perhaps lost his mind. What motivataed him to put such CRAP on film. Seriously, and to pay some actors who are not too bad in their own right, to play in it. The screenplay is irrelevant, because the horrible amateur hand-held cameras similar to blair-witch but even more annoying, and the horrible editing already make the film fall under a 5/10, then on top of that, the wasting of actors, the horrible dialogues, annoyingly boring script, and nonexistent directional voice just cause me to give perhaps the worst review i have ever gave of a film. I mean hated crap like Bad Company, when a stranger calls, etc.. but this is far outclasses those films in regards to how extremely bad it is...--- IMDb Rating: 4.5, my rating: 3/10

The sniggering from the video store staff should have alerted my attention to the poor choice I had made in deciding to rent "Hotel." Is it really the worst film I've ever seen? Without doubt... and I say this having watched "Bogus Witch Project" (now relegated to the number 2 spot in the all time worst films). Sometimes films are so bad, they're good. This however is so bad it's dug deep, used some industrial mining equipment and broken through to a whole new kind of Hell that no-one knew existed. Truly awful. Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves. Let us never speak of it again.

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.

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.