Hotel

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

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.

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

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.

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.