Opened 30 Years Ago: THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (2/14/1991)

 

Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster 30th anniversary
 remote reunion in January 2021

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS opening in Toledo, OH,
weekend of 2/15/1991

In Theaters: HOTEL ARTEMIS (2018)

HOTEL ARTEMIS
(UK/US/China - 2018)

Written and directed by Drew Pearce. Cast: Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, Jeff Goldblum, Dave Bautista, Charlie Day, Zachary Quinto, Brian Tyree Henry, Jenny Slate, Kenneth Choi, Evan Jones, Josh Tillman. (R, 94 mins)

Publicity materials, trailers, and TV spots for HOTEL ARTEMIS did a good job of hiding that it could more or less qualify as sci-fi, with its future dystopia setting, high-tech surgical procedures, and assassins upping their game with ocular implants. The feature directing debut of IRON MAN 3 co-writer and music video vet Drew Pearce--a member of the inner circle of hipster rocker Father John Misty, who appears here under his real name Josh Tillman--HOTEL ARTEMIS is a derivative mash-up of BLADE RUNNER and SMOKIN' ACES, with generous doses of JOHN WICK and John Carpenter. It's exactly the kind of mid-budget film that used to do decent business in spring or early fall but is virtually guaranteed to bomb in the summer season of sequels-and-superheroes. HOTEL ARTEMIS doesn't have an original thought in its head, but what it does have is a wildly eclectic and very game cast, some colorfully effective future/neo-noir cinematography by frequent Park Chan-wook collaborator Chung-hoon Chung, and an appropriately synthy, Carpenter-esque score by Cliff Martinez. It's fast-paced, has some dark-humored wit, and there's no shortage of blood-splattered mayhem. Admittedly, there isn't really much here of any substance, but it's enjoyable fun while you're watching, and it's gonna have a long life on streaming and cable not long after its blink-and-you-missed-it departure from theaters.

In a corporation-controlled 2028 Los Angeles, the water supply has been cut off from all but the extremely wealthy, leading to large-scale, city-wide rioting. The police are overwhelmed, and even with drones and missiles regularly hitting targets throughout the area, the city is a crime-infested hellscape. Caught in the rioting are a quartet of bank robbers that's reduced to a duo after a shootout with cops (for the curious, Father John Misty bites it fairly quickly). They make their way to the Hotel Artemis in the heart of downtown L.A., a 12-story building where the penthouse floor is a secret hospital for the city's criminals seeking refuge and off-the-record medical attention (the first rule: "No killing the other patients"). Membership is required and everyone is given an alias based on their room assignments. The brothers--sensible, diligent Waikiki (THIS IS US' Sterling K. Brown) and irresponsible, drug-abusing Honolulu (Brian Tyree Henry)--arrive and are tended to by The Nurse (Jodie Foster), who runs a tight ship with her loyal orderly and security chief Everest (Dave Bautista).

With Honolulu requiring a new 3-D printed liver, Waikiki is forced to wait out the night while his brother recovers, and he mingles with other "guests," including his old flame Nice (Sofia Boutella), who shot herself in order to hide out at the Artemis on purpose in order to whack another patient, and loud, abrasive, and xenophobic arms dealer Acapulco (Charlie Day as Joe Pantoliano). The frumpy and sarcastic Nurse, a shut-in who's been holed up at the Artemis for 22 years and is still haunted by the overdose death of her son, tries to keep it together, but multiple complications ensue, starting with Morgan (Jenny Slate), an injured cop who knew The Nurse's son when they were kids, and Crosby Franklin (Zachary Quinto), a sniveling hothead who's nearly an hour away and en route with his gunshot-wounded father Orian Franklin (Jeff Goldblum), aka "The Wolf King," L.A's most powerful crime boss and the owner of the Hotel Artemis. When the city shuts down the grid, a power struggle ensues with The Nurse and Waikiki trying to escape as Crosby and his goons try to get in, thus creating another one of those classic RIO BRAVO/ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 situations.

The first thing that's obviously going to come to mind when watching HOTEL ARTEMIS is the Continental, the swanky hotel-for-hired killers in the JOHN WICK films. Granted, the Artemis is significantly more rundown and Skid Row-ish with its elaborately grungy production design both in its postmodern interiors and in its secret passageways. And that's the dilemma with HOTEL ARTEMIS on a creative level: almost everything in it has been done before. It's hard to believe it's 2018 and we're still getting a restaging of the OLDBOY corridor scene, which was already done to death when the instantly-forgotten Jude Law bomb REPO MEN did it eight years ago, and that was three years before Spike Lee's ill-advised OLDBOY remake which also redid it. Just because Boutella is using knives instead of a hammer doesn't make it unique. Pearce doesn't do it in a single take, and while it and the film are better showcases for Boutella than THE MUMMY ever could've been, it's still the same idea. The film does offer one very inspired "death by 3-D printer" scene that's pretty entertaining, and a restrained and almost regal Goldblum gets a terrific intro and offers a withering dismissal of his "soft" son's aspirations to be just like his father. The standout though, is Foster in her first acting role since 2013's ELYSIUM. Under unflattering aging makeup, slightly hunched, and taking brisk and tiny steps like a little old lady while using a broad accent, she seems to be relishing the chance to kick back and ham it up a bit in a junky B-movie. Her no-nonsense Nurse isn't afraid to stand up to ruthless killers, and she has a surprisingly endearing mother-son relationship with Everest, who respectfully defers to her ("Yes, Nurse") even as she's busting his chops to lose weight ("I'm not fat!"). HOTEL ARTEMIS may not offer much in the way of originality, but it does give you the Jodie Foster/Dave Bautista comedy team you never knew you wanted.

In Theaters: MONEY MONSTER (2016)

MONEY MONSTER
(US - 2016)

Directed by Jodie Foster. Written by Jamie Linden, Alan DiFiore and Jim Kouf. Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O'Connell, Dominic West, Caitriona Balfe, Giancarlo Esposito, Lenny Venito, Christopher Denham, Chris Bauer, Emily Meade, Dennis Boutsikaris, John Ventimiglia, Condola Rashad, Aaron Yoo, Carsey Walker Jr, Grant Rosenmeyer, Olivia Luccardi. (R, 98 mins)

The kind of slick, hot-button star vehicle that was a weekly thing back in the 1990s, the George Clooney-Julia Roberts-headlined MONEY MONSTER probably could've been released 20 years ago with, say, Michael Douglas and uh, I guess Julia Roberts, and not been much different. While obviously not in the same league, it's a throwback "New York City" movie in the vein of DOG DAY AFTERNOON, but probably owes more to (and comes off better than) Costa-Gavras' forgotten 1997 flop MAD CITY, where an improbably cast Dustin Hoffman was an ambitious TV news reporter in a hostage situation instigated by an unemployed security guard played by a set of sideburns attached to John Travolta. MONEY MONSTER opens with disgruntled package service delivery driver Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell) crashing the live broadcast of the cable financial news show MONEY MONSTER, hosted by the smugly arrogant and almost buffoonish Lee Gates (Clooney). Suggesting a more roguishly handsome MAD MONEY host Jim Cramer combined with the grating, "look at me!" showmanship of Jimmy Fallon, Gates is the kind of "news-as-entertainment" jagoff who has softball interviews with money experts, mockingly dons gold chains and has choreographed routines with backing dancers, and has his snarky one-liners punctuated with cheesy horror movie clips and zany sound effects straight out of the "wacky radio morning zoo" playbook. There's a lot to suggest that the cocky, strutting Gates is regarded as a clown by Wall Street: as the film opens, a financial guru and "friend of the show" cancels their dinner plans for the seventh time and blows him off on the phone, and Gates' long-suffering director Patty Fenn (Roberts), who tells one guest "We don't do gotcha journalism here...hell, we don't even do journalism here," has accepted a job with another show and has yet to tell her boss she's leaving.

All of that gets put on the backburner when Budwell manages to get through lax security under the auspices of a package delivery. Pulling a gun on Gates on live TV and forcing him to strap on a vest bomb, Budwell wants to know why IBIS Global Capital's stock lost $800 million the day before. IBIS communications director Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe) is making the talk show rounds saying it was a "computer glitch" but that's only because CEO Walt Camby (Dominic West) is gallivanting around the world on his private jet and has been MIA for several days. He was scheduled to be on MONEY MONSTER that day, which is why Budwell brought two vests. Budwell invested his entire savings--$60,000 in insurance money he received when his mother died--in an investment that Gates and frequent guest Camby endlessly crowed was a sure thing, and he wants answers, not just for himself but for all the other investors who were victimized by a rigged system (or dumb enough to throw everything into one basket). Budwell doesn't believe that $800 million can just vanish because of a computer glitch. Of course, he's right, and Patty, whose long-dormant inner journalist is reawakened as she tries to keep Gates focused by talking to him through his hidden earpiece, directs MONEY MONSTER staffers to do some actual investigative work and look into the coincidental timing of nearly $1 billion vanishing while Camby's been off the grid and impossible to find for nearly a week.

Directed by Jodie Foster and co-written by veteran journeyman Jim Kouf (STAKEOUT, RUSH HOUR, NATIONAL TREASURE, and back in his younger, dues-paying days, THE BOOGENS and UP THE CREEK), MONEY MONSTER is more concerned with being a commercial hostage thriller than taking a serious look at stock market fraud and income inequality issues. That's not to say it doesn't make some bitter, satirical points here and there, whether it's taking aim at the vacuous nature of most cable news shows (of course, real-life news personalities like the increasingly hapless Wolf Blitzer and the increasingly loud Cenk Uygar have cameos as themselves), and the fickle, short attention span of the viewing public. One of the big mistakes MONEY MONSTER makes is in its closing minutes, tacking on a coda to give the audience one more scene with Clooney and Roberts when a perfect, hard-hitting indictment of an ending would've been the shot of the foosball game resuming in the coffee shop (no spoilers, but you'll know it when you see it).

MONEY MONSTER has some tricks up its sleeve in that nearly every time you start rolling your eyes at some hackneyed plot device or think the movie is careening off the rails with an improbable, Hollywood plot convenience, it pulls the rug out from under the audience--and its characters--and essentially confirms your feelings. Just when you think Budwell is an impossibly dumb, useless lug (British O'Connell is really chewing on that "working-class Queens schlub" accent) who's gathering the sympathy of captivated TV viewers, the movie introduces his pregnant girlfriend--played by Emily Meade in the kind of incredible, one-scene turn that got Beatrice Straight a Supporting Actress Oscar for NETWORK--to mercilessly lay into him about just how impossibly dumb and useless he is. Meade's is the best scene in the movie, with the actress practically stealing the whole show in about two minutes of screen time. It's destined to be a YouTube favorite, along with Clooney's ridiculous dancing. O'Connell (UNBROKEN) overdoes it a little too much at times, with his Budwell weighed down by a massive blue-collar chip on his shoulder about how "you tink I'm fukkin' stoopid?" and "you's rich fucks wit ya fancy edgee-cayshuns!" Clooney and Roberts are, as usual, a solid, almost comfort-food team even though they don't share the screen very much (one question: is Clooney wearing eyeliner in the climax at Freedom Hall? His eyes are all puffy and he looks completely different, like that sequence was a reshoot or maybe he was sick that day), and the supporting cast is filled out with numerous familiar, reliable character actors (Giancarlo Esposito, Lenny Venito, Christopher Denham, Chris Bauer, John Ventimiglia, and Dennis Boutsikaris, cast radically against type as the kind of sneering prick who would've been played by the late Ron Silver two decades ago). MONEY MONSTER isn't high art and it isn't very deep or analytical about Wall Street aside from obvious points that too much of the money is controlled by too few people, but it's an entertaining, straightforward movie for grown-up audiences, so enjoy this kind of thing in a theater while you still can.

In Theaters: ELYSIUM (2013)

ELYSIUM
(US - 2013)

Written and directed by Neill Blomkamp.  Cast: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, William Fichtner, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Emma Tremblay, Faran Tahir.  (R, 109 mins)

South African writer/director and Peter Jackson protégé Neill Blomkamp follows his acclaimed 2009 hit DISTRICT 9 (does anyone recall that actually getting a Best Picture Oscar nomination?) with another politically-charged sci-fi epic.  ELYSIUM is definitely indicative of a Hollywood blockbuster side of Blomkamp, and the points it makes are much less subtle.  But it's still an engrossing film that shows a slightly more disciplined director (the biggest flaw of DISTRICT 9 is that he never seemed to settle on shooting documentary-style or as a straight narrative) and other than one fight scene that briefly utilizes some ill-advised PS3 camera moves, it's the kind of relentlessly-paced, hard-hitting sci-fi actioner that someone like a James Cameron or a John McTiernan would've made in the 1980s.  Like his mentor, Blomkamp is a director who knows how to use CGI so it doesn't draw attention to its artificiality.  ELYSIUM looks great, the action is non-stop, and while its metaphors are a bit simplistic and not everything in it stands up to hard science logic, it's one of the most entertaining films of the summer.

ELYSIUM opens in a 2154 Los Angeles that makes the 2019 L.A. of  BLADE RUNNER look like the good old days.  Sometime in the early 22nd century, Earth became such an overpopulated, crime-and-disease-infested shithole that the world's wealthiest people (read: the one-percenters) headed to the space station paradise of Elysium, which hovers above the planet.  The privileged of Elysium live in a safe world where there's no crime and things like cancer are easily detected and eradicated upon signs of the first trace by in-home MedPods.  Elysium is off limits to the people of Earth, essentially populated by one massive underclass who live in shantytowns and bombed-out buildings.  Any attempts by refugees to enter Elysium's atmosphere--usually to get to a MedPod to cure a terminal illness--result in immediate apprehension and return to Earth.  That is, until one day when intolerant Elysium defense secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) decides to make an example of three ships trying to get to Elysium by having them blown up with drone missiles activated by her psychotic Los Angeles-based Elysium sleeper agent Kruger (DISTRICT 9's Sharlto Copley), which gets her on the shit list of Elysium's President Patel (Faran Tahir).  Meanwhile, in L.A., ex-con Max Da Costa (Matt Damon) is trying to live a normal life, working on the assembly line at the Elysium-owned Armadyne factory, which manufactures robot security drones to keep order on Earth.  Due to a bullying manager and workplace negligence, Max is exposed to a massive dose of radiation while on the job, and a robot medical tech gives him some painkillers to stay somewhat functional and informs him "You will be dead in five days.  Thank you for your service."

Knowing he can be cured if he can get to Elysium, Max teams up with old crime cohort Julio (Diego Luna) to pull off a job for powerful, fast-talking smuggler/hacker Spider (Wagner Moura).  A gravely-ill Max is fitted with a surgically implanted neurological exoskeleton, wired into his spine and head, which gives him strength and allows him to receive data directly into his brain.  Spider wants Max to retrieve data from Armadyne boss Carlyle (William Fichtner), who possesses a "reboot" code for Elysium that Delacourt wants to use to stage a coup against the sympathetic Patel and run Elysium her own way.  Spider has his reasons for wanting the reboot code, and Max just wants to get to Elysium to cure the cancer rapidly growing inside of him, and both have to deal with an enraged Kruger, who just wants everyone dead.

As you can see, you've got your unsympathetic, selfish one-percenters, the war-mongering defense secretary, critiques of workplace abuse and lack of access to quality health care, and a revolt of the disenfranchised.  Blomkamp's politics are pretty obvious (if, for instance, you think Delacourt is the hero, you might not be Blomkamp's target audience), but he never lets things get too polemical once the action kicks in.  DISTRICT 9 immediately elevated Blomkamp to the big leagues, and he delivers with impressive set pieces, masterful handling of visual effects, and managing a much bigger cast of established actors compared to his previous effort, and it's nice that he brought his pal Copley along with him.  Damon is in fine BOURNE mode once things get serious, and Copley and ELITE SQUAD's Moura (a huge star in his native Brazil) really have some fun chewing the scenery.  Only Foster seems uneasy, due mostly to her performance being re-looped in post-production.  It's her voice, but apparently test audiences didn't like the accent she was using.  Despite her above-the-title billing, Foster doesn't have a lot of screen time, and it's glaringly obvious in some of her close-ups that she's revoicing herself because there's several bits where the words are out of sync with her lip movements.  Maybe there was a script change that necessitated changing some of her dialogue, but it's very uncommon for dubbing in a big-budget American movie to be that sloppy (this was also the case with Svetlana Khodchenkova's performance as Viper in THE WOLVERINE), especially when it involves someone of Foster's stature.  She certainly looks the part, but she just doesn't seem comfortable in the role.  Maybe it's that she probably didn't get to work with most of the major stars except for one brief scene with Copley and Alice Braga--Damon and Foster have no scenes together, and their characters never meet.  It's ultimately a minor quibble about an otherwise fine film--with its release date delayed multiple times by Sony after being shot two years ago--from someone who's all but guaranteed to become a major genre leader in years to come.