New Rose Hotel
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Movie Reviews of New Rose Hotel
Movie Review: The worst screenplay EVER.
Summary: 2 Stars
What a waste of talent coming from a cast of (usually) wonderful actors. Walken & Dafoe in endless incoherent banter. The beautiful Asia Argento, who is Italy's most famous actress is miscast in this horrible mess. What a shame! I have seen the work of all these actors but this one is a huge, awful attempt to be artistic. Director Abel Ferara, who has made one of my most favorite movies (like Bad Lieutenant w/ Harvey Keitel) thoroughly dissapoints me in this shoddy piece. Everything is tacky, including the quality of the film. This is by far, the worst movie by a talented director made w/ three awesome actors EVER made. Rent it but do not buy.Movie Review: Horrid mess
Summary: 2 Stars
An unbelievable mess, this incredibly confusing movie makes Ferrara previous "The Blackout" a model of narrative clarity. This shoddy movie is one of the reasons that Ferrara has become more and more a marginal figure (his films are now barely released in the US). The reason why actors of the caliber of Dafoe and Walken starred and produced this movie is beyond me. The only thing that makes this movie worth a look are a few nude scenes from the beautiful Asia Argento.Movie Review: Nothing happens
Summary: 2 Stars
I fell asleep watching this movie. Nothing ever seems to happen. Not much of a plot. A waste of good actors.Movie Review: William Gibson: Great in Print...
Summary: 1 Stars
But preternaturally awful in film. Since Gibson's accomplishments as a writer of science fiction include the coining of the term "cyberspace" and several field-advancing novels that shaped the entire course of the cyberpunk sub-genre, it seems an amazing thing that a half-decent film based on one of his books either:
A) Cannot be made. B) Cannot be made even with him writing the screenplay. C) Cannot be made with a trillion dollars and an executive order compelling every last American citizen to watch and enjoy it.
Some of us have had the misfortune of watching _Johnny Mnemonic_, an extrapolation by Gibson on one of his short stories from the _Burning Chrome_ collection. Even in a career as uneven as Keanu Reeves has had, it's one of the weaker efforts in a portfolio that includes _Point Break_.
_Point Break_. For the love of God.
This latest effort, also taken from the aforementioned collection of short stories, is called _New Rose Hotel_, which stars Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe and Asia Argento, an actress of whom I had not previously heard. The plot, insofar as it goes, is that a maverick researcher from one genetic engineering concern in Germany is wanted by another in Japan. Walken and Dafoe engage in a sort of intellectual larceny by convincing the unhappy and talented to disappear from their current employers and relocate to one who pays Walken and Dafoe. Asia Argento, whose name and soft Italo-Hispanic contralto suggest a career that will unfold between the hours of 2 and 6 a.m. on Cinemax, plays a postmodern lounge singer whose act includes two other women kissing and caressing her through each song. Walken has the brilliant idea to recruit Argento to seduce his quarry for corporate relocation, and it falls to Dafoe to train her properly through no fewer than three nude sequences.
I love the work of William Gibson and want to see it onscreen in as many well-conceived adaptations as Hollywood's small collective mind will permit. This film is not under that category, and in fact is so far away from being in it that particles of light currently at that category may not reach this film for several decades. I guess that I can forgive Dafoe and Walken - we all have balloon mortgage payments or bone-marrow transplants or something that might justify appearing in this for some undisclosed fortune - and Asia Argento will probably never have a chance to work in more dignified settings.
Apparently the director's idea of conveying a dark, near-future setting is to film his researcher in grainy segments that look like an extremely weak television signal for a show that no one wants to view. The omnipresence and power of the corporation, Japanese culture and all of Gibson's other touches that define the contiguous world of his books are not here. Anywhere. The coffin hotel of the New Rose outside of Narita International is as close as it gets, and by the time you see that you have tired completely of the film's last third, which is Dafoe and Walken having flashbacks of the film's uninteresting first two-thirds.
Even though I felt suspicious of a DVD title priced less than one night at the base theater with Junior Mints, I felt that a smaller-scale film released without any pretense of competing at the box office might be worth it. Possibly. But don't buy, rent or allow yourself to waste precious hours of consciousness on this.
Movie Review: Feels like yanking off a molar with thumb and forefinger.
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought this one because a) it's hard to find on video and b) the idiosyncratic Asia Argento is in it. Interesting to follow her career up to this point, a mix of strange arthouse films (New Rose Hotel, B. Monkey) and European productions (Phantom of the Opera, La Reine Margot).But New Rose Hotel was an eyesore.
Abel Ferrara's continued pretenses towards some kind of metaphysical statement are beginning to annoy greatly. New Rose Hotel is just as heavy-handed, drug-clouded, boring, and pretentiously acted as any '90s Ferrara film (aside from the more accessible commercial fare The Body Snatchers and the acclaimed Bad Lieutenant). Ferrara manages to take two great actors, Willem Dafoe and Asia Argento, and direct them in such a way as to eliminate both of them of any charm whatsoever. His idea of internal complexity seems to be letting Dafoe sit in the dark with a pensive expression on his face. And Christopher Walken? He's been sleepwalking all the way through the '90s, saddled with role after role where he tries to be cool and impenetrable, succeeding only in being a nuisance.
The DVD's filmographies are interesting as is the "trivia game" concept, though the film itself is so incredibly uninvolving that I would hardly recommend adding this DVD to a collection.