If only Myspace could be viewed in its original beauty. It would allow
me to see how prolific I was in blogging when the dancers at Big Al's
declared me the most intellectual man in Peoria.
Do I miss 2007 to 2009? It was a time of contentment, and being
comfortable is not something that I seem to deal with well. The
difference between now and then is that I was not worried about the
future. Guess it could just be hope was prevalent. Surely if I take the
occasional bump and just throw movie, trucker or college kid critique on
the Internet, success and security was destined.
Lose the girlfriend by being the post-modern strip club Socrates (Chris
Rock's "No Sex" is advise for for first-time visitors), your income is
halved because of a truck stop scammers catch you working a double
shift, best friend moves out and you move home to constant Fox News
broadcasts and a mother who was already missing W, all hope would seem
to be lost. Thank the gods for cats or the time between then and now
would be a wash. Unfortunately for me, I kind of have their attitude, so
needless to say, it would be a while till much got done to correct
myself. Smartphones did not help matters.
Why open up the laptop when you can pull up the information on your
phone? Needless to say, little time was spent on Internet browsers that
encouraged me writing during downtime. Well, blogging was gone, but I
did keep up writing movie reviews. The problem is not knowing anyone who
would want to take the time after putting eight hours in at a call
center to transcribe them.
And then you end up at the iHotel where the employees who were there
from day one to hear "If Mr. Fox sees you using downtime to write or
study, you would be fired." No bumps and no ranting. It almost makes not
realizing that they had given you two weeks of vacation time a fair
exchange to take a less stressful hotel job.
The lesson here is not to think about your past when you already nailed
down your movie review's blog title. You are left with only having,
"that hotel may have been stressful, but not as much as the one Jodie
Foster was manning," as your "smooth" transition to one of 2018's
attempt to capture Quentin Tarantino's too hip vibe, "Hotel Artemis."
Hotel Artemis
Two brothers' bank heist is hindered by no one knowing how to break into
or open the safe. With the water riots consuming Los Angeles, the rich
are just trying to make sure their ill-begotten goods are secure. This
leads the brothers to decide to settle on whatever goods disgruntled
errand runners are willing to part with, including a fountain pen full
of canary diamonds that the younger brother decides to take with him
despite the warning of its courier.
It must have been cursed because upon leaving, the riot cops find that
they are a better target to engage leaving one member of the crew dead
and the other three suffering from wounds, the little brother
critically. Fortunately, despite having been retired, the elder brother
has kept up his membership dues with the Hotel Artemis, LA's premiere
criminal emergency room, so they should be able to get fixed up and wait
for this whole thing to blow over.
Now Waikiki and Honolulu upon checking in, Waikiki finds out there may
be too many variables to survive the night. His ex-flame Nice, the
premier hitwomen in the world, is obviously on a job, but we do not know
the target. It is never good to have a coked up arms dealer with a
never sunny disposition around, and the son of the Wolfking of Los
Angeles is locking the place down to ensure that his wounded dad will
not be turned away.
Everest is a beefed up health care professional and guardian whose
talents operates both ways, but if the Wolfking finds out Honolulu has
his diamonds, the no weapon policy may not be enough to allow any of the
nurse's patients to get out alive. The nurse is also trying to save the
life of a cop does not help matters. All the house rules will be
broken, but that is what was bound to happen when you only care for rule
breakers.
With a list of real tag team and women's champions already documented,
perhaps trying to find the "Reservoir Dogs" knock off each year should
be my next project. I will have to get around to "Bad Times at the El
Royale" but until then, Drew Pearce's directorial debut "Hotel Artemis"
gets to at least claim firsties for the title.
Pearce's feature either had actors who did not want to have fun or a
script that was too focused on mechanics to keep most viewers' interest.
He had written "Iron Man 3" and "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation."
Both movies are enjoyable, but the construction of the stories are off
compared to their predecessors. When we get to the action sequences, it
is hard to know what we should be focused on and the ending leaves us
with a lot of questions to what actually happened in the climax. The
credits end with an invitation to return to the Hotel and a thanks for
staying, but I would need extra honors point to inspire me to need those
answers.
If the actors were given some witty dialogue along the way, perhaps be
allowed to improvise, this would be a rewarding watch. Unfortunately, it
is too involved moving the film forward (Batista, Jodie Foster and Jeff
Goldblum might be too much for an hour and a half), we do not get it.
Definitely a waste of a fine cast with an exception to Charlie Day who
is playing his "Always Sunny" character without any meme-able lines.
I told my girlfriend about "Hotel Artemis" being another attempt to
capture Tarantino's major film debut, and she responded with "why can't
they let Reservoir Dogs just be Reservoir Dogs?" A proper response would
be, "at least it was not a remake," but Tarantino has made us want
action movies about archetypes. As long as there is that want, we are
going to keep getting repackaged versions.
"Hotel Artemis" wants to have a clever story, but fails to realize that
everything needs to be clever to be something we could picture Harvey
Keitel in. Otherwise, release it straight to DVD the same week as
"Guardians" and give Batista top bill. There is a lesson in profit.
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