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What Made Jodie Foster Agree to Star in the Worst Movie of the Year? [Hotel Artemis]
observer.com ^ | 06/07/2018 | By Rex Reed

Posted on 06/07/2018 12:20:57 PM PDT by Red Badger

There are bad movies everywhere. And then there is 97 minutes of total garbage called Hotel Artemis. This shoddy, gross, cruel and nauseating freak show is the work of Drew Pearce, a writer of no discernible talent (Iron Men 3, Mission Impossible—Rogue Nation), making an atrocious directing debut. Moronic drivel that truly qualifies as the worst movie of the year, it sinks amateurish moviemaking aimed at audiences with no taste to an alarming new low.

A creepy combo of science fiction and bloody, slashing carnage, it’s set, for some unexplained reason, in 2028—on one busy night in a futuristic Los Angeles reduced to a pile of rubble and corpses, where the citizens are rioting and killing each other over the dwindling water supply. In a world of almost terminal darkness where a flashlight could lead to sudden death, the Hotel Artemis is a deserted building that serves as a Grand Guignol horror show. In this fetid, members-only stinkhole (numerous references are made to the way it smells), wounded outlaws come to be treated for knife slashings, gunshots and worse, in an emergency room for criminals run by an ancient hag called The Nurse, played by none other than—wait for it!—Jodie Foster.

Disfigured with prosthetics, crone makeup and wrinkles for days, this resourceful, intelligent actress looks 104 years old and does everything in her power to avoid trashing her considerable talent in a role that can only be described as stupid and meaningless. Either she’s doing somebody a favor or she needed money badly. Whatever the reason for insulting her admirers, this junk movie isn’t worth it.

Wielding hypodermic needles and barbaric instruments of torture, The Nurse administers triage to an assortment of deranged killers, bank robbers and gang members who have reduced the outside world to an abattoir of severed limbs and rotting bandages. Helicopters explode overhead, generators are noisily re-wired, the sky outside the windows looks like a lava flow in Guatemala, and the sound of machine guns make conversation an impossible task, but inside the Hotel Artemis, if you are a member of this private club, you can hide out for a while and get some medical treatment, as long as you’re not a cop or member of government authority—and they don’t run out of opiates. In a film of endless enigmas, the biggest mystery of all is what Jodie Foster is doing in it.

The idiotic screenplay insists a world revolution is in progress with the poor declaring war on the rich. There are good guys and bad guys, but nobody bothers to explain who is who, what is what, or why.

The Nurse, hooked on pain killers and whiskey, greets a rogue’s gallery of creeps from Central Casting including “The Wolf King” (a.k.a. Niagara), a master fiend who rules L.A. (a silly performance by a miscast Jeff Goldblum); a band of thugs led by his menacing son (a one-dimensional Zachary Quinto); a Neanderthal health-care professional named after Mt. Everest (Dave Bautista); a bank robber named Waikiki (Sterling K. Brown) and his drug-addicted kid brother Honolulu (Brian Tyree Henry); a scumbag businessman named Acapulco; and Nice, (referring to the town in the South of France, not a pleasing personality trait) a karate-chopping lady assassin in a red evening dress (played by the dreadful Sofia Boutella, who can barely speak a word of intelligible English).

The rest of the cast performs with such a uniformly sluggish ineptitude that it is an act of generosity not to mention their names.

Drew Pearce’s direction is a real slog. His alleged script, which borrows and steals from every action cliche imaginable, makes so little sense it might as well be written in Swahili. A subplot about a diamond hidden in a fountain pen is so lame it must be a joke. Like everything else, it backfires. I laughed more at the sight of Foster escaping to her sordid room for endless replays of The Mama & The Papas singing “California Dreamin'” But the biggest laugh in the movie is the only real laugh in Hotel Artemis, when she gets so tired of the mayhem and shootouts and falling cadavers that she sighs a big one and threatens to put up a “No Vacancy” sign. It’s too late. Everyone else has already checked out early.


TOPICS: Arts/Photography; Music/Entertainment; TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: drewpearce; hotelartemis; jeffgoldblum; jodiefoster; rexreed
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1 posted on 06/07/2018 12:20:58 PM PDT by Red Badger
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To: Red Badger

Never was a fan of hers anyway


2 posted on 06/07/2018 12:30:24 PM PDT by SMARTY ("Nearly all men can stand adversity...to test a man's character, give him power." A. Lincoln)
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To: Red Badger

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$


3 posted on 06/07/2018 12:30:55 PM PDT by mad_as_he$$ (.)
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To: Red Badger

I’m going to take a wild guess it was the size of the paycheck.


4 posted on 06/07/2018 12:32:01 PM PDT by BBQToadRibs
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To: BBQToadRibs
What Made Jodie Foster Agree to Star in the Worst Movie of the Year?

Nice Carpeting?

5 posted on 06/07/2018 12:33:21 PM PDT by gr8eman (Since God has been banished from our classrooms, Satan has filled the void.)
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To: Red Badger

Critics give it a 67% on Rotten. While I disagree with critics often, the 67% means at least it is not the worse movie of the year. Hyperbole.


6 posted on 06/07/2018 12:35:49 PM PDT by BushCountry (thinks he needs a gal whose name doesn't end in ".jpg")
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Jodie in the greatest TV show of all time...


7 posted on 06/07/2018 12:37:10 PM PDT by dsrtsage (For Leftists, World History starts every day at breakfast)
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To: BushCountry

Now 64% out of 36. The reviews are starting to roll in.
Always wonder if red tomatoes saw same film as rotten tomatoes.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hotel_artemis/reviews/


8 posted on 06/07/2018 12:39:10 PM PDT by SMGFan (Sarah Michelle Gellar is on twitter @SarahMGellar)
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To: Red Badger

I assume Iron Men 3 should have been written Iron Man 3. That wasn’t a bad movie. Didn’t care for the Mandarin ruse, but it was a fun movie and was one of the most successful movies of all time. Also, I’ve liked all the Cruise Mission Impossible movies, and Hotel certainly sports an impressive cast.

I won’t be in a hurry to see the movie just because I don’t care for Jodie Foster, but I’m liable to see it at some point.


9 posted on 06/07/2018 12:39:43 PM PDT by be-baw (still seeking...)
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To: Red Badger

Habit?


10 posted on 06/07/2018 12:41:24 PM PDT by DannyTN
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To: Red Badger

Jeff Goldblum on the left, Jodie on the right. Time to retire.

11 posted on 06/07/2018 12:41:59 PM PDT by RightGeek (FUBO and the donkey you rode in on)
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To: Red Badger
LOL,great for a good, drunken night at the fraternity house. One caution, however, to the brothers: make sure NOBODY is allowed in with a cell phone, lest some POS record an inadvertently racist or sexist remark and turn it over to the university's NKVD (AKA "Diversity Office). This caution is entirely serious, since the 1st Amendment is not respected on all too many campuses.
12 posted on 06/07/2018 12:42:05 PM PDT by libstripper
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To: RightGeek

Who’s the dude on the right?


13 posted on 06/07/2018 12:43:32 PM PDT by gr8eman (Since God has been banished from our classrooms, Satan has filled the void.)
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To: libstripper

?..................


14 posted on 06/07/2018 12:48:18 PM PDT by Red Badger (When Obama and VJ go to prison for treason, will Roseanne get her show back?...)
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To: dsrtsage

That episode came to my mind as well.


15 posted on 06/07/2018 12:49:37 PM PDT by kallisti (You have to answer for Santino, Carlo.)
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To: SMARTY

I agree. She is the ugliest beautiful woman I ever saw.

I still can’t imagine how she got so well known.


16 posted on 06/07/2018 12:50:51 PM PDT by yarddog
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To: RightGeek
"Jeff Goldblum on the left, Jodie on the right. Time to retire. "

I'm pretty sure it's makeup:

Jodie Foster at the 2018 Oscars.

17 posted on 06/07/2018 12:51:27 PM PDT by PLMerite ("They say that we were Cold Warriors. Yes, and a bloody good show, too." - Robert Conquest)
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To: be-baw

Never seen ANY of those movies...............


18 posted on 06/07/2018 12:53:12 PM PDT by Red Badger (When Obama and VJ go to prison for treason, will Roseanne get her show back?...)
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To: Red Badger
What Made Jodie Foster Agree to Star in the Worst Movie of the Year?


19 posted on 06/07/2018 12:53:21 PM PDT by Yo-Yo (Is the /sarc tag really necessary?)
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To: RightGeek

20 posted on 06/07/2018 12:54:32 PM PDT by Red Badger (When Obama and VJ go to prison for treason, will Roseanne get her show back?...)
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