Hotel Artemis

2018 action movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: A nurse at a members-only hospital for criminals has a bad night.

What is Jodie Foster doing in this movie? Is writer/director Drew Pearce her nephew or something? Watching her shuffle her way through the hallways of the titular hotel and deliver every single one of her lines in the same exact way--in this tone of exhausted knowing--made me feel sorry for her. It's not that she's doing a bad job here. Other than the handful of interior shots of the setting that we get, she might be the best thing about this movie. But for this to be her first feature film role in five years doesn't make sense to me. She needed a better movie to shuffle through while listening to classic pop 'n' roll on her futuristic music-playing device.

I almost wanted to like her character, but I couldn't latch onto any of the others. Sofia Boutella, as this sexy ruthless assassin, might as well have been sleepwalking through all her scenes. Dave Bautista could have easily been a CGI character, showing off the range of lumber. Sterling K. Brown brings stoicism and little else to his criminal character. Charlie Day's character is irritating, probably intentionally so. And then there's Jeff Goldblum. After I was bored out of my mind once the initial novelty of this futuristic locale wore off, I at least knew that I was getting some Goldblum at some point. He does show up and Goldblums things up a bit, but this character doesn't really fit him. He's got better movies to be in, I think, although I did like one moment that I can't talk about at all for fear of spoiling a movie that you probably don't want to waste your time with anyway.

The hotel itself looks like it might have some character to make up for the characters not having any, but the setting has about the same amount of range as the characters. The almost anachronistic look of this hotel is only something that can be enjoyed for a brief time. With character development that is either pointless--Foster's nurse's past is brought up, it seems, only because Pearce realized while writing a final draft that a movie is supposed to have character development--or missing altogether and a story that feels like an insignificant blip in this near-apocalyptic world where water shortages lead to riots, the whole thing seems like it just doesn't matter at all. In fact, I'm having a tough time even remember what happened to two of the characters by the end of this. I'm not even sure I cared what happened to any of them, and that might be even worse.

This seems like the product of somebody having a good idea and thinking that was all that was needed to make a movie.

At least there's a Father John Misty song over the closing credits. That's something.