Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

[surreal]

Went to see this yesterday - it's the second movie from Drew Goddard, his first being Cabin in the Woods which I loved enough to get me to see this in the short time it will be on the big screen (doubt it will be around for more than a week or so).

It's the "few strangers in a strange place, who/why/what is going on" genre, set in a seedy hotel in the late 60s, with a great Motown soundtrack (if that is your thing) and some great performances (including Jeff Bridges playing a character called "Flynn" again).  I even quite appreciated Dakota Johnson for the first time ever (fantastic arse...).

I really wanted to like it, the setup is great, cinematography and set design etc is spot on, but I think it's about 30 minutes too long.  These things should really be 90-100 minutes tops but this is 2hrs 22 which is WAAAAY too long especially to sustain for that long before getting to the payoff.  It does lead you down a few false paths, some surprising twists but it felt like 2 or 3 other movie plot ideas had been melted together.

Anyway, its still good with the above caveats, 3.5 / 5

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQmOaJciI7Q

[TrenterPercenter]

Ha we both just posted the at pretty much the same time I'll move mine here and perhaps neil can delete my thread.

So saw this on the basis that I will watch pretty much anything with Jeff Bridges in it.

It's a decent if predictable character caper in which we steadily learn about each of the protagonists stories (that are pretty formulaic in the end: old man, pretty women, black woman, kindof cop, weird nerd, beach bum dude) and then go "aaaaaaah that is why that thing happened then". 

It is definitely fun (for an hr or so), slick and Bridges does his excellent doddering old man shtick.  Some stylish elements seem a little forced (see singing and banging) and as I was watching I thought to myself......"this reminds me of cabin in the woods" (which it turns out it is the same team).  Similar to CITW is goes bonkers at the end, and whilst CITW doesn't suffer overly much for this, this film does and seems overly busy, rushed and as if they didn't know how to end the film so threw a load of things in hoping something would stick.  The change of pace is just a little too awkward and there is a real sense of the film being sidelined in favour of gratuitous shots of Hemsworth's (impressive you have to admit) pecs and abs.

Not as good as Blindspotting which has now dropped off the cinema, which is a real shame.

3/5 worth the admission but with a sprinkling of meh.

[surreal]

Heh, I was just going to point that out...

[TrenterPercenter]

Heh, I was just going to point that out...

Yeah seems we had quite similar feelings about the film too.

It is too long as just as things started kicking off at the end I felt my interest waning.  For what is meant to be a clever eyebrow raiser the end is just a little too "i'm going to stand here and talk to you for ages rather than kill you and then the people with guns pointed at your heads can forget how to shoot for a bit, then the kid can be a sharpshooter but forget the girl is mad and is obviously going to kill him" brain fart of an ending

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

There was a weird trailer/puff piece for this at the cinema a couple of months ago. It consisted of the actors all talking about how good they thought the script was. Naff as it was, I did find it rather intriguing. I also really enjoyed Cabin in the Woods, so I've been looking forward to seeing this ever since. Needles to say, it's disappointing to see the critical response has been rather tepid.

[mothman]

Just realised Jeff Bridges is now older than his father was when he was in Airplane!

[garnish]

Cabin in the Woods was shit, I thought.

[Mister Six]

Just realised Jeff Bridges is now older than his father was when he was in Airplane!

I just realised Jeff Bridges is Lloyd Bridges' son.

[Bhazor]

Bless, they never forget an old service man.

[Bazooka]

John Hamm has never been shit in anything, even shit things, is it worth it for him?

[Pepotamo1985]

SPOILERS AHEAD

It's a decent if predictable character caper in which we steadily learn about each of the protagonists stories and then go "aaaaaaah that is why that thing happened then". 

Similar to CITW is goes bonkers at the end, and whilst CITW doesn't suffer overly much for this, this film does and seems overly busy, rushed and as if they didn't know how to end the film so threw a load of things in hoping something would stick.  The change of pace is just a little too awkward

Yeah. Loved the aesthetics and the shifting viewpoints and some of the performances were excellent.

However, this felt a lot longer than it actually was, which has got to be a bad sign. At first I appreciated how twisty-turny and mysterious proceedings were - I went in with no conception of what the film was about at all, which is good practice anyway but particularly so when seeing a film at the cinema you are extremely likely to watch just once in your -life - and felt myself getting sucked in, but the ending third/whatever kinda killed that goodwill and made me a bit annoyed I'd allowed myself to get so invested in the opening. Which isn't to say I didn't like the ending portion or find the Charles Manson strand/sub-plot entertaining and intriguing, but if you're going to switch tone, pace and style pretty much entirely to close off a movie - and in doing so leave a lot of raised questions unanswered and introdcued avenues unexplored/unresolved - you need to make the shift much less jarring and pronounced.

Also, the bell boy being revealed to be a mass-killing Vietnam vet really pissed me off. There's nothing (well, nothing I noticed) in any of his preceding scenes - whether in his actions, temperament or statements - that foreshadows it particularly or makes it make any kind of sense within the context of the narrative at all.

Yes, he mentions having seen worse etc. and it's obvious he has a dark past of some kind but that could be anything - and I didn't find it pronounced enough to wonder what particularly. Without the reveal he could easily just be a 'weird' character for unexplained reasons, a loose-end/anomaly like the hotel 'owners' and various other issues and questions left unresolved.

His rampage was the inverse of a Chekov's gun moment (or indeed a Chekov's gun moment in ultra fast forward) - the laziest, clunkiest, most tedious deus ex machina imaginable. Oh shit, characters are trapped in hopeless seemingly irresolvable situation and face certain death, but oh wait one of them is actually a crack soldier and can save everyone. FFS.

It's particularly egregious given the payoff to his character arc is him dying while non-priest gives him the ecclesiastical forgiveness he's been seeking seconds after the rampage ends. Would've been much more acceptable if his flashback sequence had happened earlier in the film and linked to something specific - why not have a PTSD bout after Bridges gets collaterally shot? As far as I can remember, it's literally only when he's confronted by a gun he mentions killing at all, and it comes out nowhere.

Worth a cheap evening viewing, but not more than that.

[Blinder Data]

This always looked a bit tryhard and I am sad/gladdened that my trailer suspicions have been proven to be correct