Hotel Artemis (2018)

November 10, 2019 1:28 PM

Set in riot-torn, near-future Los Angeles, 'Hotel Artemis' follows the Nurse (Jody Foster), who runs a secret, members-only emergency room for criminals.
posted by DirtyOldTown (7 comments total)

This has style and a ton of ideas, and Jodie Foster is really feeling it. But it does not hold together so well. A secret boutique hospital for criminals with a single doctor and a single nurse? Okay, so how it is a high rise? And how would that stay secret? And if the building is so big, how does everyone run into each other all the time?

That's just picking one thing though. This is a mess of tasty ingredients that mostly don't cohere into anything resembling soup.

I would totally watch Drew Pearce's next movie, but this is a swing and a miss.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:37 PM on November 10, 2019

I caught most of this movie on cable once -- when the trailers were out I'd gotten the impression that Hotel Artemis was in the John Wick universe, but I guess I just confused it with the 'The Continental' Wick spin-off that was in development at one point.
posted by oh yeah! at 2:24 PM on November 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

I stumbled into this one back in the halcyon days of MoviePass, when I had a couple of hours to kill, and everything about it was so predictable that even Jodie Foster's better-than-necessary performance was predictable. Was it fun for free? Hell yeah, it was great fun for free. But I won't go out of my way for Hotel Apache.
posted by Etrigan at 2:56 PM on November 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Agreed - this movie has style for days but didn't have anything in particular to say and so many things to nitpick.

I almost always like Bautista, and Quinto had a fun part.

Guess it's a pseudo-intellectual actioner for Foster, at least it was probably fun to play.
posted by porpoise at 4:33 PM on November 10, 2019

Okay, so how it is a high rise? And how would that stay secret? And if the building is so big, how does everyone run into each other all the time?

It’s a very ‘90s downtown LA, which is to say that the sidewalks essentially roll up at 6 p.m. and there’s plenty of derelict buildings with just a few floors occupied. Artemis is one of those — an old hotel high(-ish)-rise that has drifted into obscurity and is only hanging on because it caters to an old-school or specialty clientele.

I think I just put twice the thought into it that anyone associated with the movie did.
posted by Etrigan at 4:57 PM on November 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

I wonder if the two clocks set in the film keep real time? Wolfman Goldblum's son calls to say his dad's ETA is 54 minutes, does he show up 54 minutes later in the film? And Nice's bomb clock skips away from her counting down a few times, but if you could keep counting with her in French maybe the timing works out?
posted by carsonb at 11:25 PM on May 25, 2020

I went into this knowing nothing about it. I hadn't even heard of it. At first I thought it must be one of those Asylum rip-off movies for John Wick. I was cooking with my back to the screen and I thought, "That sounds just like Jodie Foster." And god damn if it wasn't actually Jodie Goddamned Foster. I don't understand how Drew Pearce, who somehow wrangled a second shot at a Hollywood career, managed to book all the people who are in this movie — for $15.5M — but he did!

Anyway, it's good fun and a decent cyberpunk story. As I like to say, it was Not Terrible™.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:57 PM on August 1, 2020