watching Memento for the third time last night got me thinking about my favorite hotel movies. It reminded me that a lot more good movies are set in hotels than I'd realized, and in them the hotels are used to great effect in such different ways. In some cases the hotel is used to bridge the gap between our main characters and the outside world, so they can get out of themselves and have fun, ( Lost in Translation, Cedar Rapids ) in others, its function is to completely isolate them in seclusion ( The Shining, Psycho ). Hotels can serve a variety of purposes in our lives. I haven't stayed in many, but I always look forward to the experience, the best being when my aunt bought me my own room at a Sheraton in Cleveland and I stayed up all night smoking weed and running up the phone bill. The worst, hands down was the one room, no bathroom dive I had to share with my parents and sister on our trip to New York city, complete with bedbugs and tuna stank up and down the hallway. I'm sure you guys have your share of hotel stories, this thread can be for that too. First, I'll share with you my favorite hotel movies, in the order I like them and/or they kick ass the most.
1. The Shining
2. Psycho
3. Memento
4. No Country for Old Men
5. Hard Eight
6. Tape
7. Lost in Translation
8. The Innkeepers
9. Cedar Rapids
10. God Bless America
There ya go, list yours, throw some titles out there, it's your life. I don't know what the criteria for it being a hotel movie are besides the main characters spending a majority of the films running time in them.
My runners up ( because they're not that good ) are:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Slums of Beverly Hills
Identity
The Celebration and Lost in translation is the winners.
This is just off the top of my head so I may have to revise this list later, but my top three would be:
The Shining
Barton Fink
Lost in Translation
good call on The Celebration. also 2046, but that's more of a motel movie.
What about last year at marienbad? Was that a hotel? Or just a rich people party in a palace..
Man I'm going to rewatch that. And if that counts then Gosford Park and Rules of the Game.
Actually i've just listed the best films from a whole different category: rich people hanging out in an estate.
Sideways
i like the motel in Stranger than Fiction
Memento wasn't set at a hotel. A motel. Big difference. Totally different vibe, atmosphere, whatever.
Hard Eight featured both.
Tape was a motel, I'm pretty sure.
Maybe you think I'm splitting hairs, but it's really an important distinction to make.
No Country is a motel too.
I think I like motel movies better..
i think i like motels better in general...
Pulp Fiction has a cool motel too
Yeah, I dig the down and dirty motel vibe more, too. If it was just a hotel thread, that'd be boring, so I'll have to include them both. Good to see a couple titles that I missed floating around.. Feel free to include any hotel/MOTEL scenes you find particularly awesome. I love the motel part of From Dusk til Dawn, and the beginning of The Devil's Rejects. Nothing like some good hotel horror. Okay, motel...
A few that haven't been said yet...
Great:
Some Like It Hot
Grand Hotel
Okay:
Hotel Rwanda
Dirty Pretty Things
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
Not so good:
Maid in Manhattan
Dunston Checks In
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Quote from: Pubrick on May 14, 2012, 01:01:17 PM
rich people hanging out in an estate.
The Exterminating Angel
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
The Remains of the Day (not one of the best, but still...)
Bonus, awesome hotel scenes:
Pillow talk in Punch Drunk Love
Blood in toilet in The Conversation
Drunk Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now
Hotel Chevalier (http://vimeo.com/1916781)
..and KarlJan reminded me of the great motel scenes in Bonnie & Clyde
I'm staying in a hotel where I just looked up to notice a framed painting of a Magnolia above my bed. Good or bad omen? :ponder:
not top of the list but i kinda like Bug too
Quote from: Reelist on September 11, 2012, 10:12:07 PM
I'm staying in a hotel where I just looked up to notice a framed painting of a Magnolia above my bed. Good or bad omen? :ponder:
Bad if you're a blackjack dealer and volunteer firefighter who pilots an air tanker.
Quote from: Reelist on September 11, 2012, 10:12:07 PM
I'm staying in a hotel where I just looked up to notice a framed painting of a Magnolia above my bed. Good or bad omen? :ponder:
Heh... Great Omen, dude.
Unless you're Kevin Smith.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dreadcentral.com%2Fimg%2Freviews%2F1408dvdb.jpg&hash=15cac540ba83dc089d5f56ef57df96cf1b077e6f)
Quote from: socketlevel on September 11, 2012, 10:17:10 PM
not top of the list but i kinda like Bug too
That. Fine quirky film.
I guess
The Grand Budapest Hotel would be on my list too.
I watched 'The Innkeepers' tonight (spoilers), it grows on me more each time. I watched it on my laptop the first time and I don't think I got the full effect of it's sound design. I found myself legitimately scared in pretty much all the places it wanted me to, which is a rare feeling to get when you know all of the horror tropes. Ti West has this way of really drawing you into the characters and knowing them as real people before the horror starts. So even though there are only two deaths in this movie it feels like a huge deal because of how likable Sarah Paxton's character is.
Anyway, I wanted to bring this up. In this clip, Kelly Mcgillis from 'Top Gun' asks Sarah Paxton if she's an 'inspiring actress' at 1:21. With subtitles it says "aspiring actress" but listen to her pronounce it a few times:
"The Innkeepers" Co-stars Pat Healy, once again working behind a counter. Anyone who wants Pat Healy to carry their movie must be a huge fan of 'Magnolia', where do huge fans of Magnolia come? I don't know, guys. Sometimes I just.don't.know.
Ti runs in the same crowds as Ghostboy, so it's not totally out of the realm of potentiality.
Have either of you see his western? I haven't and I've never seen Cabin fever 2 either. But I actually most want to rewatch either the the innkeepers and/or the Sacrament
Haven't seen Valley of Violence yet, though I've been meaning to get around to it. Sacrament left me cold a bit; it felt like he just wanted to do a retelling of the Jonestown massacre, but didn't really know why. But Innkeepers is great and House of the Devil is a minor masterpiece, so he's still on my good side.
As for Cabin Fever 2, he apparently disowned it after the edit was taken away from him, but from having seen it, I honestly can't imagine any version of it that wouldn't have been terrible.
I love House of the Devil and enjoyed The Sacramemt, must get on The Inn-Keepers. He also appears in my favorite Joe Swanberg movie Silver Bullets.
Bug (Friedkin)
I keep coming back to this film every couple of years, try to show it to someone who hasn't seen it and people are always shocked that it's so good and they never heard of it. People who remember it claim they passed on it because it looked like a cheap horror film. That was my case. But then I saw it and damn, it's just fucking crazy on another level. I don't think Michael Shannon can top this performance, in fact it is THE Michael Shannon archetypical performance. But what Ashley Judd manages here is simply electric. She has a monologue near the end that makes you want to jump out of your seat and scream along with her. People love The Exorcist and there other more respected films in Friedkin's career, but to me this one takes the gold.
QuoteI guess I'd rather talk with you about bugs than nothing with nobody.
i bought Bug about ten years ago in a basement movie/music store near some university in seattle, the university of washington i think, and Alexandro inspired me to go back to it, since i haven't sold it.
he's absolutely right about both performances being incredible. somehow the movie is good but it's almost as if their performances are better than the movie, almost as if movies don't even deserve performances of that caliber
above i quoted not the movie's best line but its most thematically encapsulating one. the movie celebrates what these days would be called a toxic relationship, exploring its bad side while also expressing the necessity it can take in the lives of others. i believe i'm starting to understand crazy people. i've always been biased toward them anyway perhaps, owing to their heightened sensations, but i'm understanding them now like this: Rupert says "Better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime," and that's a good line, here's a variation on it, "The world calls me a schmuck, he calls me his queen."
i will build upon that idea by mentioning the next movie i watched was
(https://i.imgur.com/iqrKQ0f.jpg?1)
both movies are about the pros/cons of toxic relationships, are set in a hotel, and end with fires.
now, Bug was written by Lady Bird's dad (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0504832/), and Fool for Love was written by and co-stars Sam Shepard. that's actually side-info unrelated to the topic i'm building.
both movies work within a limited setscape but in fact explore massive interior landscapes experiencing lightning storms.
which i love, really. these are interior melodramas, almost soap operas. why not? you wanted to see their lives--well, they didn't want to see their lives. and that basic philosophy i support.
it's all so trashy, too. these people who can't find anything in life, of course they value love, and the kind of guy i am, i'd rather hear stories like these than comic book movies or whatever else godless bullshit the lamestsream is embracing.
a Fool for Love quote is
QuoteI couldn't take a breath without thinking about you.
isn't that a good one? i want someone to say that to me. is it an outrageous line? yes. i want someone to be outrageous with me. we'll end in fire but at least we'll have begun.
considering that a pretty good/sufficient closer.
Quote from: jenkins on November 10, 2018, 04:47:37 PM
i bought Bug about ten years ago in a basement movie/music store near some university in seattle, the university of washington i think
Was it Scarecrow Video? That's legitimately the best video store I've ever been to. You'll pay a premium for it, but you can find stuff there you'll never find anywhere else.
i did go there and i remember at the time there was a story about QT having walked to it, which cemented it as a notable spot for me, although it achieves that on its own without the QT story. but i bought it somewhere else, it was on like a two block stretch outside a university, with all sorts of common university stores, cultural stores