Movies-TV

walken's funny cRaZy lines "NOOKIE NOOKIE" very fun movie

this is a movie that is fun to watch, the singing by abel in the club is very good , walken is at his best with his who cares atitude. defoe is spaced out and cool the way he's falling apart before your eyes , over abel. abel has a nice accent in her voice. the music is cool at the begining of the movie

Bad, Bad , Bad,... Goes Far too Slow just to get Nowhere

The great cast of Dafoe, Wlaken, and Argento, winds up in a techno thriller without any thrills and a dud of a plot. Abel Ferrara proves, once again, that he is one of the most hot and cold directors that has ever existed in the history of cinema. For every Bad Lutentant, King of New York, and The Funeral, he also serves up a Dangerous Game, Addiction, and, now, New Rose Hotel.

Basically, Chris Walken and Willem Dafoe play a game of genius stealing from a corporation by hiring Asia Argento to get a Japanese mega-brain to defect to another side. But, Willem ends up smitten with Asia, our hooker with the heart of gold, and everything, quite blandly, doesnt turn up roses. Willem spends the final half of the movie in a cubicle moaning over the first half of the movie, flashing back to several scenes we've already seen and some we didnt need in the first place.

The story has no life to it. It feels like they just figured a good movie might pop out of thin air because scene after scene is lifeless and bland. Walken and Dafoe do some far too obvious improvising, and, although they do appear to be having fun, it doesnt work. Argento comes out the worst, simply because she seems the most at ease with her character, is smooth in her acting, so it ends up being a shame that she is so good in, yet another, bad, bad, bad movie. Walken and Dafoe have proven thier talents elsewhere, but Asia has yet to find the movie in witch she can shine.

It just goes to show, you can have a great cast, a sometimes notable director, some money, and a crew, but, if you dont bother to have a good story to launch from, the movie is dead from the start.

Worst film I've ever seen

I wish there was a category for no stars or minus stars because this rates as a - 3 stars. Don't waste your time or money on this one.

Feels like yanking off a molar with thumb and forefinger.

I bought this one because a) it's hard to find on video and b) the idiosyncratic Asia Argento is in it. Interesting to follow her career up to this point, a mix of strange arthouse films (New Rose Hotel, B. Monkey) and European productions (Phantom of the Opera, La Reine Margot).

But New Rose Hotel was an eyesore.

Abel Ferrara's continued pretenses towards some kind of metaphysical statement are beginning to annoy greatly. New Rose Hotel is just as heavy-handed, drug-clouded, boring, and pretentiously acted as any '90s Ferrara film (aside from the more accessible commercial fare The Body Snatchers and the acclaimed Bad Lieutenant). Ferrara manages to take two great actors, Willem Dafoe and Asia Argento, and direct them in such a way as to eliminate both of them of any charm whatsoever. His idea of internal complexity seems to be letting Dafoe sit in the dark with a pensive expression on his face. And Christopher Walken? He's been sleepwalking all the way through the '90s, saddled with role after role where he tries to be cool and impenetrable, succeeding only in being a nuisance.

The DVD's filmographies are interesting as is the "trivia game" concept, though the film itself is so incredibly uninvolving that I would hardly recommend adding this DVD to a collection.

Mezmerizingly bad!

The only reason I was able to view this film in its entirety was that (I am convinced) there was some sort of subliminally hypnotic signal in the tape which made it impossible for me to turn off the VCR. Like a helpless observer of some horrible accident, I felt a morbid fascination to continue viewing, so as to see just how bad this thing ultimately could become. The lighting and sound seem to have been handled by members of the wrong union, for the scenes were often far too dark and the tv's volume had to be increased to the point of distortion to compensate for the terrible sound. This was not a matter of actors mumbling, although they did indeed do that. No, this was a matter of someone apparently using a "Mr. Mike" to record the film. The plot itself was terribly shallow and quite absurd. For those who feel compelled to watch this film for the strange sensation of being able to claim they have seen something really bad, at least they can look forward to the unintentionally hilarious sight of seeing the usually wonderful Mr. Walken trying to do a silly softshoe dance. That, however, is not worth the price of this stinker.

Awful!

It's hard to believe Walken and Dafoe wasted their talent on this "film" and I use the word film lightly. Half an hour into watching, I had had enough but a friend who expected better things to come compelled me to keep viewing. Not only did better things not come, the movie sunk to further depths of depravity. Not only was the plot miserable, the sound quality was awful and the lighting atrocious. In one scene due to inept lighting you can hardly see the actors because of the darkness shadowing their faces. Mood setting is one thing but obscuring the actors quite another. What a colossal disappointment.

great transfer of a one-of-a-kind film

when I first saw this, I thought it was possibly the worst, sloppiest film ever made, but it stuck in my head until I finally figured out what the story's really about. we've all had moments in life when we've pondered, over & over again, how someone we loved could betray us, and/or what we could've done to have changed the course of our lives. this film & the William Gibson story it's based on are unique in their storytelling & the screenwriter's commentary explains everything sequence by sequence in this at-first baffling movie experience. if you like off-beat/alternative/experimental film, check this out ASAP! I don't think there's ever been anything else like it. & Asia Argento's the stunning icing on the cake!

Seven nights in this coffin, Sandii

Make no mistake this is not Johnny Mnemonic or the Matrix in any way. While the story may come from Cyberpunk Guru William Gibson, there is almost no tech to be had in this film.

That being said, the film is very true to the source, and it's languid and impressionistic style makes it perhaps the most literary of the works inspired by WG.

The movie is slow and a lot of it is tedious, but that may be because the real story here only occurs in the final act, the whole rest of the film being the back-story.

Its an interesting approach though not completely satisfying, but in a story about loss, self-doubt and paranoia, nothing really should be.

where are the extra tracks!

hey, what gives? Amazon says there should be 2 specific commentaries & an Easter egg on this DVD & the sticker on the box says "contains 2 or more commentaries" (whatever that means!), but there's only one commentary on here, by the screenplay's author, not by "Gibson, Ferrara or the cast." Does anyone know what happened here?

Pff

Well,
Everybody seems to hate this movie in almost all regards. I would say that it isn't spectacular, but I think it deserves better than a lot of these people are giving it. I can respect that they think differently of it.
*chuckle*
It's amazing how many people can be wrong.

Many complained that they didn't understand what was going on. Sucks for them, I guess they just aren't very bright I know I watched it, and had no trouble seeing what was going on. I read the book afterward, and thought it was quite a well-done adaptation, though I would have thought that they could have come up with a better william gibson story to do a movie of, considering the brevity of this particular one, and the abundance of other stories out there, many of which are considerably longer.

A movie that could have been.

Look, it's like this.
The story New Rose Hotel, by William Gibson is one which hilights the decay of society through peoples own self destructive impulses and that never ending bain of humanity greed.

As a story, New Rose Hotel is to be honest way to short to even contemplate making a movie out of it. There's just not enough there and when I watch the movie, it shows immensely. Dafoe and Walken are 2 of my favourite actors and there performance together I found to be of good status. What this movie needed to do was give the viewer a good explanation as to the status of the society , this different world, basically an atmosphere. Instead it gives you a blurred corporate scene and then your thrown into a bar with women that can't sing and the 2 main characters forcing themselves to make out there enjoying the poor entertainment. The exchanging of information should have been more secretive and when people wispered in others ears you should have been given a zoom on that audio. Then there was the main guts of the story, with the nano technologist. This was what could have been the movies saviour, alas it was brushed over and the conversations where the main focus of the movie. This brings me to my last annoyance. The person in charge of camera directing should have been .... Instead of seeing people interacting together at important sections of the story, you got terrible close ups of single faces that were below amateur quality and destracted you from the dialogue. All in all Gibson should have written extra material for the movie and a lot more should have been spent on atmosphere to enhance the intrigue of the story, even if it meant getting more cost effective actors. ...I like to end with a positive note, and the only one I can make as far as capturing the story goes, is that the end scene that Dafoe acted out at the end was effective enough.

If your like me and a fan of William Gibson and these two great actors, you may want this movie as part of your collection, but I tell you now, after your first viewing it's one that will sit and gather dust very quickly.

Another love-it or hate-it film.

Notice that almost no one gives this film its average score (around 2.3 stars)? It's a classic bimodal distribution: hate it or love it. Well, maybe "love it" is a bit strong, but for those who 1) don't know the plot ahead of time, and 2) carefully follow the plot as it develops in the film, particularly in the last quarter, the story is quite gripping. If you've read the story ahead of time, or lose the plot while watching, it will just seem like a very low-budget muddle.

Like many of Gibson's stories, this is hardly science fiction-- in fact, it's more purely noir than many other more noir-y looking films that come to mind. As such, it's about money, love, betrayal, women, memory, machismo--that sort of stuff. Having read the story after seeing the film, I'd almost say the movie was better, while still being true to Gibson's spirit: less of the narrator's whiny voice, more Fox; more mystery, less pseudo-futuristic-cosmopolitanism. And a much better finish.

The best part is really the much-maligned last quarter, which in its memory flashbacks leads you to discover for yourself who betrayed whom and why. The conclusion, if you care about these sorts of issues at all, is really quite sad and moving. Not knowing when it would end, I jumped up close to the TV to hear Argento's reply to Dafoe's last line. To end there shows that these guys knew what they were doing.

a new tool of torture...

It took me 4 separate sessions to sit through this abortion. I've read Neuromancer, so I'm not ignorant of Gibson's work. I don't care if this movie is a great adaptation of the book...that just tells me that the book must be equally as boring.
The "eroticism" is cheesy, the story meanders... it's as if noone was really interested in making this. If so, it shows.
If this had been a low budget b-movie, it might have had "so-bad-it's-good" potential. Nope.
I didn't want to even give it 1 star, really, but I'll say it's for the minor nudity & the so-so performances by Walken & Dafoe.

Gratuitous sex was never so boring

Neither even the stellar acting of the great actors William Defoe and Christopher Walkin, nor the nearly continual gratuitous sex that permeates throughout, could save this boring film nor its weak plot. The sex scenes, which are numerous and ordinarily include several women at once, were actually well done though peculiarly uninteresting. Walkin and Defoe are on their game, and nearly make it a worthwhile viewing, but the script writer and the director were both asleep at the wheel. As a science fiction film, it contains nothing interesting either. The story is boring, and plods through irrelevant scenes. I had high hopes for this film; thinking it was similar to 'Blade Runner' and possibly half as good. After watching the first few minutes, I was minded of 'Liquid Sky'. However, it wasn't even half as good as 'Liquid Sky', and that is not a great film either, but at least it held the viewers interest. I wouldn't suggest purchase of this film to anyone who hadn't seen it first, and then only if they didn't fall asleep.

Confusing Narrative!!! Beware!!! Spoiler below!!!

New Rose Hotel has a great plot. Two corporate spies (Fox and X) are hired by a company (Hosaka)try to steal this Japanese scientist (Hiroshi) from one of their rivals (Maas). The two spies end up using a call girl (Sandii) to seduce the scientist and convince him to switch sides. X soon falls in love with Sandii and has trouble accepting her affair with Hiroshi(despite the fact that's what X and Fox hired her for). However, everything is going according to plan and Hiroshi defects to Hosaka. Because of this, X and Fox become millionaires overnight. Unfortunately, the plan backfires when Sandii backstabs Fox and X by defecting to Maas. In the process of her defection; she is able to reprogram a DNA sequencer (?) that ends up killing Hiroshi and all of the top minds at Hosaka in a lab in Marrakesh that Fox and X set up to hide Hiroshi. Hosaka first makes the millions of dollars they paid X and Fox disappear before they even had a chance to spend it and then come after Fox and X (who they believe double-crossed them when in fact Sandii double-crossed them too). Fox gets killed and X ends up hiding out at the New Rose Hotel reminscing about what went wrong.

Great story, right? Well, if you watched the movie, you wouldn't have been able to made sense of the plot above. It was only after reading Mr. Gibson's story that I understood the plot. This movie is incoherrent and if it wasn't for the strong performances of Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento, this movie would be a total waste of time. Abel, you can do better!! The movie was pleasant to watch for the most part. No technical glitches or cheap effects. However, what good is a movie if you can't understand what's going on? That's the problem with New Rose Hotel. That's why I give it such a low rating. Unfortunately, this film reinforces the often mistaken reputation of its director for stressing style over substance.

New Rose Hotel - see it!

Abel Ferrara is one of those directors that people either love, or don't know exists, and New Rose Hotel is one of his films to treasure. This adaption of William Gibson's short story "New Rose Hotel"is one of Ferrara's finer films.

Fortunately Ferrara is committed to film. he will ignore whatever and keep making films regardless.

Ferrara is obviously not a person imprisoned by the notion of 'good taste', but more to the point, recognises that life is an emotional mental and physical experience - sex looks weird, decisions are 'non logical' and the world is bigger than any individual. These are virtues.

Forget everything you have heard about William Gibson - 'cyberpunk' blah blah blah. Ferrera pulls out the beating heart and mind (they are the same thing) at the centre of the short story and avoids speculation about 'the future. This is a love story, and it reeks of semen, strange urges and a distinctively human scent.This is not a sci-fi story, and If anyone tells you this is a sci-fi story, never take a word they say seriously again.

The smartest move Ferrara makes is recognising that the future looks remarkably like the present. Freedom! left the geeks behind, so lets get on with it!

Once again Walken pulls out the stops for Ferrara and delivers the kind of desparte, funny, tender, sad, tragic, half mad characterisations only these two seem to know how to cook up. It is also a thrill to see Willem de Foe deliver a good performance in a watchable film.

Like a lot of Ferrara's films its riches are yielded through multiple viewings - engaging, confusing, evocative - the relationship between the three protaganists and their place in a world they don't quite understand, and which will surprise them.

It would be tempting to call this an arthouse movie - but that is an insult. When arthouse stands for some halfwitted pose (it is not good enough to mock mainstream film values - you actually need to deliver something superior), Ferrara is a rare talent. he doesn't need our encouragement, but do see this movie before he explodes.

what good actors do when good roles dry up

"New Rose Hotel" is the second attempt to turn a William Gibson story into a feature-length film (after the fairly disastrous "Johnny Mnemonic," starring King of Inexpression Keanu Reeves), and its pedigree is what drew me toward it: stars Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Asia Argento(!), and director Abel Ferrara ("Ms. 45") all have steady reputations in the film world. This gave me a slight reassurance: "no matter how bad the script is, the cast and direction could make up for it."

Well, "New Rose Hotel" is the type of film that exists in the twilight zone between films that are so bad they're painful to watch, and films that are so bad they're a laugh riot. The story has something to do with two cyber-pirates (Walken & Dafoe) who hire Asia Argento to fall in love with a prestigious Japanese scientist, and collect a large sum of money in the process. The events unfold with a maximum of confusion and even when things actually seem to be making sense, they just get confusing again.

That's not to say "New Rose Hotel" is ALL bad. Sterling Video, which released this specimen, is a company pretty notorious for pushing out low-budget, bill-paying dreck featuring brand-name stars under the radar of the mainstream so as to pass unnoticed to the library shelves at your local video store. And this is no exception. While Walken and Dafoe bring trademark professionalism to their nothing roles, you know this wasn't a movie made for Academy Award consideration. Ferrara, however, seems to have given up hope after filming, allowing the editor to piece together what little story there was using the gimmick of close-circuit cameras for stylistic value. And Asia Argento, it must be said, is an AMAZINGLY bad actress who would have no career if she wasn't the daughter of Italain director Dario Argento; she mumbles her lines to the point where you won't be able to make out what she's saying (not a bad thing, considering this film makes good use of her physical assets).

"New Rose Hotel" is a low-budget, confusing mess that would be completely forgettable without the presence of Walken and Dafoe. Some scenes retain a sense of style, but other than that this is a lost cause. If you're compelled to rent this, go in with your expectations low and it'll pass easier.

Worth watching for the most part.

For William Gibson fans, this movie was not so bad. It was (relatively) faithful to the short story. It was, for the budget and what it was, not too bad an adaption to film. Certainly better than Johnny Mnemonic, from that standpoint. I believe the director also directed Bad Lieutenant (another character study) which, when I realized it, made the format of how the film is more sensical. He went along a similar vein here in terms of studying the people rather than following the events around them.

The characters were well-cast in my opinion, based on the short story of the same name. As other reviewers pointed out, it DOES add a lot to the genre. All the cyberpunk stories are _not_ just the Matrix or Blade Runner, or a mishmash of either. (Not that they're bad. In fact, I enjoy both.) This succeeds in presenting a dramatic tale in the shady future Gibson created.

There are problems among the good stuff, make no mistake. [VERY MINOR SPOILER BELOW}

The montage at the end was, well....utterly boring and pointless. It gives the impression (whether or not it was actually true) that one ran out of time before the film was supposed to be over, so a slide show of various images from the hours previous that you've already seen are presented in a confusing cloud of images...which serve no real purpose. Up until that point however, the movie as both a character study and a suspensful tale are not bad at all. It's sort of like A.I. You KNOW when the movie ends, yet a little snippet drags it on well past it should.

Anyway, give it a try, especially if you are a Gibson fan, and if Johnny Mnemonic thoroughly disappointed you. This will give you more faith in future renditions, at least a little (and pray like hell for Sci-Fi to pick up one of his books for a mini series, heh) Another thing to keep in mind with books, especially Gibson, is that the true caliber of his work in many ways can't be put on film. I don't know if there is a way to portray the terror, disappointment and cruelness of the future of his world in a movie....but I'd have to say that this movie made at least a valliant attempt, and a better one than JM.

We Liked It & Even Watched It Twice!

Apparently most viewers hate this movie. It is not an easy movie to follow, I grant you. However, I've seen most of Abel Ferrara's films and liked them plus I generally go for anything with Willem Dafoe in it. Walken is a favorite too. Hubby absolutely adored it and would probably go the whole 5 stars if he were writing this, which puts him at variance with almost everyone. I can't go that far but I will go 4 stars. The plot is not that tricky. What is tricky is knowing what moment of time you are in with the characters. At any given moment you can be at the start, middle or end of the story. In this it rather resembles "Memento," which is in the theaters now. Ferrara should have considered changes in lighting or some other visual key to cue the viewers into this time shifts. I've seen this done by shooting part of a film in black and white and the rest in color. I've also seen one time sequence shot in all cool or blue tones while the rest of the movie is shot in reddish hot tones. In short, there are ways to make this easier on the viewer. The plot is that Walken and Dafoe are going to make an Asian scientist fall in love with a call girl they've just met, Sandy. Sandy will bewitch the scientist and he will go wherever she wants him to go. Industrialists will pay Walken and Dafoe big money for the con. They in turn will pay Sandy a million dollars as her share. The question becomes though who is conning whom. While Dafoe is busy falling in love with Sandy, he doesn't follow through on tracing the various leads about her which come into his hands. One irony I couldn't get over was Dafoe being stunned by someone else's beauty, when, in his prime, he had to have been one of the most beautiful people on the planet. Move this back to the 1980s and probably no one would be looking at the call girls in this film! My absolute favorite movie by Ferrara is "Bad Lieutenant" with Harvey Keitel in the starring role. Keitel gives the performance of his life in that film and it is much easier to follow than this one. Before you totally write off this film maker, you might give that one a a try if all the negative reviews on this one are too much for you.

At Least Plan 9 from Outer space was comical

This was the worst movie that I have ever seen! I can honestly say that because I actually watched the whole thing. Every frame of it. I wanted to Give Mr. Walken & Mr. Dafoe the chance of finishing the movie in some extrordinary way...but they didn't! I cannot say that I've seen anything by the director. this will however be the last movie he directs that I watch. the screen play was terrible, the cinematography was lousy, the acting was the worst that I've ever seen from actors with such an impressive list of credits. I'm seriously thinking about writing to the production company about getting a refund for the Dollar that I spent renting it.

PLEASE DO NOT BUY THIS MOVIE!!! I am begging amazon to remove this from their catologue because who ever buys this movie will be extremely upset with them and will probably never buy any thing from them again.

The only reason I gave this movie a one star rating is because they did not have a negative star designation.

THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME RANT