Sat 6 Apr 2024
A Sci-Fi Movie Review: HOTEL ARTEMIS (2018)
Posted by Steve under Reviews , SF & Fantasy films[6] Comments
HOTEL ARTEMIS. 2018. Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, Jeff Goldblum, Brian Tyree Henry, Jenny Slate, Zachary Quinto, Charlie Day, Dave Bautista. Director: Drew Pearce.
Although apparently a bomb at the box office, I haven’t been as cinematicly impressed with a movie since seeing Blade Runner for the first time. Blown away, I was. It takes place maybe 20 years in the future during a riot in downtown Los Angeles over the shortage of water in the city. (Some problems never end.)
That’s only the background, though. The entirety of the film takes place inside the Hotel Artemis or just outside its entrances or the rooftop. What its exclusive clientele consists of are criminals who pay a membership fee, in lieu of medical insurance, for its top of the art medical facilities.
Jodie Foster plays the elderly Nurse in charge, in her 60s perhaps, a woman who on the outside is tough and organized and ultra competent. But on the inside, over the night the film takes place in. another part of her personality is revealed, showing a huge weariness, sadness and melancholy resulting from the death of son several years ago.
There are several additional stories attached to the patients who make their way to the hotel that evening, which I won’t go into, but as the paths of the assorted thieves, paid assassins, illegal arms dealers and general all around bad guys and henchmen begin to crisscross and intersect, it’s quite a dizzying task to keep at all straight who’s doing what to whom and why.
The linchpin to all this (and don’t forget the massive riot going on outside) is the Nurse, trying to hold everything and (I think you can tell) not panic. And as the action never stops, some secrets are revealed, more than one.
But if a pregnant police office can get an Oscar in another, totally different and otherwise straightforward crime thriller, my vote for this year’s one would have been for Jodie Foster.
Watch the trailer. As trailers go, it’s a good one.
April 7th, 2024 at 6:24 am
This one flew completely under my radar.
April 7th, 2024 at 6:36 am
What Jerry said. But it looks like a keeper.
April 7th, 2024 at 8:44 am
It’s on MAX. I’m recording it tonight at 3:30 am.
April 8th, 2024 at 12:21 am
It’s on MAX currently. I missed it despite being intrigued by the trailer first time around. The BLADE RUNNER comparison is apt.
April 10th, 2024 at 10:50 pm
Thanks for this review Steve. My local library had a dvd of Hotel Artemis and I really enjoyed it. Jodie Foster also stars in a recent HBO series of True Detective. She plays a sheriff of a small town where the sun doesn’t shine, just ice, snow and darkness. A lot of strange things occur!
April 11th, 2024 at 11:33 am
We are on like minds on most things, Walker, book or movies. Glad the trend continues.
I do not understand the lack of recognition this movie has gotten. It’s probably not a film for mass audiences, but to have come and gone without any notice at all is beyond me.
Here from the movie’s Wikipedia page is a summary of some it’s critical response:
“Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times praised the cast and the filmmakers attempt to do something different but was disappointed that the film is “all too predictable and familiar”.
“Foster’s performance received positive reviews and particular attention from critics. Empire’s Jonathan Pile said, “Foster gives a performance to treasure—tough on the surface, but conveying an unshakeable sadness”,[26] while Screen Rant’s Sandy Schaefer called her the film’s best part and said: she naturally gets the meatiest role here as Nurse—whose dry humor masks her struggles with anxiety and a past she cannot escape. Vulture’s Emily Yoshida said, “Foster, dowdied up and forever shuffling around from room to room, toting a portable record player and headphones, is a massive pleasing anchor amid all the more flashy bullet exchanges and flying kicks that inevitably break out.” The San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle said, “Not enough can be said about the performance of Foster in this film. She brings to the role a quality of having seen the absolute worst in people, but also the suggestion that, as a result, she accepts them on their own terms and knows how to handle any situation. So she starts the film radiating confidence and sadness, and then, as the story wears on, a creeping sense of panic.” Rick Bentley from the Tampa Bay Times declared Foster’s performance as Oscar-worthy and said, “she transforms herself from her world-weary face to a way of shuffling when she walks that suggests a life of pain and suffering ignored to spend more time helping others. This is one of the Oscar-winner’s best and most memorable performances.”