If only Myspace could be viewed in its original beauty. It would allow me to see how prolific I was in blogging when the dancers at Big Al's declared me the most intellectual man in Peoria.
Do I miss 2007 to 2009? It was a time of contentment, and being comfortable is not something that I seem to deal with well. The difference between now and then is that I was not worried about the future. Guess it could just be hope was prevalent. Surely if I take the occasional bump and just throw movie, trucker or college kid critique on the Internet, success and security was destined.
Lose the girlfriend by being the post-modern strip club Socrates (Chris Rock's "No Sex" is advise for for first-time visitors), your income is halved because of a truck stop scammers catch you working a double shift, best friend moves out and you move home to constant Fox News broadcasts and a mother who was already missing W, all hope would seem to be lost. Thank the gods for cats or the time between then and now would be a wash. Unfortunately for me, I kind of have their attitude, so needless to say, it would be a while till much got done to correct myself. Smartphones did not help matters.
Why open up the laptop when you can pull up the information on your phone? Needless to say, little time was spent on Internet browsers that encouraged me writing during downtime. Well, blogging was gone, but I did keep up writing movie reviews. The problem is not knowing anyone who would want to take the time after putting eight hours in at a call center to transcribe them.
And then you end up at the iHotel where the employees who were there from day one to hear "If Mr. Fox sees you using downtime to write or study, you would be fired." No bumps and no ranting. It almost makes not realizing that they had given you two weeks of vacation time a fair exchange to take a less stressful hotel job.
The lesson here is not to think about your past when you already nailed down your movie review's blog title. You are left with only having, "that hotel may have been stressful, but not as much as the one Jodie Foster was manning," as your "smooth" transition to one of 2018's attempt to capture Quentin Tarantino's too hip vibe, "Hotel Artemis."
Hotel Artemis
Two brothers' bank heist is hindered by no one knowing how to break into or open the safe. With the water riots consuming Los Angeles, the rich are just trying to make sure their ill-begotten goods are secure. This leads the brothers to decide to settle on whatever goods disgruntled errand runners are willing to part with, including a fountain pen full of canary diamonds that the younger brother decides to take with him despite the warning of its courier.
It must have been cursed because upon leaving, the riot cops find that they are a better target to engage leaving one member of the crew dead and the other three suffering from wounds, the little brother critically. Fortunately, despite having been retired, the elder brother has kept up his membership dues with the Hotel Artemis, LA's premiere criminal emergency room, so they should be able to get fixed up and wait for this whole thing to blow over.
Now Waikiki and Honolulu upon checking in, Waikiki finds out there may be too many variables to survive the night. His ex-flame Nice, the premier hitwomen in the world, is obviously on a job, but we do not know the target. It is never good to have a coked up arms dealer with a never sunny disposition around, and the son of the Wolfking of Los Angeles is locking the place down to ensure that his wounded dad will not be turned away.
Everest is a beefed up health care professional and guardian whose talents operates both ways, but if the Wolfking finds out Honolulu has his diamonds, the no weapon policy may not be enough to allow any of the nurse's patients to get out alive. The nurse is also trying to save the life of a cop does not help matters. All the house rules will be broken, but that is what was bound to happen when you only care for rule breakers.
With a list of real tag team and women's champions already documented, perhaps trying to find the "Reservoir Dogs" knock off each year should be my next project. I will have to get around to "Bad Times at the El Royale" but until then, Drew Pearce's directorial debut "Hotel Artemis" gets to at least claim firsties for the title.
Pearce's feature either had actors who did not want to have fun or a script that was too focused on mechanics to keep most viewers' interest. He had written "Iron Man 3" and "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation." Both movies are enjoyable, but the construction of the stories are off compared to their predecessors. When we get to the action sequences, it is hard to know what we should be focused on and the ending leaves us with a lot of questions to what actually happened in the climax. The credits end with an invitation to return to the Hotel and a thanks for staying, but I would need extra honors point to inspire me to need those answers.
If the actors were given some witty dialogue along the way, perhaps be allowed to improvise, this would be a rewarding watch. Unfortunately, it is too involved moving the film forward (Batista, Jodie Foster and Jeff Goldblum might be too much for an hour and a half), we do not get it. Definitely a waste of a fine cast with an exception to Charlie Day who is playing his "Always Sunny" character without any meme-able lines.
I told my girlfriend about "Hotel Artemis" being another attempt to capture Tarantino's major film debut, and she responded with "why can't they let Reservoir Dogs just be Reservoir Dogs?" A proper response would be, "at least it was not a remake," but Tarantino has made us want action movies about archetypes. As long as there is that want, we are going to keep getting repackaged versions.
"Hotel Artemis" wants to have a clever story, but fails to realize that everything needs to be clever to be something we could picture Harvey Keitel in. Otherwise, release it straight to DVD the same week as "Guardians" and give Batista top bill. There is a lesson in profit.
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