From Pokemon Red and Blue to Pokemon Sun and Moon–and now Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee–the RPG series has changed a lot over the years. But were things better back in the day? Fighting for the Pokemon titles of today is Will Potter and repping Pokemon games of old is Oscar Dayus. Watch and decide who you think argued their case better in our poll!
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Hotel Artemis‘s basic premise is simple: Make an entire movie about the Continental scenes from John Wick. The Continental is John Wick‘s network of secret hotels for criminals, where doctors wait on-call to patch you up after a gunfight, and the staff will dutifully kick you out and/or murder you for breaking any of the establishment’s many rules. That’s basically Hotel Artemis, but the whole movie. And with an all star cast, moody set and visual design, and a tense, tight script, it’s pretty damn good.
What Hotel Artemis isn’t: an action movie. With the trailers and the unavoidable John Wick comparison, you might go in expecting one, and you’ll come out somewhat disappointed. Structurally, Hotel Artemis is more like a play, set almost entirely in one location, and with a small cast of characters who you get to know intimately through generously paced scenes full of expository conversations.
Near-future Los Angeles is on lockdown in Hotel Artemis thanks to violent rioting against corporate control of the city’s drinking water, a sci-fi concept that feels completely realistic. But that’s only the backdrop; it serves to lock the Artemis’s guests in place. If you checked in today, you’re not checking out tonight. Much of the movie is spent getting to know the characters as they come together and clash in various ways, all running their own schemes and missions. Finding out what they’re all really doing there, or what put them on this path, is the source of plenty of narrative payoff.
Hotel Artemis is an ensemble film, but at the same time, Jodie Foster is undeniably its star. As the Artemis’s head Nurse, Foster effectively runs the place, admitting and administering to patients whose memberships are in good standing, and enforcing the rules with the help of Dave Bautista’s Everest, who’s half bouncer/half nurse, not to mention half badass/half comic relief. Everest is not unlike Drax, although he proves that Bautista is still both funny and imposing even without green makeup.
The Artemis’s other guests, who all go by the destination-named rooms in which they’re staying, include Sofia Boutella’s femme fatale Nice (pronounced “niece,” as in the city in France), Sterling K. Brown’s bank-robbing Waikiki, and Charlie Day’s Acapulco. Zach Quinto and Jenny Slate are a pair of wrenches in the Artemis’s normal operating procedures, and Jeff Goldblum shows up charismatically–and briefly–as has become his habit lately.
Where Hotel Artemis really succeeds is in worldbuilding. The John Wick comparison is inevitable, but Hotel Artemis does even more to flesh out its world than Wick did in two films. And unlike John Wick, Hotel Artemis doesn’t start to feel like mythology as the details about its titular establishment emerge. It’s quite the opposite–the more we learn about the people and the place, the more grounded the whole thing feels.
The escalating riots outside the hotel take shape as constant context, with news reports running in the background of many scenes. Events inside the Artemis devolve into chaos in tandem with the protests outside, especially once the Wolf King–LA’s top criminal–shows up expecting special treatment. The characters’ backstories, motivations, and goals emerge more and more as the story progresses, until you’ll feel you know them personally.
Hotel Artemis isn’t flawless, and its balance between exposition and action leans a little too heavily toward the former. But Foster carries the movie on her back as she shuffles around the Artemis patching patients up and keeping them in line. Her tragic backstory takes up a lot of screen time, but it becomes surprisingly relevant later on. And although the character initially seems incongruous with the setting, her journey there makes perfect sense by the end.
If Hotel Artemis‘s tight script is its greatest strength, the future-noir setting and visual design come in a close second. Technology ranging from the hotel’s security systems to the handheld gadgets each guest uses–including Nurse’s retro-fabulous musical proclivities–convey a lot about this movie’s world. Director and writer Drew Pearce, whose writing credits include Iron Man 3 and who here makes his feature directing debut, seems to have thought of everything. Even something as simple as the Artemis’s various wallpapers, which serve as the only scenery for the agoraphobic Nurse, say a whole lot about the setting, world, and characters.
And when Hotel Artemis does dip into action, it does so with style and flare. Boutella, especially, shows once again that her frequent action roles in films ranging from Kingsman to Atomic Blonde are no accident. In a slinky red dress charmingly mismatched with punk rock Doc Martens, Boutella does everything she can to steal the show from Foster. Sterling K. Brown, meanwhile, serves as the movie’s emotional core, as he’s the first character we meet in the opening scene’s bank robbery gone wrong. Charlie Day, predictably, provides mostly comic relief, and does so admirably, though he shows he has a menacing side as well.
Hotel Artemis might not be exactly what you expect going in, but it ultimately proves to be a compelling and engrossing deep dive into a single setting on a single night, and the collision of the handful of characters who find themselves there. Part near-future sci-fi, part classically stylized noir, Hotel Artemis plays out more like a theater production than the action movie you might expect. But it’s well worth checking in either way.
From Pokemon Red and Blue to Pokemon Sun and Moon–and now Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee–the RPG series has changed a lot over the years. But were things better back in the day? Fighting for the Pokemon titles of today is Will Potter and repping Pokemon games of old is Oscar Dayus. Watch and decide who you think argued their case better in our poll!
