yarrow Blog

An LA flophouse inhabited by an extended family of the walking wounded and more than a few scheming schemers. A mysterious death. Add earnest, and psychotic, FBI Agent Skinner (Mel Gibson) who's at least as strange as any of the hotel's inhabitants. What's not to like?  Million Dollar Hotel is fairly enticing at the front end if for nothing more than the opening scene and Jeremy Davies character, Tom Tom, a damaged but sweet-innocent narrator who guides us through a byzantine plot stitched together from a series of vignettes, flashbacks and reactions to Skinner's investigatory shenanigans. As the story progresses, the plot gets muddy but the freaks are intersting enough to keep you engaged. I may be the only person on this planet who wanted to watch it a second time, but I did and I liked it even more. See this film for it's great soundtrack, some interesting plot gimmicks (Bono wrote the story with Nicholas Klein) and it's crew of flakey grifters surviving on the gritty edge of the City of Angels but don't expect a masterpiece. Million Dollar Hotel is promising fare (except, perhaps, for Gibson's character which he's played once too many times and with better gags in past efforts) that may not quite execute on it's ambition, but the attempt is worth a few minutes of your time.

I've recently been on a bit of a  Claude Chabrol jag and have greatly enjoyed the subtlety (and twisted nature) of his darker work. Both films are noirish in mood if better lit, with satisfyingly-warped characters slowly exposed. Like a parlor magician, Chabrol has you looking at the right hand, while slowly revealing that the left hand is where the real action takes place. In The Bridesmaid (La Demoiselle d'Honneur), a sister's friend ensnares an awkward and naive brother. In Merci Pour le Chocolat, the good-mother/businesswoman/philanthropist turns out to have a darker side. I love the movies and look forward to diving deeper into his work. I place these films in a different class from Chabrol's A Comedy of Power, which also has a dark side, but not such deliciously perverse characters.