Bad Times at the El Royale

Mid-century modern architecture. The Dude aka Jeff Bridges. Retro hippy California captured in amazing production design.Tautly suspenseful. These factors did me in, even before the movie started I was a fan.

This Drew Goddard movie is a loopy mystery built on the much used story device of a bunch strangers coming together in a strange place for a short period of time. But the adherence to the stock formula ends at the beginning once the scene is set.

The characters are unconventional, the twist and turns unpredictable and you can't help but rooting for the Dude even though you are an atheist and he is in the guise of a priest in this movie. The only single bell hop and mostly absent caretaker of the motel, Miles, is played by Lewis Pullman.The rest of the quirky cast is made up of Jon Hamm as the traveling vacuum cleaner salesman and the amazing singing and acting talent of Cynthia Arivo as the single African American woman who is on her way to audition as a backup singer for Supremes in Vegas. Then there is Dakota Fanning as the hippie Emily Summerspring and the charismatic cult leader Billy Lee - played by a mostly shirtless Chris Hemsworth.

To find later (after watching the movie) that the entire El Royale motel was built inside a warehouse in Vancouver with set design, color palette, architecture, and even singular details like bar stools or the distance from the bar to the reception made to match up with exact measurement of the movement of characters and the aesthetics of the movie was mind-blowing. Martin Whist, the production designer deserves a ton of credit for the amazing setting. The El Royale motel is also an important character of the movie and merited all the attention and detail it received, of course it has its hidden dark secret too. The California-Nevada state line running right through the hotel is an interesting element of the story.

Bad Times at El Royale has a captivating story line, engaging actors and an incredible set for film noir fans with a finesse modern technology can afford us now. 1969 looks better than it ever was at this border line between sunshine state and sin city.

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Hell Or High Water

West Texas is the romanticized West of twenty first century Hollywood still populated by outlaws, sheriffs and thousands of cows. The edgy element of romance is provided by skeletal still art of derricks dotting the desert-scape, populated by dirt-poor ranchers, slick oilmen and occasionally, in saunters Jeff Bridges in a cowboy hat.

In Hell or High Water, West Texas is played by Eastern New Mexico. Same difference, the same earth under the same sun on either side of an invisible human-drawn administrative line, apparently invisible lines have no effect on geographies.

In addition to the strangely addictive West Texas-Jeff Bridges combo, Hell or High Water has a great cast and a subtly kick-ass script by Hollywood’s true Texan writer – Taylor Sheridan. Directed by David Mackenzie, the movie is about two brothers taking revenge on a financial institution, to put it indirectly staying clear of spoilers.

Chris Pine and Ben Foster work the dynamics of an endearing brothers-in-arms duo, one a happy go lucky ex-con and the other a reserved and protective father. The brothers are balanced on the other side of the law by two Texas rangers – wise-cracking Jeff Bridges and a half Comanche-half Mexican ranger played by Gil Birmingham. There is an interesting tension between these two law men characters  colored with sarcasm and racial jokes yet their banter (mainly one-sided by Bridge's character) has the looking out for each other, brother-from-another-mother quality.

The camera panning the desolate expanse of the desert towns and the story chasing the brothers through the lone star state's western outposts  captures the hopelessness, isolation and rapidly creeping poverty of the region. If you like neo-Westerns (there might or might not be cowboys, by Western I just mean they are shot in the American south west) check out Serpico, True Grit or Nocturnal Animals, the desert is a prominent player in all these remarkable movies.

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