Bad Times at the El Royale - BLU-RAY

This Movie it’s really Good it has Excellent HDR and Dolby Vision with Great Atmos and this Movie is very Suspenseful And also a Thriller I like Jeff Bridges he Always does a Great Job In Acting and Dakota Johnson is Smoking Hot In this Movie

Beautifully lavish and stylish thriller set in the 70’s. Looks great on 4K.

This Movie has Excellent 4K Reference Quality with HDR with Dolby Atmos

Bad Times at the El Royale is directed by Drew Goddard, the man who wrote and directed the cult classic The Cabin in the Woods, and stars a whole bunch of famous people. Seven stranger, each with a secret, all happen to meet up at the El Royale, a hotel that is half in Nevada and half in California. Over the course of one night, secrets find their way out and everything turns to chaos. I wasn’t pumped for this when I saw the first trailer. It seemed like it was going to be kind of like the recent Murder on the Orient Express, which was ok but not great. I forgot about the trailer and watched it again a while back and I got a little bit excited the closer the release got. I liked this movie. I thought that it had a clever story and caught my attention. The performances were really good in this. The biggest standout for me was Lewis Pullman as Miles Miller and Jeff Bridges as Father Daniel Flynn. The others I really liked were Cynthia Erivo (Darlene Sweet), Dakota Johnson (Emily Springsteen), and Chris Hemsworth (Billy Lee). The story very interesting. From the first moments of the movie it grabbed the audiences attention, and also had some interesting editing that worked. As the story progresses everything starts to tie together and more secrets come out. The suspense in this movie was great. You didn’t know what was going to happen. The actors were fantastic as I mentioned before and added a bit more flare to the story. I really loved the relationship between Darlene and Father Flynn. Those were the most interesting parts. The directing and was good. You could see some of Goddard’s techniques from The Cabin in the Woods and shared some similarities. The cinematography was pretty good. The set decoration was really good, another possible Oscar nominee. Side note: there has been some really good set decoration of recent this year. I don’t know why but I love it. I liked the costumes. The fit the time period well (1969) and they had the personality of the character too. The score was good. I really liked the music in it and Cynthia did sing in it and I will say she has an amazing voice. There was one scene in particular that had some really interesting stuff happening and all we could hear was her singing. I loved it! As for flaws, it was a bit of a long movie. It was 2 hrs 20 min and some stuff could’ve been cut down a little. There’s stuff involving a sister which made sense for the plot but there was a little something that just felt a little bit off. It may just be because I didn’t like her as much. Towards the end a secret from Miles Miller comes out and it’s supposed to be like a big thing but then when you learn about it, it wasn’t that big of a bombshell. I feel like they could’ve changed that. Another thing happened involving a tape which kind of felt a little off just because I would forget about it and then it would got back to it. Also this really isn’t a flaw but some people were advertised a lot but barely in it so I felt a tiny but disappointed but it worked out. This is a clever movie that made barely any money on its first weekend (only 7 million with a 32 million budget). It seemed like a big movie but I guess people wanted to see Venom (not really good) and A Star is Born (very good) more. I would recommend it. Either see it in the theater or wait for it to come out on blu ray. My Grade: B+

I loved almost everything about the first hour or so of this. The style of the camera work, the inherent tension in the writing, the character choices, and the editing that fluidly compacts every perspective writer/director Drew Goddard (Cabin in the Woods) introduces into a compelling mystery, but also visually conveys the themes the story is chasing. Bad Times at the El Royale is all about duality and perspective and the different ways in which one individual might perceive another based on the perception of their reality. While this may sound rather basic in terms of ideas what makes Goddard's approach work all the better is that he doesn't just layer in misdirects as cheap tricks, but truths so as to give the audience genuine pause to who can be trusted. It is in the second hour and extended climactic confrontation that the tension begins to fizzle and it becomes clear certain story strands will not be explored further much less wrapped-up. That said, what does occur is still very much an entertaining time at the El Royale with character confrontations that refuse to fully diffuse the situation and therefore the tension at hand. It is in this extended climax that Chris Hemsworth's character, Billy Lee, shows up and takes the film in a direction that doesn't tend to layer in everyone else as much as the first half. Whether Billy distracts due to the fact Hemsworth is dancing around with his shirt off I don't know, but despite being satisfied with the frankness of the conclusion there is a desire Goddard might have continued in the more complex vein of his set-up rather than allowing a single character to take things off the rails.