Bad Times at the El Royale [Includes Digital Copy] [Blu-ray/DVD] [2018]

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+

Ya gotta love Dakota Johnson's departure from "Fifty Shades of Grey (1, 2, &3)!" Seductive in those Fifty Shades films, here in "Bad Times at the El Royale, (2018), she (Dakota Johnson) turns in a stellar performance alongside the masterful ones by "The Dude," Jeff Bridges and Cynthia Erivo! The other 4 star-studded cast members lend great support in the telling of this unusual mystery thriller tale as the movie unwinds the story through expert visual storytelling! I love good mysteries from the old-fashioned classics of Alfred Hitchcock, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Orient Express, etc., etc. So now I have a less-intellectualized, heavily-visualized tale told in intense, 21st Century impression-generating indentations in the brain/mind's eye by means of "quasi-Suspira-like" images moving from screen to screen, and scene to scene. I have watched seven (7X) already this pleasurable DVD for the images and the way it tells this story! Periodically, I love to immerse myself into the amazing LIMITED bandwidth of colors this film, Bad Times at the El Royale," displays on the small screen of my TV. AND I get yet again amazed at the artistry of acting ALL these fine actors tell in the revelations of their coming together by Fate and Destiny of this cool and unique and unusual mystery! It's also quite fascinating for me to watch it in DVD added-value of Spanish subtitles!

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.

First off let me say, Bat Times at the El Royale is most certainly not for everyone. The way the story unfolds and how information is withheld/presented is quite complex. Although this may make it a bit too convoluted for some, it makes it an absolute treat for anyone willing to dig beneath the surface and get analytical. Not unlike Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard's directorial debut), Bad Times plays with your expectations. Goddard takes painstaking care to build tension throughout a scene, only to have it all upended by a sudden twist. For that reason, I anticipate the reaction to this film will be divided, as many moviegoers simply don't like surprises or being unsure of what will happen. However, if you are a fan of Goddard's previous work, it's a safe bet that you'll like this one. I also need to talk about the cast, as they deliver an absolute treasure of an ensemble performance. Each person plays their part incredibly well, but Cynthia Erivo and Chris Hemsworth are the definite stand outs. Hemsworth especially shines, showing us that he can do more than play a quippy Norse god. This movie has so much to unpack both visually and in terms of foreshadowing that I cannot wait to see it again. If you're looking for a smart, stylish, and generally thrilling way to spend a few hours, look no further than Bad Times at the El Royale.

A dark and twisted road is the way I would describe the the story arc of this movie. The film adds layer upon layer, much like the transparent sheets in a medical text, where you overlay each sheet on top of the next to get a more complete picture of the subject. Until the final act unfolds, this process lets you make assumptions about what is actually going on, but it doesn't telegraph its punches. I'm happy to say that I was kept guessing until the end, although it wasn't a "Happy Ending" in any traditional sense. It seems that movies made today feel the need to be gory and graphic. Maybe in the way that spectators at the Roman Colosseum developed a taste for gore, we need more each new film to satiate an appetite that is being inadvertently developed in us. I find that a little goes a long way, and graphical gore can be better implied and then left to the imagination, because we tend to worry more about what can't be seen than what is shoved in our faces. The best directors draw in the viewers mind as an accomplice to their intentions. This movie is not at all a gore-fest, but at the end it doesn't leave much to the imagination at all. My wife, who asked for this movie, probably won't watch it again, because she didn't expect it to be this dark.