A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Four Rooms (Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, 1995)

Jennifer Beals and Tim Roth in Four Rooms

Cast: Tim Roth, Sammi Davis, Amanda de Cadenet, Valeria Golino, Madonna, Ione Skye, Lili Taylor, Alicia Witt, David Proval, Jennifer Beals, Antonio Banderas, Tamlin Tomita, Lana McKissack, Danny Verduzco, Kathy Griffin, Marisa Tomei, Quentin Tarntino, Paul Calderón, Bruce Willis. Screenplay: Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino. Cinematography: Rodrigo García, Guillermo Navarro, Phil Parmet, Andrzej Sekula. Production design: Gary Frutkoff. Film editing: Margaret Goodspeed, Elena Maganini, Robert Rodriguez, Sally Menke. Music: Combustible Edison.

Four directors on their way up concocted Four Rooms, a knockabout anthology comedy set in a rundown LA hotel. The four segments are linked by the hotel bellhop, Ted, played by a twitchy Tim Roth in a performance that's supposed to be reminiscent of Jerry Lewis, but for once makes the viewer long for the real Jerry Lewis. Roth mugs and flinches and mutters his lines so much that you might be grateful for closed captions except that the lines aren't particularly funny. A few actors survive this mess: Jennifer Beals keeps her head in the two segments in which she appears, and Antonio Banderas does over-the-top machismo well, but most of them succumb to the general anarchy. It was savaged by critics, but has a dedicated following who think it's one of the funniest films ever made. 

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