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Smithy · 05-10-2015, 08:38 PM

First review! Has a couple of spoilers so I'll put it in one just for the complainers

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After a disappointing fourth season, “American Horror Story” returns to FX with “Hotel,” which spends most of the debut episode building and introducing characters.

The always spectacular Kathy Bates plays Iris, the front desk clerk and gatekeeper to the Cortez Hotel. She’s been working there for 20 years, and reminds me of R. M. Renfield in “Dracula” (being that she’s a human working for a hotel filled with vampires).

Speaking of vampires, it takes quite a bit of time before Lady Gaga is introduced. She’s “The Countess,” a seductive, eccentric and methodical vampire who owns the Cortez Hotel. Yet, even with the power of Gaga’s performance, Sarah Paulson, who plays Sally, a junkie and friend of The Countess, has the most provocative character of them all.

And while the first episode doesn’t introduce James March (Evan Peters) – who built labyrinth of a hotel in 1930 – we get a taste of the secret rooms when kids appear and vanish, with one containing a kiddie party haven used to seduce even children.

The most exciting thing about each season’s debut episode is the visual introduction to the characters and locations. While “Freak Show” may have been the most vibrant and colorful of them all, “Hotel” features stunning costume designs and set pieces that are nothing short of spectacular.

But, what I found most intriguing about “Hotel” is that it appears FX and Ryan Murphy have taken their gloves off. Being that “Hotel” is the fifth season, I don’t think the filmmakers have any fear of losing committed viewers. Thus, they have taken everything to the edge of gluttony, which is ironically part of the underlying story-arc.

It appears many of the “Hotel” victims are sinners, as teased in the below opening title sequence. And with that comes junkies, criminals and the insane. “Hotel” gets graphic with the drug use, takes sex/rape to an entirely new level with a conical drillbit dildo, and even has a blood orgy that’s uncomfortably erotic. Everything about “Hotel” is about excess, and there’s no denying that everyone involved is ready to take it all the way (****, the season opens with Detective John Lowe (Wes Bentley) discovering a man, with his eyes gouged out and his tongue removed, glued inside a woman who has been impaled).

The one thing that I love about the “American Horror Story” franchise is that, much like a video game, it’s all about the ride. And while the end game may be inconsequential (I have’t liked any of the season finales), Ryan Murphy and company have set the stage for a monstrous fifth season that’s boasting its ability to be unapologetic from sex to the drugs and violence.

Tom4784 · 05-10-2015, 08:47 PM

Glad that Gaga's signed on for the whole season, I was getting Sister Mary teas from the whole 8 episode thing.

Xtopher · 05-10-2015, 08:51 PM

Guess the major positive reaction got her the whole season.

Smithy · 06-10-2015, 06:44 PM

Lots of reviews coming in now!

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If I went to a hotel and saw Kathy Bates standing there ready to check me in, I would probably dash out the door. The beautiful Swedish tourists should have gone with their instincts because Hotel Cortez is the type of hotel you check in and never check out.

This season of American Horror Story, AHS Hotel, features an all-star cast including the infamous Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga is haunting and brilliant in her role as Countess Elizabeth, who is twisted and blood thirsty. Is she some type of modern day vampire? Only time will tell as the season unfolds.

The story centers around the eerie Hotel Cortez and the eclectic occupants such as: Hypodermic Sally played by Sarah Paulson and Liz Taylor played by Denis O’Hare. Their paths cross with cop John Lowe (Wes Bentley) who is looking into a series of murders that seem to be all connected. Flashbacks reveal surprising truths, and all of the unexpected twists and turns in the story will have you on the edge of your seats. Be prepared to be scared!

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Hearkening back to the original AHS offering (Murder House), the initial installment of Hotel is determined to make you wonder which characters are alive, which characters are dead, which characters are manifestations of some ill-born id and which characters are just Murphy's friends dropping by for a day or two of what I'm sure must be some of Hollywood's finest craft services....

Outside of the wacky camera angels, stomach-churning editing, pulsing plasmas and polymorphous perversity, the best reason to watch American Horror Story is always to see what fun games Murphy and Falchuk have given the actors to play, though compared with Freak Show, this is emerging as less of a goofy acting showcase.

Lady Gaga, effectively stepping in for Jessica Lange, has gotten most of the early publicity for her extended acting debut. After an hour, it remains to be seen how Gaga will handle extended dialogue or emotional volatility, but she's initially just being asked to embody a visual conceit, which she does convincingly. She struts in high fashion with confidence, she does near-nudity without self-consciousness and she has a feral resemblance to Nosferatu star Max Schreck, which might seem accidental except that several characters attend a cemetery screening of the F.W. Murnau classic.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/mov.../review/829651

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Los Angeles' Hotel Cortez is a dowdy old beauty where terrible things happen -- vampiric things, and much worse. You don't want to look under the beds, or sleep on them either. (It does not get a lot of recommendations on Yelp). Ethel Darling (Kathy Bates) runs the front desk, with an assist from cross-dresser Liz Taylor (Denis O'Hare). Ethel's son Donovan (Matt Bomer) is a hotel habitue, as is Hypodermic Sally (Sarah Paulson). The Cortez's boss is the Countess Elizabeth (Lady Gaga). She is a sartorial piece of work, accessorized with a metallic hand that does bad stuff.

A detective, John Lowe (Wes Bentley), is mysteriously summoned to the Cortez. Why? Could it have something to do with a series of horrific murders in L.A.?

Let's talk about one Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta -- you know her as Gaga -- because that's all anyone coming to the fifth season of "AHS" will want to talk about anyway. As the Countess Elizabeth, she's a voluptuary and old soul -- possibly an ancient soul -- with vermilion lips that look like a smear of blood. Or maybe that's just because they are smeared with blood. When she first drifts onto screen, the impulse is to gawk, then shield your eyes. She's a bright white light that punctures the gloom, much as that exotic hand accessory of hers punctures throats. Gaga fits perfectly into Ryan Murphy's tableau of horror-meets-sex-meets-death. Her eroticism may be lethal but also Gagaesque, abetted by a pair of nipple shields that look expensive and painful. How fitting Gaga waited until "AHS" to make her TV series debut.

Now about that series: It will forcibly repel some viewers, disturb the rest. That is the plan, after all. "AHS" never bought into the idea that less is more, but that more is more. Much more is even better. The season opener is downright operatic with the gore, and more indebted to the hotel horror of Eli Roth ("Hostel") than to the Coen Brothers' "Barton Fink." If hardly a quantum advance over the fourth season, it makes the first look like a sitcom.

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Of course, getting to one of the rooms requires dealing with a not-very-helpful desk clerk (Kathy Bates, naturally) and her sidekick, played by Denis O’Hare, who goes by the name Liz Taylor. The strange doings at the hotel, and an anonymous phone call, bring unwanted attention from a local detective (Wes Bentley). Not surprisingly, he’s haunted by his past.

As for Gaga, she spends much of her time with the equally striking Matt Bomer, and the two are introduced via a wordless sequence in which they lure a young couple back to the hotel, where the duo resides. In keeping with “American Horror Story’s” habit of sexualizing violence, and vice versa, suffice it to say that nobody should expect to get their security deposit back.

Whatever the shortcomings, the extraordinarily well-timed addition of Gaga to the mix should render any naysaying moot, practically speaking, establishing this as a sort-of event that plenty of people will feel obligated to check out (or in). Viewed that way, Gaga’s primary role is to help bait the hook, at one point describing the hotel to an outsider by purring, “Maybe this place is special.”

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Not only is the season premiere of Hotel arguably the best episode so far of the entire AHS series, but Gaga slays in this role—in every way. Her opening scene with Bomer, set to the song "Tear You Apart" by She Wants Revenge, is one you will never forget after watching—which you will do with your jaw unhinged, dangling somewhere around your knees.
As one might expect, those shocking-yet-artful (people always say that; in this case it's true) sex scenes haven't rattled Gaga one bit—and she's actually asked for some of the scenes to go further. "In a strange way, I actually almost prefer to watch myself in a love scene," she reveals. "I know it has to look convincing and real." As her co-star (and sex-scene partner) Cheyenne Jackson put it, "[Gaga] doesn't flinch. She goes there. Like right off the bat. She said, 'It has to be real or I can't do it.'"

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American Horror Story: Hotel” is not a quirky, layered complex tale recounting a true crime like FX’s “Fargo,” or a brothers-in-arms gore-fest like “The Bastard Executioner.” Instead, years of cultivating the best talent – both below and above the line – have made the Murphy-Falchuk annual fright franchise a dazzling display of how television can compete with cinema for capturing a mood and telling a yarn that might be completely otherworldly, but feels believable and real. The art department (includes the production designer, set decorators and construction teams) are collectively as much a shining star as the stellar AHS cast.

The venue is perfect, the guest list sublime and the tunes are rocking and ready to make your smallest apprehensions about staying at any hotel blow up with the fright of a million little monsters.

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American Horror Story: Hotel seems to have all the ingredients of a memorable horror classic.

Driven by a great goth sound track of funereal dirges by Joy Division and Bauhaus, the fifth incarnation of the anthology series features an unforgettable performance by Lady Gaga - at turns stunning and creepy, beautiful and grotesque - as a vampire countess who rules over an assortment of monstrous atrocities at a gorgeous art deco hotel in Los Angeles called the Hotel Cortez.

The overall picture is just a little too busy, too dense. The first episode of Hotel - the only one available to critics - is so busy trying to set up its divergent cast of characters it ends up being confusing and exhausting.

It's a maddening mess the following episodes need to untangle. And I hope they do so in a gentler fashion. AHS has never been afraid to pile on the gore, but the violence in Hotel is excessive even by the show's standards.

Murphy and Falchuk have yet to disappoint. Despite its many apparent problems, Hotel has the potential to become another AHS winner

All pretty positive reviews