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Hazardous Hopping
A lone bellhop finds himself spending News Year's Eve handling four strange predicaments in 1995's Four Rooms. An anthology film consisting of four stories directed by Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino, it features the bellhop played by Tim Roth in each one. Unsurprisingly, Tarantino's is by far the best segment but the other three all hold points of interest.
In the first, a coven of witches checks into the hotel and Ted the bellhop (Tim Roth) finds himself seduced by a topless Ione Skye, the lead from Cameron Crowe's Say Anything. She looks fantastic in this movie as one of the witches. The other four instruct Ted to "make her smile" and there's an amusing moment when he tries to make funny gestures before finally getting that they mean he should have sex with her.
One of the witches is played by Madonna. It's a very small role yet somehow she won a Razzie for Worst Actress. Like Lady Gaga's nomination for Machete Kills, this feels like misogyny, or at least resentment directed at Madonna. She's hardly in the movie long enough to establish herself as a bad actress, let alone the worst actress.
The second story is the least interesting. Ted accidentally enters a room where a man (David Proval) is holding his wife, Angela (Jennifer Beals), hostage, gagged and tied up. Ted has to think fast to save himself and there are some funny moments.
The third story, from Robert Rodriguez, has Antonio Banderas and Tamlyn Tomita as a wealthy couple who leave their two children (Lana McKissack and Danny Verduzco) alone in the room, paying Ted to look in on them routinely and answer their calls. The kids are both talented and they have an amusing running gag about smelly feet that turns out to be something more sinister.
Finally, the Tarantino segment has Ted going up to the penthouse where Tarantino himself plays a big shot called Chester Rush. He's having a party with Angela (Jennifer Beals, the same character from the second segment), a guy named Norman (Paul Calderon), and an uncredited Bruce Willis playing a guy named Leo. Pacing, dialogue, and composition quickly show how Tarantino's filmmaking instincts set him apart from the average director. The plot hinges on an obscure Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode in which Peter Lorre and Steve McQueen make a bet with one of them staking his finger on a chopping block, the other his new car. The whole segment builds up to a moment when Ted might actually have to cut off Norman's finger. Tarantino builds it up beautifully with long tracking shots punctuated precisely with quick cuts at the appropriate moments.
Four Rooms is available on The Criterion Channel.