Before the era of streaming, watching movies required more effort. You either had to own it on some physical format, rent it from a store, or happen upon it on cable TV. Now, you have way more options at your fingertips, which can be great, but can also make it harder to actually make a choice.
Thankfully, there are new ways to help decide what to prioritize in your watchlist. Seeing which movies are leaving the service is a great place to start, which is why we’d recommend you check out Bad Times at the El Royale before it leaves Amazon Prime Video at the end of the month. Here are three reasons we think this 2018 movie is worth checking out.
It’s got an all-star ensemble cast
Bad Times at the El Royale focuses on what’s happening at a seedy motel in the late 1960s. Among the film’s central characters are a priest who may not really be a priest, an aspiring R&B singer, a pair of sisters, and an FBI agent. These characters bounce off of one another in fascinating and explosive ways, and each one of them is played by an outstanding actors.
Dakota Johnson (Madame Web), Jeff Bridges (The Old Man), Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), Jon Hamm (Mad Men), Chris Hemsworth (Furiosa), and a young Cailee Spaeny (Alien: Romulus) are among the central members of the cast, and each one of them gets a moment to shine.
Its shifting perspectives will keep you guessing
Because the movie doesn’t really have one central character, it will often shift perspective to recount the same events from multiple perspective. These shifting perspectives both keep you invested and will change how you see the story as it unfolds.
Bad Times at the El Royale is a movie where none of the central characters are what they initially appear to be, and the various reveals of who is who and what the motivations of each individual character are prove to be more than half of the movie’s fun.
It knows how important production value is
Perhaps the best thing about Bad Times at the El Royale is that the movie is set in the late 1960s, and it takes full advantage of that fact. The costuming detail is period appropriate, but also highlights the way the film’s various characters are attempting to hide things about themselves.
The movie is set almost entirely at a motel, but the sets that they built it on are genuinely magnificent, including a lobby that’s filled with period detail and also serves as the location for the film’s climax. All of this attention to detail doesn’t just make the film a believable period piece — it also makes the movie feel bigger than its somewhat narrow scope would suggest.
Bad Times at the El Royale is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
