LOGIN, AMIGO!
Buy tickets & receive a FREE 3-Month Love Forecast from Astrology.com!
Send your sweetheart the gift of movies this Valentine’s Day!
Enter for a chance to win a trip for 2 to Nicaragua!
Who's taking home the Oscar? Cast your vote & challenge your friends on Facebook!
Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.
Director Stephen Purvis and writer Chris Haddock never rise above the material's inherent pulpiness, but they keep the twists coming until the very end. Read full review
An ambitious, low-budget neo-noir, Stephen Purvis' El Cortez navigates the genre's tawdry twists and crosses and double-crosses with intermittent flair. Read full review
Perhaps in an effort to root the film in the genre, the dialogue reaches for a particular hard-boiled register but grasps only clichs. El Cortez, like so many before it, searches for that nugget in the genre mine but just doesn't find it. Read full review
Every "twist" is so telegraphed that there's little suspense here. Phillips' performance is an enjoyable change of pace, and the gratuitous sex scene with Middendorf is fairly hot, but the story's just an aggravating wait for the inevitable double-crosses. For it to be a true lowbrow pleasure, more sex would be needed. Read full review
Sharing its title with a historic Reno hotel that's seen better days (or maybe not), El Cortez is a clumsy lump of ponderous pulp fiction with "Cooler" aspirations. Read full review
The script, by Chris Haddock, leaves numerous questions unanswered. It also reflects the character depth and conversational complexity of a 14-year-old's first effort at fiction. Read full review
Lou Diamond Phillips is let down by an uninspired supporting cast, including Bruce Weitz as a crippled con artist and Tracy Middendorf as the requisite femme fatale, a clichd script, and flat direction by Stephen Purvis. Read full review
Be the first to rate this movie!