Sleepless - Las Vegas Movie - The Luxus

I'm always on the lookout for Las Vegas movies and TV shows, so when I heard one was opening this weekend I thought I'd check it out.

Sleepless stars Jamie Foxx as a Las Vegas cop with a connection to the criminal underground that puts his son's life in danger. It also features Michelle Monaghan, Dermot Mulroney, Scoot McNairy, and Gabrielle Union.

The movie is under the radar with a modest 1800 theater release. I just happened to see a commercial for it which had a throwaway line about Foxx being "one of Nevada's finest" which led me to do some research revealing the Las Vegas setting.

Sleepless opens with a wide shot of the Las Vegas valley and several high quality aerial photography establishing shots of the Las Vegas Strip are seen throughout the movie. Other scenes feature cars driving on the Strip and Downtown (or "Old Downtown" as one of the cops calls it).

Much of the movie takes place at a fictional Las Vegas hotel resort - The Luxus.

The fake hotel is located in the middle of CityCenter crammed in-between Aria and Mandarin Oriental. Seeing a completely fictional resort reminded me of the 2015 TV show The Player which featured a few fake Las Vegas hotels.

Made-up hotels in Las Vegas movies and TV shows tend to move around though. When the characters are inside The Luxus overlooking the Strip the location looks to be closer to The Mirage with views of The Palazzo across the street.

The Las Vegas scenery continuity in Sleepless isn't terrible though. There weren't many obvious gaffes of a character being at one end of the Strip only to be at another end of the strip seconds later. The 2010 movie Get Him To The Greek and last year's Jason Bourne both suffered from these types of mistakes.

Sleepless isn't a great (or even good) movie, but if you're someone like me who likes to watch anything Las Vegas related you might want to check it out sometime.

Lucky You - Las Vegas Movie Review

I had avoided the 2007 movie Lucky You (starring Drew Barrymore and Eric Bana) because I had the impression that it wasn't really about Las Vegas, but focused more on the love story between the main characters. I was wrong.

While the love story is prominent, the movie is heavily based on Las Vegas, poker and gambling. The dialog is really strange - it's like the writers had a poker glossary and tried to use each and every term before the end credits. Some of the most ridiculous "people don't talk like this" stuff I have ever seen in a movie.

Lucky You isn't good - but I strangely would encourage any Las Vegas or gambling fan to watch it just to see how bad it is. It falls into the "so bad it's good category" in my opinion. With so much gambling jargon being thrown around it's almost like watching a parody of a poker movie at times.

The cast isn't terrible with Robert Duvall, Robert Downey Jr. and Michael Shannon having supporting roles, which makes the insanity of the robotic dialog even more head scratching.

As far as Las Vegas scenery, they didn't do much in the way of creative hotel placement that you sometimes see in Vegas movies. Most of the poker action takes place at Bellagio and Binion's (or sets made to look like those places, although the film was shot on location in Las Vegas).

I was expecting to see a standard run of the mill rom-com that I watched just because of Las Vegas, but what I got was a crazy movie that I honestly want to watch again to make fun of the dialog and improbable poker scenarios that play out.

Fright Night Movie - Las Vegas Remake

The 2011 remake of the 1985 movie Fright Night takes place in Las Vegas. The plot involves a high school student suspicious that his new next door neighbor is a vampire. The student enlists the help of a Las Vegas magician to help stop the supposed vampire.

I'm not sure how much Las Vegas will be featured in the movie, but it's fairly prominent in the trailer. It looks like one of the scenes might take place in a Las Vegas club, and with one of the characters being a magician I bet there's a magic show scene at some point.

Fright Night comes out on Friday August 19, 2011. If I see the movie I will be sure to update this post with a detailed rundown of the Vegas scenes.

Saint John of Las Vegas

I recently watched the movie Saint John of Las Vegas. Based on the title and description of the movie, I was expecting to see some good Las Vegas scenes. I was wrong. The majority of the movie takes places outside of Vegas, and the little Vegas there is - isn't very exciting.

A fairly major plot point involves the main character buying lottery tickets in Las Vegas. Unless there was a recent law change I don't know about, lottery tickets aren't sold in Nevada. While most of the audience probably wouldn't notice or care, this mistake kind of took me out of the movie. I also found it a little strange that someone in Las Vegas would use lottery tickets as his game of choice. Seeing John at a craps table would have been a lot more interesting.

If you're planning on watching Saint John of Las Vegas for the Vegas scenes, you might want to skip it.

Get Him to the Greek - Las Vegas Scenes

Movies and TV shows like to take creative license when filming in Las Vegas. The NBC show "Las Vegas" was famous for their fictional hotel which seemed to change locations up and down the strip every episode. In the movie 21 the characters had a suite at the Hard Rock (off the Strip) that seemed to magically overlook the Bellagio fountains. The iconic Vegas movie Swingers had the characters entering the Stardust, but the interior scenes were actually shot at the Fremont hotel. The Hangover actually did a pretty good job with their Vegas exterior shots. I love the scene where they are overlooking the strip from Caesars and then night fades to day focused on Flamingo and Bally's.

Earlier today I saw the new release Get Him to the Greek. Aside from looking like a reasonably funny movie, I heard that part of the film was in Las Vegas, which was an added incentive to see it. Turns out the Vegas scenes are kind of minor. The characters have a suite at Planet Hollywood. They then see the Rat Pack is Back show at Plaza. After that they are partying in another suite which I guess is supposed to be their original suite at Planet Hollywood. The only problem is the view overlooked the strip from a vantage point which looks south from Trump. The characters then exit the hotel and appear to be around Fashion Show Mall, which makes sense... but then the camera cuts and they are suddenly in front of Paris going north. I'm sure 99% of the moviegoers wouldn't notice this, but it was a pretty obvious goof for Vegas geeks to spot.

So bottom line, Get Him to the Greek was a pretty funny movie, but if you were going for the Las Vegas scenes you might want to wait for DVD.