C'est Non Un Blog

Realizing that my posting habits are getting a lot more lax lately and knowing that you definitely visit this site for more than just my random thoughts on movies (as much as my ego says otherwise, you people like the dirt), I decided that now would be a good time to fill you in on what’s up instead of popping into my DVD player yet another kung fu movie.

Well, lately there has honestly been a lot of the kung fu watching. What can I say, some little part inside of me really gets off on seeing someone kick someone else in the head. And if you can do it with STYLE, well, all the more power to you buddy. I salute you kung fu movie star, with your crazy choreography, incompressible plots and your awful dubbing! Is it wrong that the same four voices are in every single movie? No, it’s so RIGHT!

Today I was a little busier than usual (which is to say I was actually busy). After watching last night’s That 70’s Show and eating a steak sandwich I headed off to Bennington to drop off a video (Spellbound), catch a movie (Elf), and apply for a crappy job (Home Depot). I got home and had to make dinner for me and my dad (mom was off at some stress management seminar. She needs it). I am truly the master of the kitchen. (Marvel at my barbecued pork and microwaved minute rice!) Then it was off to make another delicious mix tape because I have to go with my dad tomorrow to pick my sister up from Ithaca College (with a break for Survivor and CSI, of course).

Man, I’m not looking forward to that road trip. It takes forever (at least 3 and a half hours each way) and is a dull drive, and then I have the added pleasure of guessing whether my sister has picked up the mystery disease that is killing her roommate as we speak. I’m staying the hell away from her for a while. I’m not a big hand washer, but damn, this week I am. Also, all sorts of family are coming up this week for the big turkey day, so I have the added pleasure of trying to figure out if any of them are diseased when I see them (crammed all in one house). My cousin Matthew has been sick each of the last three times I’ve seen him. Joy.

There. That was fun. Probably lots of more fun updates later when my family comes and proceeds to get very, very drunk. (My mom’s been stocking up on booze for two months now. I’m not shitting you.)

Randomly surfing around the internet I found the following. You don’t really have to read the whole thing, I just wanted to point out that Army of Darkness is known as Captain Supermarket in Japan. I thought all of you, and especially Sara, would enjoy:

Alright you primitive screwheads, listen up … as some of you know, Army Of Darkness mainly comes in two flavours: the 82-min Theatrical (Universal) Cut and 96-min Director’s (International) Cut. The former has been readily available on VHS, LD and DVD from the original distributors at Universal. However fans cried out for someone … anyone … to dig up the long-lost Director’s Cut, since the only version available at this time was the OOP Japanese Laserdisc entitled Captain Supermarket. There were many different video releases of this movie which have presented some of the extra footage in question, but none of these versions ever housed the Director’s Cut in its entirety the way the director intended.

Oh man, you have got to check this http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=13574613_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-SIX%2DSUE%2DSKY%2DOVER%2DSEX%2DCHANGE%2DSNOGGER-name_page.html out. I’m surprised Fox didn’t think of it first.

Last night I had a dream where I was a member of a reality dating show and the premise of it was to see if a regular nice guy could find love with a rich bitch. Paris Hilton and some other woman I can’t remember were the focus of the dream. Like all reality dating shows there was a lot of making out to be had. (At one point I found myself eating onions for no apparent reason but fortunately there was a bathroom filled with dental products nearby. Thankfully I wasn’t in the middle of some Freudian nightmare.) And like all reality dating shows no true love was to be found.

——Mystic River——

(A-)

This is a pretty good film. Clint Eastwood does a great job at making a film that could have been pretty forgettable (the murder mystery police procedural story has been done to death–just on Law and Order alone) and making it quite memorable by playing off of the characters instead of the situation. It also helps that there are some damn fine actors working on this film. I mean, hell, the cast list reads like the must have Hollywood A list. There are a few weak moments I feel (like what the hell is up with Laura Linney at the end? And what’s going on with Kevin Bacon’s wife constantly calling him and not saying anything?) but overall I thought it was a very good film.

——Shaolin Mantis——

(B-)

For a while I was a little disappointed in this film because the guy never pulled out the Mantis style. It wasn’t until the very end that I realized he didn’t actually know the Mantis style yet and had to learn it by watching a praying mantis at work. Whoops.

Anyway, the film is about a kung fu expert sent by the Emperor to infiltrate the house of a suspected Ming sympathizer and to get a list of all of the rebels involved. He goes about this in the rather comic fashion of posing as a teacher for the granddaughter (who happens to know kung fu AND falls in love with him) and he tries to teach her while she tries make his life a living hell. Meanwhile he’s working on a deadline, because if he doesn’t get the information in nine weeks his whole family will be killed. The grandfather finds out who he is but the granddaughter makes up a story about how they are lovers and they get married.

Then there are a long series of fights to get out of the house when he has his information which make no sense because he doesn’t really win the fights and only after learning the mantis style does he come back and kick their asses. The fights before he knows mantis style aren’t anything special, which is a shame because they spend SO much time on them. The mantis style is awesome though. The rest of the movie is so-so, so I probably would recommend that you just skip to the end.

However after he brings the information to the emperor at the end the totally bizarre happens. His father, who he saved now tries to kill him with poison, citing the fact that the Mings must win. I guess with the history this makes sense, but why have the main character be on the bad guys’ side? It makes no sense.

——The Street Fighter——

(B)

Finally I got my Sonny Chiba movies in the mail. The plot of this is needlessly complicated, but the gist of it is that Terry is working for the yakuza and they want him to kidnap this wealthy heiress, but he doesn’t go for that so he goes to the good guys and offers to protect the girl. Terry is one of those guys that plays by his own rules and pretty much does whatever he wants because his father was killed when he was a child and right before he died he told Terry to trust no one and to always be the best. Anyway, the plot is just like any other 70’s exploitation flick, and not really good at that (for example, Terry has a flunky sidekick called Ratnose who is incredibly annoying and whose only purpose seems to be to die at an important part in the narrative) but the real draw of this movie is definitely Sonny Chiba who is AWESOME.

Sonny Chiba is a lot like Bruce Lee, except without the grace and he acts like a drunk gorilla (it’s pretty amusing). His karate is brutal. Unlike a lot of kung fu movies Sonny doesn’t play with his enemies, he kicks their ass (and usually kills them) as quickly as possible. It’s pretty impressive to watch him kill like fifty enemies in a row at the end. Also the film is really brutal too. There’s lots of blood (although it looks more like bright red Dutch Boy paint than anything resembling blood), frequent breaking of bones and a couple times Sonny will actually rip something off (including someone’s throat and a rapist’s nuts).

The actual plot isn’t that great, but it’s totally worth it to see Sonny Chiba kick major ass.

——Black Sunday——

(B)

At times I feel like this movie about a terrorist plot to kill everyone at the Super Bowl with a blimp is a little bloated (like a blimp; does it really need to be two hours and twenty minutes long?) but enough things go right with this movie to make it worthy viewing. Just to go back to that blimp for a moment, that final chase between the blimp and a police helicopter is probably one of the most bizarre and interesting chase scenes ever put on film. It’s pretty damn suspenseful too. I also liked the way the film really got into the details of pulling off a plot like this, and at the same time being able to deal with the characters in a respectful manner not really seen in today’s blockbusters. Of course today’s blockbusters are also a hell of a lot more exciting half the time, which makes me really wish that this had been edited down a little bit (at least to two hours). Still, despite the fact that it drags on from time to time it is a pretty decent movie worth checking out if at least for the bizarre climax.

——The Isle——

(A)

Harry rented this Korean film and brought it over to my house to watch, and we both agree that this is probably the most fucked up disturbing thing we’ve ever seen. This definitely isn’t for everyone. Harry and I both agreed at the end that anything else disturbing we saw from now on would seem blasé in comparison. Still, if you were someone who really liked Secretary but wished it was a whole lot more fucked up then the Isle is probably for you.

This is a beautiful film about a mute woman who supplies these men that live on houseboat shacks and from time to time provides the services of a prostitute. The people who live in the shacks are usually people who don’t want to be found by society, whether that means they committed a crime or that they just don’t want people to know what they are doing (like the businessman who comes there to have an affair).

Then a man comes that has apparently killed his wife and lover and is fleeing from the law, with absolutely no interest in fishing. The mute girl takes to him pretty quickly, but they are both pretty damn fucked up. The guy keeps trying to kill himself and the mute girl likes to stab people who piss her off from under the water. And the movie only gets more fucked up from there…WAY more fucked up. And it’s a love story, go figure.

I won’t get into the finer points of this movie (email me if you are interested and want to know more) because it is really disturbing and probably not something most people want to read about it. But despite the fact that you’ll probably get the hibbee-jibees multiple times (I don’t care how jaded you are) this is actually an excellent film that beautiful and amazingly well put together. I’m not ever going to look at fishing the same way again, but the film is still pretty must see for those with a really, really, REALLY strong stomach.

——Winter Sleepers——

(A-)

This is the film the Run Lola Run guy directed right before Run Lola Run. It’s a pretty slow burn drama about how these people’s lives in a ski village intertwine because of coincidence. It’s beautifully shot in warm tones with some good direction, and has some great character interaction. Some people might find fault with it with the fact that not a whole lot really happens in the movie, but I at least really enjoyed it despite that fact. The movie isn’t perfect, but it was still able to give me that warm and fuzzy feeling one gets when watching a good foreign film.

——Return of the Street Fighter——

(B)

More Sonny Chiba, and unfortunately some more bad plot. The beginning of this film spends at least a good half-hour on boring exposition, but I guess it is worth it because from then on it is almost nonstop ass kicking. Of course half of the fights happen with little or no explanation, but still, Sonny rocks. There is another crappy sidekick, this time a cute Japanese girl who looks like a hipster Pippi Long Stocking, and yeah she serves little function other to die and thus start Sonny’s ass kicking. There’s also a Mafia Don who looks just like Pacino in Serpico who you know is a really BAD bad guy, because he uses every chance he can get for Asian racial slurs. I’m not completely sure I know what this film was all about, but neither do I care, especially when Chiba hits a guy in the back of the head so hard that his eyes pop out like a cartoon character.

——Blade of Fury——

(B-)

I probably would have rated this film a whole lot better if director Sammo Hung hadn’t totally fucked the ending. Sammo tends to like shooting things in fast-mo (my term for the opposite of slow-mo) which works fine in a few scenes in the first half of the movie, but looks completely stupid in the final scenes of the film. Fast-mo seems to work best when it is used when two characters are fighting each other, both moving at similar speeds, or when a character is spinning. For some reason it just looks really right when you are spinning. When it doesn’t work is when you have characters or objects moving at varying speeds, like when a group of people are attacking one person, because that means whenever someone who was just standing there moves for his chance to get kicked in the face he looks like a silent movie character in an under cranked film. Also it is definitely a technique, like slow-mo, that should really be used sparingly at key moments only. When you use it for the whole fight it just looks like shit.

I’m not really going to get into the plot except to note that the Ching dynasty is really hated by the Chinese. I mean REALLY hated. In just about ever kung fu movie I’ve seen they are always the bad guys, and they are always major dicks.

There is one MUST SEE moment in the film though. This is a sequence where, for no apparent reason, a horse runs THROUGH a brick wall. I don’t know how they did it, or even how they got the horse to run into a wall, but it is the most hilarious/bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. That moment alone makes this movie worth seeing, and there are quite a few fights that are pretty cool.

——Shaolin and Wu Tang——

(A)

This is by far the coolest kung fu movie I’ve seen so far. Gordon Liu does it again. There are a few passing resemblances to his other great kung fu movie, Shaolin Master Killer, but there is also enough new stuff that you won’t really care. The plot involves two friends of rival schools (Shaolin and Wu Tang) who get involved in an evil plot by a Ching official (there the Ching are again!) to learn the secrets of the two schools. Since the schools won’t teach him their secrets he sets up an elaborate plot that not only help him learn the two styles, but also make the two clans think the other one has caused them some harm. The two friends go off to their respective clans and train to fully master their styles, only to be the two representatives for their respective schools in a tournament that the Ching leader is hoping will wipe out the two schools so that he will be master of the realm. The two realize the plot in time though, and together manage to take out the Ching official.

The plot to this is quite solid, and the fight sequences are very much among the best I’ve ever seen. Gordon Liu doesn’t fuck around with his kung fu. When you watch him you really feel like you’re watching the real deal. This one receives my highest kung fu recommendation.

——Hollywood Homicide——

(C+)

Although the film does end on a high note that doesn’t really disguise the fact that this is a one-note gimmick movie. All the movie has is the fact that Harrison Ford is a real estate agent in his spare time and pretty boy Jackson is a yoga instructor/wanna be actor who gets all the chicks. It doesn’t really voyage too far away from that premise. Otherwise it’s a Law & Order episode where the case is solved not by good crime solving but by the pure coincidence that the two main bad guys also happen to be the two men that killed pretty boy’s dad. Whoop de do. Harrison Ford does bring some light to this otherwise dull comedy by making even the most bland lines sound awesome. Plus bonus points for that scene where he’s humping the two-way mirror. Also, bonus points for having Andre 3000 of Outkast in the movie. Otherwise this film is just another day at the office.

——It Happened One Night——

(B+)

This 1934 Frank Capra film is insanely charming, even if the plot and the dialog aren’t really anything to flip over. The film is all about a newspaper reporter helping a rich girl escape her father in Miami and hitchhike their way north to her new husband in New York. Surprise, surprise, on the trip north they quibble and fight with each other the entire way, only to somewhere along the way fall in love. You’ve seen it a million times before, and yet something about the film feels real fresh (prehaps it is the fact that in 1934 this probably was real fresh). The banter between the two is not as snappy as it would have been in a Howard Hawks film, but the acting is spot on and makes for a real fun film.

——Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World——

(A)

This is one of the best movies of its kind, and is definitely the best movie that takes place on a boat since Das Boot. Speaking of Das Boot, the two films are very similar in their portrayal of men at sea in a time of war, except for the fact that this film is far less depressing and a hell of a lot more fun. Part of the problem of films that take place in this time period is that they seem to always feel stale and stuffy, and who wants to see that? Master and Commander has none of those problems, staying authentic to the time period while feeling timeless at the exact same time. It’s exciting and interesting and always keeps you on your toes. And the battles…damn. They do for two ships firing cannon balls at each other what Saving Private Ryan did with its D-Day battle scene. Giant chucks of wood suddenly disappear while splinters fly everywhere. It’s crazy. This is definitely one of the best films of 2003, as the film manages to be not only a good blockbuster entertainment, but a fine piece of dramatic entertainment too.

——Flag of Iron——

(C-)

For a Chang Cheh/Venoms movie, this film is unusually bad. The plot is horrible and the overdubbing is probably the worst of any film I’ve seen so far. And while the film has plenty of fights, there are probably too many as each one doesn’t really last too long before the antagonist dies. Only the final battle really stands out, and at that it really isn’t that spectacular. Stay away from this one.

Ah, Entertainment Weekly has a cover story on Britney Spears. This, combined with the Rolling Stone interview of a few weeks back, confirms in my mind that Britney is one of the stupidest people on the planet.

Probably my favorite stupid moment of the article was where at one point in reference to the numerous magazine covers she’s done with increasingly little clothes she said, ‘“People make such a big deal out of it,” she says, sounding genuinely puzzled. “I honestly don’t get it. It’s weird. To me, the human body is beautiful.”’

A little later in the article she starts talking about the “retarded” wardrobe suggestions ABC made for her TV special promos. To that she said the following: ‘“It was really obnoxious,” she says with an exasperated snort. “They wanted me to take my clothes off. They wanted me to have this towel wrapped around me and then drop it. It was all about my body, you know?”’

Can she really be THAT dumb? Well yeah. Here is a woman (kind of) who will do anything to sell herself, being the whore that she is, and yet if someone suggests she does something they’re a horrible person. That makes about as much sense as this quote: ‘“These parents, they think I’m a role model for their kids, that their kids look at me as some sort of idol. It’s the parents who should be teaching their kids how to behave. That’s not my responsibility. I’m not responsible for YOUR kid.”’

Again, the idiocy is amazing. You don’t think you have even a LITTLE responsibility for the fact that every pre-teen girl in the US dresses like you? Her lack of any social consciousness shocks and horrifies me.

On the plus side it does sound like she’s really burning out and getting ready for a big celebrity breakdown. There is a picture in this issue where she looks pretty wasted, and the picture looks startlingly like those pictures of Drew Barrymore when she was in her teens getting fucked up on everything.

In all fairness to Britney though, it looks like stupidity runs in the family. Finally I have here a quote from her brother Bryan (who runs the financial end of her licensing empire of all things. It’s not like he’s at home and doesn’t know what his sister is doing.) ‘“She really doesn’t understand the power she has. But then none of us in the family really understands it. I mean, to me, she’s just my little sister–why would anyone put her on a magazine cover? It’s only when I step back and think about what’s she’s done over the last four years that I go ‘Oh, my God!’”’

So wait, he has to think about things before he realizes what’s going on? None of the family understands the power she has? Man, they are like a bunch of dumb-yet-pretty monkeys. That combined with the “the human body is a beautiful thing” quote makes me think that it’s a normal event in the Spears’ household to table dance with a python wrapped around your neck. And if so, I really want to get invited to a family gathering at their house.

(Oh, and quickly, my favorite quote from the Rolling Stone article has to be the part where she’s asked what her favorite song on the new album is and she can’t even remember the right title. Hardly even comes close.)

Man, you know what’s fun? Trying to barbecue in the middle of November with 50 mph winds outside. Today was my dad’s birthday and my mom got some really good steaks (damn fine steaks) and I had to barbecue them because it really isn’t the same cooking a great steak inside. So my dad had the barbecue set up in the garage with the cars parked right outside to cut down on wind (otherwise there is no way in hell that thing would light).

So anyway I start the grill up and its having problems getting above 300 degrees. That’s cool, I’ll just have to cook them a little longer. Then a little later I come out to check on them and the wind has changed and the grill is now like 600 degrees. You could actually see the smoke swirling around the garage. OK…FUCK! Quickly I turn the grill to low and put the steaks on the top shelf. The fat has no started to burn so the flames are licking up all the way to the top shelf. Luckily though a little later the wind changed again and the temperature went back down. I managed to cook the food and not burn the house down. I am man, hear me roar.

BTW, those were some damn tasty steaks.

When did the Matrix movies stop being about the Matrix and the people trapped inside? Whereas the first movie was very concerned with getting everyone out of that false reality, the sequels seem to ignore this problem and instead focus on those already out of the Matrix. Where is that sympathy for the fact that every human is just a battery? No one seems to care anymore.

Also, where is my 20-minute low altitude helicopter chase? Both Entertainment Weekly and Newsweek said it was going to be in one of the movies, and yet it was nowhere to be found. What happened there?

I just read this and I really think it expresses well why I (and many others) are so disappointed with how the Matrix all ended. Read on:

The Matrix: Regurgitated
The final episode is a slam-bang, dreary mess.
By David Edelstein
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2003, at 4:44 PM PT

Should have taken the blue pill after all…

Few of us could have guessed back in 1999 that the supercool martial-arts sci-fi thriller The Matrix was actually Book I of The Gospel of Neo. Sure, the religioso underpinnings were there from the outset: Tomes were written on the subject, and I myself penned a gushing treatise on the farrago of philosophical and cultural influences for the New York Times last May, shortly before getting beaned by the lead balloon that was The Matrix Reloaded. (I still have a lump.) With the third and (please, Lord) final chapter, The Matrix Revolutions (Warner Bros.), Andy and Larry Wachowski have gone from underpinnings to overloads: This one is a bona fide Bible epic, with the added bonus of interminable combat set-pieces inspired by old World War II pictures but played at video-game velocity. Revolutions isn’t as stupefying as Reloaded—and, of course, our expectations have been drastically lowered. But it’s an abysmal anticlimax all the same.

To refresh (or reload) your neural circuits, Neo (Keanu Reeves) began life as (doubting) Thomas Anderson, a cubicle nerd and illicit software programmer who came to learn that his world was a computer-generated simulacrum—a collective delusion engineered by machines to keep the human race dormant while they harvested its energy. (The sun, the machines’ previous energy source, had been blotted out by humans in a last-ditch nuclear holocaust that might not, in retrospect, have been such a good idea.) Neo also learned that, if you could “free your mind,” anything was possible in the Matrix, including killer kung-fu moves and freezing bullets in mid-flight. In Reloaded, though, Neo came to doubt that he was a creature of free will. In a scene that was a marvel of gummy dramaturgy, he learned from the Matrix’s architect that he’d existed before—that, in fact, his existence had been programmed into the Matrix when the Architect had realized that a percentage of humans would inevitably become alienated, discover the secret of their existence, get themselves unplugged, build vast underground cities, and—

Sorry, this is just too convoluted to recount: Even as a religious parable it has no internal logic. But, as deadly as it was, Reloaded did pose some moderately interesting questions about the Matrix cosmos—questions that gave rise to hundreds of theories and billions of words, deep in the rushing magma of the Internet. Was the human city Zion a Matrix—a Matrix-within-a-Matrix? Was Neo the One, or was the One one of the other ones? (As Fats Waller used to say, “One never knows, do one?”) What would happen to the zealous Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) when he learned that his messiah was a plant, and that the Oracle herself might be in cahoots with the Architect? (I see men and women on the subway everyday who’ve lost faith in their oracles, at great cost to their hygiene.) More important, could the fount of all of evil in the universe be a sniggering Frenchman?

The surprise of The Matrix Revolutions—jump to the next paragraph if you want to preserve your happy innocence—is that the war between man and machine is beside the point. That’s right: There will be no mass unplugging of the human flesh batteries, no collective human breakthrough into the real. The ultimate villain—literally, the Anti-Neo—turns out to be Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), who has multiplied to the point where he is a greater threat to the machines (and their all-important Matrix) than to the humans. Smith still has a bug up his butt about Neo, though, which means it’s in the interest of humans and machines to stamp him out: Neo can fulfill his messianic function by fighting Smith on behalf of both species, thereby becoming a Christ-like mediator and “balancing the world.”

I can’t tell you what a letdown I find all this. Agent Smith has no stature, and he’s an amazingly tedious bogeyman: All he wants to do is complain about the repulsiveness of humans and sneer at the idiocy of Love. (“Why get up, Mr. Anderson? Why keep fighting? Peace? Love? Illusions. Constructs as artificial as the Matrix itself. Only a human mind could come up with anything as feeble as love”—and on and on.) The final battle in the skies is like Superman II (1980), only nowhere near as fun. The lightning flashes, the Orff-ish choir chants and wails. The One and the Anti-One whoosh toward each other, collide, bounce off each other in slow motion, make craters where they land, pick themselves up, and do it again: two little fighting dolls making a meaningless racket.

Early on, you might realize that for all the fancy computer-generated imagery, scene after scene is as primitive as anything in a 19th-century melodrama. In a just world, the final parting of Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Neo would be hissed in every theater in the country. (Moss began the Matrix series as the hottest of all superheroines; she goes out as a mooshy oil slick.) The only good news is that Persephone (Monica Bellucci) and Merovingian (Lambert Wilson) put in token appearances. “I don’ believe zees,” says Merovingian, popping an olive in his mouth when Trinity and friends crash his nightclub, Hell. The best thing in the movie is when Trinity calls him “Merv.”

The Matrix Revolutions is one of those movies where Tinkerbell dies if you don’t believe. Naiobi (Jada Pinkett Smith) rockets her ship toward a dock overrun with a black cloud of locustlike “squiddies”—only the gate is stuck: Will she make it in time to explode her EMP and wipe the squiddies out, or will she be pulverized by that unopened gate? Believe. Can the gate really be opened by … the Kid (Clayton Watson)? Believe. The titanic drill is headed right for the heart of Zion, thousands of squiddies in its wake: Will Neo be able to shut them all down from deep inside Machine City? Believe. Guys in giant mechanical walkers spend five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes shooting down wave after wave of squiddies. Is there a point to all this? Believe.

Or, don’t. Now that The Matrix is ostensibly over and done with, it’s worth asking if anything in Reloaded and Revolutions deepens our understanding of and appreciation for the original film, or if the story was better left with Neo—confident in his oneness, and in the battle to be waged—striding purposefully back into the Matrix to the adrenaline-pumping guitar licks of Rage Against the Machine. I wish the Wachowskis had left him there, before his long black coat became a cassock, before he became boring. The Wachowskis began with the notion that our lives in this material world are insubstantial, that we must somehow free our minds to break through into the real. But what followed wasn’t a free-mind saga, it was a religious parable for 12-year-old boys. They make belief seem like the enemy of a free mind.

I went and saw the Matrix again. This is both a response to seeing the film again, and a response to what Josh wrote to me this weekend, so for the whole scoop make sure you read my first review and Josh’s review first, before getting into this rebuttal. Enjoy!

——The Matrix Revolutions——

(C+)

Because I was a little confused on a few points of Revolutions and because I wasn’t really sure where my final opinion was concerning Revolutions I saw it again this weekend with my dad. I’m happy to say that a lot of the things I was confused about are made much clearer on second viewing. This movie definitely needs to be seen at least twice to get the full meaning of it.

That said, I also disliked the movie a whole lot more the second time around. I don’t care if everything does make sense and the movie does provide a resolution to everything–the film is still a major disappointment. I’m getting to the point where I almost wish the sequels were never made (and I would totally feel that way if it weren’t for some of the finer points of Reloaded) much the same way I feel about George Lucas’s shitty prequels. I bet the Wachowski brothers stole a little too much from Episode I and II, and unfortunately Lucas stole way too little from the Matrix.

Why the disappointment? Well, there is just the fact that the original Matrix was such a tighter film in terms of storytelling. Then there is the fact that the ending of the original Matrix promised us so much more than was revealed in the sequels. Neo’s threat to the machines at the end of the movie, before flying away, promised so much more than this half there Revolutions. The movie seems more concerned with making sure that the brothers’ philosophy is spelled out to the T than it is with making the most enjoyable movie possible. The original Matrix was able to imbed the philosophy carefully into the film without disrupting the pure enjoyability of it. The sequels feel labored in trying to associate the action with the philosophy. Honestly I feel like half of the action sequences don’t even need to be there. The freeway chase, amazing as it is, doesn’t really need to be there. How much does it actually contribute to the story? Think about it, it actually takes us away from the main narrative. And that’s how most of the fights feel in the sequels. Almost none of the action has the same weight and feel of those sequences in the original film. I don’t think it is the nature of the narrative either; I think it’s bad storytelling.

I also object to the fact that besides being able to fly, Neo doesn’t really have any new “superpowers”. We see him warp reality the first time he flies in Reloaded, but that doesn’t really have the same effect as when Neo warped the walls at the end of the Matrix. He uses the force to pull some weapons off of the wall at the Merovingian’s place, but other than that he doesn’t really do anything special at all. Why is the Super Burly Brawl smackdown dominated by the same punch/sonic boom/hand-to-hand combinations over and over? Why don’t they chuck some stuff at each other using the force? Why don’t they bend reality to their whims? Why not add something to the whole mix that we haven’t seen in one form or another before? I mean I love the fact that Smith now controls the Matrix…why not make some use of that? The final smackdown of the series should have blown minds; instead it was mildly thrilling because of the impressively realistic special effects.

Now to get down to the nitty gritty details of the film.

OK, Revolutions fulfilled the promise it made for a resolution to the story. But did it really? The way I see it the good stuff is only just beginning. Sure there is peace for now, but how long do you think that will last? The way I see it we just started another cycle of the Matrix. When the Oracle refers to the fact that they’ll probably see Neo again, she’s really referring to the fact that everything that happened before is going to happen again. The variables have just changed slightly. Neo wasn’t the One, he was just “the One”, just like there had been “One”s before. Whoop de do da fuck.

Watching the movie again I don’t think Neo can blow up the Sentinels because of any heightening of awareness or anything mystical or philosophical or religious like that, but instead that he is able to use his connection to the Matrix to use that to travel to the Source where he then heads back out to sort out the machines, just like the Source is able to command the Sentinels to stand down to let Neo do his thing. He’s able to see all of the power around him using the same principle. That also explains why with his heightened consciousness his dumb ass is still not able to tell that Trinity has 90 wires sticking out of her gut.

Speaking of wires: Anyone else think that the brothers have an extreme henti fetish thing going on? Especially when Neo gets to the Source you can feel the tentacle porn fetishes everywhere.

Anyone else find the whole Neo trapped in the Train Station subplot pointless? I mean in a movie so damn focused on “Purpose”, what purpose is served by this sequence other than to find some way of fitting the last bit of philosophy in there? Why does Neo go to the train station instead of anywhere else? Yeah, the movie tries to explain it all by saying that the train station is between worlds, but that really isn’t a very satisfactory reason. It feels WAY too convenient. And the fact that Seti and her parents are there too…damn, the coincidence meter is off the charts!

Why can’t Neo just get himself out? OK, there is the whole “The Trainman built this place” thing, which I guess is suppose to relate to how Smith is in control of the Matrix later, but I just don’t buy it. If Neo is so damn special he should be able to figure out how to rewrite the train stations code just like he did in the Matrix. In fact he almost breaks free when he has visions of the Source when Trinity shows up to pointlessly save his ass. Grr…

Revolutions had little to no human drama. What? Huh? What are you talking about Ben? What about all of those scenes with human drama in them? Well, they would actually have to be well written for any drama to come out of them. Expect plenty of examples below.

I’ve never really bought the whole Trinity and Neo in love thing. Never has it been more than just a crush. You don’t even know that they really have a thing for each other until Trinity explains that Neo can’t die because she’s suppose to love the One. Huh? They’ve barely talked to each other up to this point and I’m suppose to buy this? I still remember hearing audible laughter when she said that the first time I saw Matrix in the theaters. Does it get any better in the sequels? Not really. In Reloaded their love is explained by having them make out at every available moment. Everything else is metaphorical or allegorical. None of it is actually based on a real relationship. It’s not love, it’s lust. There is nary a moment of REAL intimacy between the two.

And don’t even get me started on Trinity’s death sequence. That scene goes on way, way, WAY too long. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too long. When I saw it in the theater I could hear everyone in the theater becoming restless, including myself. People shifting their asses in their seat, people crinkling candy wrappers, etc. I talked to my sister and when she saw it she said people were actually laughing at it. And why shouldn’t they? The whole thing is ridiculous. Trinity has all of these things sticking out of her body and she still manages to carry on probably the longest conversation of the whole film without ever acting like she’s in pain at all. Give me a break. Keep it short and sweet. Less is more.

Honestly I think the new Oracle is one of the best things about this movie. I was getting a little sick of Gloria Foster in Reloaded (probably because of the inane things she had to say in that movie) but now the Oracle feels as fresh and delightful as she was in the original film.

The Club Hell shootout is really disappointing. Why? Because no one (other than Trinity, who’s actually done this before) seems to know what to do in this sequence. Morpheus and Seraph just STAND THERE shooting. Boring. Why not run around a little like Trinity? (Unless they just want her to do all of the work.) Either that or these are the worst gun checkers ever. They practically throw themselves on top of the bullets.

Seraph is disappointing because he never really does anything that’s as cool as how he looks. The fight between him and Neo in Reloaded is probably the most pointless fight in the whole series. One minute of boring hand blocks? He shows a little bit of spark in the parking garage, but otherwise does little for the rest of the sequence. I think he’s actually at his coolest when he is protecting Seti from the Smiths. There he has the badass quality that he deserves.

Morpheus is utterly destroyed at the end of Reloaded because he discovers that the whole prophecy was a scam. They don’t really play on that much in Revolutions. I don’t know why, because it would have made for a great story. Instead of having him say anything though, Niobe steps in as the believer to save his dumb ass from saying anything stupid.

Club Hell is “just a club”? It’s Hell! Surely Hell demands a little more respect.

I think the first fight between Neo and the Agents in Reloaded is one of the best fights in the film. It not only sets up that the Agents are nothing to Neo now, but it also has some of the best fight choreography of the sequels. The other fights could really use some more originality.

Having Monica Belluci in a slapstick sex comedy is probably the most brilliant thing I’ve ever heard. Someone get on that, stat!

Twenty guns are on Seraph, Trinity and Morpheus, and not one person manages to get off a shot for the entire scene. I don’t care if they miss, something is just wrong there.

I love how whenever someone says something, and then they cut to Keanu Reeves he always has this George W. “HUH???” look on his face. And by love I mean hate.

OK, Neo can do amazing things as the One. He can even short-out machines in the real world. And it still takes him four hours to figure out that Bane is Smith?

Fact A: Neo doesn’t even know Bane. And yet Bane really seems to know them.

Fact B: Bane only talks about stuff that happened in the Matrix. How would he know that. But still, I can accept that he might just be crazy.

Fact C: The whole “Mr. Anderson” thing. Not only should we wonder how Bane would actually know Neo’s real name since no one other than Trinity and Morpheus would know this; not only has no one actually called Neo “Mr. Anderson” in the movies other than Smith, but we also have to deal with the fact that the actor that plays Bane has perfected Hugo Weaving’s speech patterns so well that most of us thought that he was actually Hugo Weaving in makeup the first time we say him on screen. He has the exact tone and cadence and everything. Neo, there is no spoon.

I wasn’t trying to imply in my last review that Locke should suddenly change into a great guy who’s totally on board with the One, but that the filmmakers should give his character a little more respect. He actually makes some pretty damn good points throughout the two films, and yet always his opinion is meaningless because they have made him into such a tool. He is such a dickhead, why would we ever listen carefully to what he has to say? I find that to be a damn dirty shame, because it is not until the film is almost over that we really know that he is wrong. He could have been right the whole time. Why didn’t they play that up more? Bad writing, that’s why.

The first time I saw Revolutions I thought Kid was a little less annoying that he was in Reloaded. But the second time I saw Revolutions I thought he was so much MORE annoying than he was in the first movie. “Neo, I believe!” Gag me with a spoon. Then there is the whole interaction between Kid and Mifune, which happens to contain some of the most basic war movie cliches ever put to film. Man they hit all of the big ones. “How old are you kid?”

“18.”

“Should have said 16, I would have believed you.”

“OK, 16.”

“Starting age for the core is 18, kid….”

Oh God, the pain of it all.

Then there is the typical speech before the battle bit we’ve all seen a million times before. Also, why the hell has no one equipped their guns until after the drill falls through the hole? What the hell are they waiting for? Also, why the hell would you even have APUs in a space that small? Why go to all of the trouble? Why not just have a shitload of guns? The absurdity of it all is starting to get to me.

The machine’s strategy is moronic. The entire purpose for it is to prolong the action sequence to make it more exciting. Allow me to demonstrate:

Army A and Army B are meeting each other for battle. Army A decides to march their army in with columns of men four men wide. Army B decides to march their army in with rows of men four men deep. Because Army B is spread out and Army A is more condense Army B is able to easily flank Army A and shoot the hell out of it. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

Now consider the fact that instead of Army A just marching straight into Army B it decides to practice its parade formations by not shooting at B and instead running around in circles while a few men here and there break rank and rush into the hail of bullets.

That’s what the machines are doing.

The fact that they actually seem to succeed with this dumbass strategy only highlights how fucked the humans are.

Consider this: The machines can fly. Which means while the humans are stuck moving in two dimensions, the Sentinels can move in three. If they all just spread out so that the APUs couldn’t condense their fire on the giant masses of them the sentinels could have easily picked them to pieces in mere minutes with minimal casualties. Zion is crushed before Niobe can even get there. More efficient my ass, Architect.

Then there is the fact that the brothers have obviously watched Aliens way too many times. I won’t even get into all of that. You probably all know what I’m talking about.

Zee and Vasques: Let’s move like we have a purpose people! Let’s move like, say, the fate of Zion depended on it. When did loading a rocket launcher become such agonizing torture? Just shoot the fucker already! If you are going to make it more suspenceful, hold the shot on Vasquez aiming and trying to get a clear shot. Not on them walking slowly to their target and then taking their damn time loading it. People’s lives kind of depend on this, remember?

The Jesus imagery in the original Matrix was great. It was there, but it was only part of something else. They never hit you over the head with it. It was there if you wanted to see it, but you didn’t have to see it. In Revolutions they beat you over the head with it. When Neo sacrifices himself there is even a cross of light that comes out of his chest. Come on. Also, there is the fact that if you aren’t familiar with the story of Jesus there is a good chance you won’t understand the ending and what just happened. Until you start putting all of the pieces together it is kind of confusing. Argue with that if you will, but I believe it true. I even had some trouble with it.

No I can’t really believe a hovership can rocket itself above the clouds. What precedent is there for that? These things were designed to never be more than 20 yards away from something to repel from. What exactly are they hovering over? The explosions?

And when have we ever seen the hoverships do more than just hover?

The Big Baby Machine Thing is a deus ex machina. How do I know this? Because it’s name is, get ready, Deus Ex Machina. Subtle the Wachowski brothers ain’t. Neo can’t defeat Smith. He can only give himself up to Smith because Smith is now the one who controls the Matrix, and when the Deus Ex Machina has an entry way into Smith so that it can then reboot the Matrix, bringing everything back to square one. Gee, if the Deus Ex Machina isn’t a deus ex machina, I don’t know what is. God came down and made everything all better, thus erasing everything that’s been built up thus far.

Yeah it all makes sense, and I kind of like it in a more technical intellectual way, but as a form of entertainment it just sucks. Eastern philosophy does not make for the best entertainment. Learning that to beat Smith you have to first beat yourself is not enjoyable. If instead Neo learned that he had to become like Smith to beat Smith, the possibilities of that ending I find very intriguing. Instead it becomes a big mess of “purpose” in that it is about as exciting as learning that my chair’s purpose is to allow me to sit in comfort.

Also, does anyone other than me see the vast amount of problems that are going to arise because of this new incarnation of the Matrix? Am I alone with the Architect in thinking that the old way is the better way? Earth just doesn’t have the resources to hold a population greater than half a million people. There is going to be overpopulation and then some plight like in any natural habitat. Living in the real world is going to be more miserable than it already is. At least with the war against the machines there is hope of something better. Now what is there?