Menace II Society (1993)

Young, Black, and Didn’t Give a Fuck.

My friend Forty requested today’s movie a pretty good while back, but he and I have a history of watching movies together so that we can make jokes about them and it seemed only appropriate that he join me in the movie he requested.  But the first time we got together to watch today’s movie, I started getting horrible stomach pains the likes of which I had never felt before, causing me to cut our movie viewing short.  I managed to survive, unless I’m writing these reviews posthumously, but we had not gotten very far into the movie, so it remained on the table.  Forty recently had some time off, so we decided to get together and give it another shot.  The only question that remained was whether or not it was the movie causing my stomach pain.  If I finish this review, it probably was not the movie and was instead the Wendy’s that I ate the night before.  This movie is Menace II Society, written by Tyger Williams, directed by Allen and Albert Hughes, and starring Tyrin Turner, Larenz Tate, Jada Pinkett Smith, MC Eiht, Glenn Plummer, Clifton Powell, Arnold Johnson, Marilyn Coleman, Charles S. Dutton, Bill Duke, Too Short, and Samuel L. Jackson.

The movie starts with Caine Lawson (Tyrin Turner) and his friend O-Dog (Larenz Tate) going into a store to buy beer, but getting into a confrontation with the Korean storekeeper and his wife that ends in O-Dog gunning them both down and stealing the tape from the surveillance camera.  We then basically jump into the life of Caine and his friends in the ‘hood.  Caine deals drugs and lives with his grandparents (Arnold Johnson and Marilyn Coleman), while taking care of the child and ex-girlfriend of his imprisoned father figure Pernell (Glenn Plummer) named Ronnie (Jada Pinkett Smith).  At one point, Caine gets shot in the shoulder in a carjacking that ends in the death of his cousin.  Later, he gets arrested with O-Dog for trying to steal a car.  But then Ronnie asks Caine to move to Atlanta with her to start a new life, so everything will end up happily ever after, just like every story from crime-riddled neighborhoods does.

I had heard a lot about this movie in the past, but had never had inspiration to see it.  I probably figured that I couldn’t possibly relate to the characters in the movie as I didn’t grow up in bad neighborhoods, even though I did grow up in the meth capital of the world.  I was never really around that stuff though.  Now that I’ve actually seen the movie, I have my same problems with it as I do with most drama movies in that I found it good, but depressing, and I don’t like being bummed out in my movie experience.  But the movie was indeed good, but I couldn’t help seeing all of the occasions that it clearly and blatantly ripped off a movie I have seen, Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.  My timeline may be off…  But if I get through the bummer, I enjoy the movie for what it is: a look at the life of some criminals in 1993-era Watts, and one that doesn’t deify or vilify the greater majority of the characters.  We understand on some level why they do what they do, even though we don’t condone it.  I feel like a good portion of the writing doesn’t really get that much respect out of me because of that; because it could easily be a true story, it’s just not based on anyone in particular.  And the dialogue certainly doesn’t deserve that much respect, because at least 80% of the words used in this movie are either the N-word or “fuck”.  I also see that Wikipedia says that it uses “fuck” or one of its derivatives 300 times in the movie, setting the record of most fucks per minute with 3.07 times per minute.  If I had noticed that sooner, I might have made my review try to set the record for fucks, but I’m not going back to add them now.  I also got the feeling that I wish they could have included subtitles in this movie for white folk, because I required a translator for the greater majority of the slang in the movie and Forty could only help so much.  There were a couple of things in the movie that I took issue with.  The first was right in the beginning with the shooting of the Korean couple.  I definitely didn’t take issue with the shooting of the Koreans, but I did take issue of what started it.  Why did the dude have to talk shit?  He said, “I don’t want no trouble,” mere seconds before talking shit about O-Dog’s parents and welcoming trouble with open arms.  I also took issue with O-Dog watching the tape of him killing them over and over again with his friends.  I don’t even have a joke for that.  It’s just crazy.  Of course, I also took issue with the whole attitude Caine has about his station in life, and it’s one that it seems most of the other characters have as well.  One of the characters says, “God don’t care about us.  Look how fucked up this place is.”  It was either O-Dog or Caine that said that (I can’t remember), but that is the most stupid things I’ve ever heard.  You’re going to blame God for that?  You and your friends occupy most of your time drinking, selling drugs, or killing people.  You sure are helping with the revitalization of your community, man.  And not only are you doing the horrible things, but you’ll occupy the rest of your time wearing the tape thin on the video of you doing horrible things, if you can’t find any to do at that moment.  One thing about this movie that did make total sense to me was that, being a black people movie, there would certainly be a prolonged shot at some random actress’ booty.  You did not let me down.

Most of the performances were very good in this movie, but Tyrin Turner never really worked for me, which was a shame because he was the main character.  In most circumstances in the movie he seemed to act as if he was trying too hard and not being realistic.  I first noticed it when he would check his pager.  Instead of just glancing at it, he chose to show that he was reading it as if he had no idea what he was looking at, as if it was reading the symbol for Prince’s name instead of “1 Page”.  It became a running joke for me through the movie to constantly make him say, “Yeah, that’s cool and everything.  I’m sorry, I’m just a little distracted trying to figure out what the fuck was paged to me earlier.  What the fuck does that gibberish mean?!”  His pronunciation of words also confused me more than once.  I had to try really hard to figure out what he meant when he demanded a guy’s “Jurry”.  I eventually figured out that he wanted the man’s “jewelry”.  It made much more sense after that.  I would give him credit for the fact that he was pretty convincing in the scenes when he seemed close to death and the scene where he was crying in the prison while talking to Pernell.  I thought Larenz Tate did a good job as O-Dog, but he did something that confused me as well.  I was confused by the fact that, even though all of these people were always a hair trigger away from killing someone, they still were brutal in the amount of shit they would talk to each other.  I don’t know how they hadn’t all killed each other.  O-Dog even mocked Caine for crying when they were taking him to the hospital as he was almost bleeding to death.  Samuel L. Jackson was also in this movie, and he gives a great performance that is VERY Samuel L. Jackson.  It’s the exact kind of performance he’s known for, like the Chappelle’s Show portrayal of him.  Also, would it have killed you to get Jada Pinkett Smith to wear something tight at some point in the movie?  She was young and pretty hot in this movie, but you couldn’t really tell because she was wearing Shaquille O’Neal’s street clothes for the bulk of the movie.

Even though it’s definitely not the type of movie I typically go for, Menace II Society was a really good movie.  If nothing else, it’s a good look at inner city gang violence and the people involved, and shows them unflinchingly and lets you reach your own conclusions about the message of the movie.  The greater majority of the performances are very real, but the main character seemed to be trying too hard for all but a few instances of quality.  I won’t typically recommend a movie that is such a bummer, but this is a good movie.  I’ll let you decide for yourselves if it’s something you need to see.  Menace II Society gets “We just havin’ some fun with the motherfuckin’ tape” out of “Teach him the way we grew up was bullshit.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook and Twitter.  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

It Ends Tonight

The time has come to finish another movie series.  As is typically the case, this movie is generally regarded as the worst in the series.  The first movie in the series was regarded as innovative and awesome, and the second one was less innovative but included some pretty spectacular action.  The third one … ties up the series.  But you aren’t coming here for me to regurgitate Rotten Tomatoes scores into your faces with a couple of dick jokes; you’re here to find out my opinion on these movies … with a couple of dick jokes.  So let’s penis this up with my review of The Matrix Revolutions, written and directed by Andy and Larry (Lana) Wachowski, and starring Keanu Reeves, Hugo Weaving, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mary Alice, Sing Ngai, Bruce Spence, Lambert Wilson, Nathaniel Lees, Harry J. Lennix, Clayton Watson, Harold Perrineau Jr., Nona Gaye, Helmut Bakaitis, and Monica Bellucci.

At the end of the last movie, Neo (Keanu Reeves) held up his hand and made some robots fall down.  Then he also fell down.  So he’s in a coma, his mind being stuck in the matrix somehow, even though he’s not plugged into it.  He finds himself trapped in a train station with a family that probably owns a couple 7-11’s.  It’s controlled by The Trainman (Bruce Spence) and the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson).  Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) go to the Merovingian to negotiate for Neo’s release, but Trinity decides the best negotiating technique she has is to pull a gun on the Merovingian.  With Neo out, he sets out to go to the machine city with Trinity while Morpheus, Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith), and the rest of the crew to participate in a gigantic battle against the machines in Zion.  And then some more CG nonsense and the end.

Much as with Reloaded, this movie has a weaker story and must attempt to stand alone on its action.  But where Reloaded had a couple of epic, practical action scenes, this movie had two CG guys bumping into each other as thousands of other CG guys watched.  The story mostly seems like a desperate attempt to tie up the story they had started at whatever the cost, and then throw in some vaguely biblical imagery because, as we all know, Keanu Reeves is computer Jesus.  I still have no idea what would motivate the computers to reach a treaty with the humans, but it happened so we’ll just have to deal with it.  The dialogue continued to not impress, especially when Neo was talking to the Oracle.  Every question he asked was met with, “You already know the answer to that question.”  Well thanks for wasting our fucking time, Oracle/Wachowski’s.

Story had already been a bit of a problem in Reloaded, but the freeway scene was worth the price of admission all by itself.  In this movie, the action scenes were all pretty disappointing.  One action scene was when Morpheus, Trinity, and Seraph fought their way in to see the Merovingian.  The CG used in this scene was much more disappointing than it should have been with how much money I imagine they had at their disposal.  They also should just give up on using guns.  If I had an accuracy rating as low as they have in Call of Duty I would kill myself, but I’d probably miss my shot with my gun in my mouth.  I don’t even know why the Merovingian was intimidated with Trinity holding a gun against his head.  There was at least a 75% chance that she’d miss.  But then she’d just kick him into a wall with the jumping crane kick that she has in her contract that she must do at least once per film.  I also felt like the outcome of the fight between Neo and Bane would have been different if Neo didn’t just assume that being awesome in the matrix meant that he didn’t need to work out in the real world.  I would say that I didn’t mind the battle for Zion near the end of the movie.  Yeah, it was a lot of CG nonsense, and mostly involved some giant robots shooting at a hole in the ceiling, but it was pretty epic in scale and got the greater majority of the small characters the opportunity to be a hero.  The little wormy guy that loved Neo got to kick some ammo into a robot, Link’s pussy (Zee) got to shoot a giant robot with a bazooka, and Link and the crew of the Hammer got to sit in chairs and pint at things with joysticks.  Okay, that last part was boring.  They were having this epic scene where they were flying the Hammer through some narrow tunnels with Sentinels in pursuit being barely held off by turrets on the ship, and a couple of times they decided to show the excitement of that scene by showing the guys controlling the turrets in what could best be described as playing Xbox.  I admit to wanting to see an ending with some hand to hand combat, but what I didn’t want is a big CG mess of two collections of pixels smashing together in the rain.  They interrupt this occasionally with two real people kicking and punching at each other, but let’s not waste lot of time on that.  Look what computers can do now!

Someone came up with an interesting idea in this movie: “Let’s give Keanu Reeves some room to stretch his acting chops.”  Interesting, but not intelligent.  He sucks.  Trinity gets a new piece of jewelry through her chest and he has to try to cry over her.  It didn’t work out well for him.  Someone must’ve realized it wouldn’t work out so they burned out his eyes and covered half of his face with a scarf over his icky eye goo.  Carrie-Anne Moss?  Still a lezzie.  But her acting looks pretty amazing next to Keanu.  I think the star of this movie when it comes to performances is Ian Bliss as Bane.  That guy does a really good impression of Hugo Weaving.

Now we’ve finished the Matrix trilogy, and the Wachowski’s made good and sure that nobody would be asking for them to ruin a fourth one.  The story was a rushed attempt to tie up loose ends, the action was 90% CG, and they tried to get Keanu Reeves to act.  Bad decision, guys/guy and girl.  It’s not the worst movie ever, but it does kill all of the enjoyable parts of the previous two movies.  I don’t really recommend it … unless it’s cheaper to buy the movies in a trilogy.  I own it, but only out of my obsessive-compulsive completionism.  The Matrix Revolutions gets “Why do you persist?” out of “It is done.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

You Always Told Me to Stay Off the Freeway

By now, I think most people have the feeling that the first Matrix movie was fantastic.  And, as with most fantastic things, the studio tried to capitalize on its popularity by cranking out a couple of sequels that sucked.  Going into today’s movie, I remember only that the series deflated me in the sequels, but I don’t really remember which one was the greater cause of it or why.  Because it was requested by Samrizon, because it continues the series, and because I can’t remember if I liked it or not, let’s check out my review of The Matrix Reloaded, written and directed by Andy and Larry (Lana) Wachowski, and starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Hugo Weaving, Harry J. Lennix, Anthony Zerbe, Jada Pinkett Smith, Gloria Foster, Randall Duk Kim, Lambert Wilson, Helmut Bakaitis, Harold Perrineau Jr., Nona Gaye, Daniel Bernhardt, and Monica Bellucci.

Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) has come across some information that a group of robotic Sentinels are tunneling towards the last remaining human city, Zion.  Commander Lock (Harry J. Lennix), commander of Zion’s military, orders all ships to return to Zion to defend it.  Morpheus asks another ship to wait around to get a message from the Oracle (Gloria Foster).  They do, and Morpheus takes his ship, the Nebuchadnezzar (which I only include because I like typing that word), back into the matrix so that Neo (Keanu Reeves) can contact her.  He does, but is immediately attacked by Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), who was freed from the control of the matrix and is now trying to replicate himself into everyone in the matrix.  With the information received from the Oracle, Neo must battle his way through hordes of enemies, risk his life and the lives of his loved ones, and cost people their lives, all in order to get into a big room full of televisions and talk to a bearded jerk with a superiority complex.

By the time this movie came out, it suffered from the same problem that the first Matrix movie suffers from when watching it today: when it’s no longer innovative and impressive, it must rely too heavily on a story that’s not super impressive.  It’s fine enough, but it had the tendency to get a little talkie, which was a problem since about half of the dialogue was made terribly annoying by the fact that the Wachowski Brothers used the check from the first Matrix money to invest in a Thesaurus.  Especially the Architect.  The vernacular utilized by that gentleman was quite feasibly the most irksome and befuddling thing to attempt to cognize.  You had to virtually pick and choose the word you could fathom and try to formulate something comprehensible out of it.  Thank you, Thesaurus.  There was a little bit of love story in the first movie, but it was a lot heavier in this one, and I don’t really think it’s the Wachowski’s strong point.  For an example of this, I would harken back to the scene when Link was returning home to his wife Zee and was apparently about to enter the house and yell, “Where’s my pussy?!” until he realized that there were kids in the room.  Seriously, he walks in and gets out, “Where’s my puss…” before he sees them.  Is this how we’re supposed to do it, Ladies?  I’m going to get a girlfriend so I can introduce her as “the irrelevant skin and tissue that connects the boobs and the vag.”  They’re much better when it comes to scenes like the dialogue between Morpheus and Commander Lock.  That dialogue was thick with “Fuck you, I’m smarter than you” from Morpheus.  The Wachowski’s also begin to show themselves to be a little pervy, like the part where the Merovingian has randomly put the programming equivalent of Spanish Fly into a girl’s cake so that the Wachowski’s can vaguely mask their desire to zoom in on a computer code version of a lady’s vagina with some nonsense dialogue about causality.  But then perversion and the Merovingian came together for a good line that Persephone dropped about the lipstick that wasn’t on his face.  It’s so hard to tell where to stand with these Wachowski’s.

The action was sublime in this movie.  If they were going to teach a class about action sequences, they would show the freeway battle scene.  It’s spectacle at its best, and mostly done practically if I remember correctly.  There was some CG, but mostly it was just cars getting fucked up.  The movie also jumps right into some decent action, although it turns out to be a bit of a fuck you because it’s a dream sequence.  It also adds to my idea that people suck at shooting in the matrix.  Trinity’s falling out of a window and an Agent is falling right after her.  She’s unloading uzi’s at him and he probably can’t dodge very much in midair, but neither one of them can hit anything.  A single bullet out of the entire barrage connects.  They also had some pretty good hand to hand combat scenes, like Neo and the Merovingian’s henchmen.  The movie still looks pretty amazing, but it has a couple of faults with some of the CG.  I remember there being some pretty awful face replacement and fakey looking computer generated people, mostly surrounding the multiple Agent Smiths in the big fight on the playground.  There’s also an icky, sweaty-looking dance/Neo and Trinity fucking sequence that goes on a little long, but at least everyone in the dance sequence has their nipples out.  I also want to believe that the one guy that jumps really high out of the crowd was just doing that so he could be on camera.  I also liked the idea, and the execution, of the Keymaker’s skillset, turning a broom closet into a mansion foyer.  And the best thing about the look of the movie was that epic urinal in the Merovingian’s restaurant.  It was a waterfall!  I’d pee all over that!

The performances were roughly unchanged from the previous movie.  I think I might’ve liked Keanu Reeves a little less in this movie.  He still seems like a mixture of Ted from Bill & Ted and Johnny Utah from Point Break.  But this time around, he’s the savior of the world from the first moment.  He wasn’t all cocky about it, but you’d like to think the world was not in his hands.  Carrie-Anne Moss still looks lezzie and Laurence Fishburne is still spooky, but he pulls out a lot more rousing speeches this time around.  We’re also introduced to Jada Pinkett Smith’s Niobe character, which made little to no impact on me.  I found myself slightly irritated with Hugo Weaving in this movie, but it was more the fault of the writing that he kept saying stupid things when talking with his clones.  And thank the good lord up above for the inclusion of Monica Bellucci.  She didn’t do very much in the movie, but Gundamn is she good looking.  I like to think that Keanu slipped a chunk of change to the Wachowski’s to add a random scene where she wanted him to kiss her for no good reason, just so he could stop kissing the lezzie for a while.  And it was fun for me that they added Daniel Bernhardt to the movie as one of the Agents.  I think we all remember his debut performance in Future War (MST3k movie.  Check it out).

Not nearly as impressive and innovative as its predecessor, but still an enjoyable watch in its own right.  The Matrix Reloaded can spend a little too much time talking for my taste, but the action that the dialogue is filling the space between is worth the wait, especially in the freeway scene.  I definitely think Reloaded does a passable job of holding a candle for The Matrix, even though it has a cliffhanger on a movie that’s kept separate from its resolution by almost a year.  But I won’t have to wait that long because I’m reviewing it tomorrow.  For now, The Matrix Reloaded gets “This is Zion, and we are not afraid!” out of “I just love you too damn much.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.