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.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010)

One might be so bold as to assume that a collaboration between two Hollywood powerhouses such as Jerry Bruckheimer and Nicholas Cage could possibly be the greatest film in the history of man … but why would you think that? Are you insane? The producer of G-Force and the guy from Season of the Witch?

Such a concoction recently made it’s way to my computer via RedBox by way of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The Saucer’s Appendix is the story of an awkward boy named Dave (Jay Baruchel) who meets a sorcerer named Balthazar (Nicholas Cage) and becomes … wait for it … his apprentice! Cage was a pupil of Merlin (Yes, THE Merlin) and he’s been fighting bad sorcerers and trapping them in those little Russian nesting dolls, the center of which is his girlfriend (Monica Bellucci) who trapped Morgan le Fey (Some old broad) inside herself. Too bad the movie didn’t have as many layers as these nesting dolls, eh? Anyways, Cage meets Dave, who is a descendent of Merlin, and trains him up to fight Morgan and this one evil sorcerer played by Alfred Molina named Whore’sBath. Rotten Tomatoes claims it’s spelled Horvath, but I know what I heard! Also, at some point, Baruchel meets and falls in love with the pretty blonde girl from I Am Number Four.

I can assume I am not the target demographic for this particular movie. It seems like the kind of movie that would be enjoyed by younguns. By me? Not so much. I’m not sure that Baruchel is meant to lead a movie. He was fantastic in Tropic Thunder where he could be awkward in the background, throw in some funny now and then, and then fuck off. But he’s arguably the star of this particular movie. He plays the descendent of Merlin himself or, as this movie calls it, the Prime Merlinian. Yeah, they really called it that. But, being the Prime Meridian that he is, most of the movie is placed on his scrawny, awkward shoulders, and I don’t feel like the Prime Millennium was up to the task. There was one interesting scene that came forth because of him when the movie includes a long, fairly well done recreation of Fantasia, a movie where the Prime Mescalin was played by none other than Mickey Mouse himself. The Prime Masturbation sets mops and brooms to work cleaning his lab area so he can ready for his date. As you may assume, it does not go well, to the GREAT comic delight of the audience. Oh Prime Michigan, will you ever do anything right?

I had an odd thought during this movie, caused by the secondary lead Cage. He IS generally regarded as a great actor, right? I assume I just haven’t seen the right movies starring him. I hear the man puts on quite the performance in Raising Arizona and probably other movies, but I’ve not seen them. But of the movies I’VE seen the man in – Season of the Witch, Ghost Rider, Con-Air, The Rock, Face Off, and lest we forget Wicker Man – I’ve not been thoroughly impressed. And why is he in 8 movies a year, with only 1 that’s watchable? Oh wait, I just remembered I really like both National Treasure movies and Kick-Ass. Alright, Cage, you can keep making movies, but I’m watching you! Well … no, I guess I probably won’t be … but still!

Also, why was Monica Bellucci barely used in this movie? Not only is she a fine actress, she’s a FINE actress. She was shown only a few times in the movie and did not speak until the very end of the movie. Which, now that I think about it, is my preferred way of enjoying Monica Bellucci. Carry on, movie!

So, honestly, I don’t have much to say about this movie … cough … The movie is not the worst thing I’ve watched by a long shot, but it’s also something you’ll be fine going about your life not having seen it. I suppose if you have Harry Potter-obsessed 12 year old boys in your family, or perhaps in your basement, it’s a good way to stop them from screaming for an hour or two.

On a scale of 1 to 5 stars, you don’t need to watch this movie. Getting closer?