Category: movies

I went to see The Matrix Revolutions with Mike last night. We caught one of the showings at the United Artists theater off Park Lane. Of course the movie has been out for over a month now and I wasn’t even sure if it was still playing in theaters. I probably would have seen it sooner, but I was holding off on that in case I had the chance to see it with my brother in Palo Alto over Thanksgiving (as it turns out, we didn’t fit that in).

In an effort not expose myself to spoilers, I avoided all commercials and reviews for the film. But, I did peek and see the 50 score at Metacritic which concerned me a bit. But I’ve liked movies with low Metacritic scores before (such as Equilibrium with 35) and, besides, the first Matrix is my favorite movie :).

I enjoyed Revolutions and I’m glad I went to see it. But, it was still a bit of a let-down. It's not that it was a bad movie — not at all — but I think that the Wachowskis built up the series to such a height that perhaps no director could have been able to satisfactorily conclude it.

Now that I’ve seen the film, I’ve been reading a few reviews. And, I think perhaps Salon’ Andrew O’Hehir put it in terms that I can most relate to. Spoilers ahead — skip to the bottom if you haven’t seen the film.

Is some light to be shed on the cryptic encounter between Neo (Keanu Reeves) and the Architect (Helmut Bakaitis) in “Reloaded,” in which it appears that, yes, Neo may be “the One,” but he also may be trapped in a reiterative cycle he can't control or escape? Well, not much, frankly. Is the Architect himself a machine, a flesh-and-blood being, or something else? Hmm. What about the Oracle (still a cookie-baking black lady, but now played by Mary Alice in place of the late Gloria Foster, a transition handled about as well as it could be) — who is she and what’s her relationship to the Architect? Um, well, see … Why exactly do Neo’s powers over time, matter and space begin to assert themselves outside the Matrix? I guess, er, just because they do. […]

I suppose that I was hoping for Larry and Andy to tie up the loose ends, but they left a few hanging there. For instance, I still don’t quite understand The Architect’s speech from Reloaded. And I don’t get how Agent Swith was able to traverse into the Real World either :-/.

Plot issues aside, I thought they could have done some of the fight scenes better as well. Granted, I enjoyed the homage to the Lobby Scene (though I didn’t understand the gas masks on those guys), but this is more about the final Neo/Smith fight. Sure, it’s cool that they can fly around and such but, as a kung-fu aficionado, I prefer a more tightly cropped frame so that I can follow their respective moves — extended wide-shots are no good to me.

[End Spoilders.] The most recent list of my favorite movies may need a few small revisions, but I’m still not optimistic that Revolutions will make the cut (on the other hand, there’s a good chance Reloaded will appear). Still, Revolutions is worth more than just a rental and I'd recommend seeing it in the theaters if you haven’t already.

I’ve set TiVo to record Ebert & Roeper, primarily because I miss out on movie commercials (I skip all commercials with TiVo). And, last December they reviewed Equilibrium, which had some gun flights which intrigued me at the time. Christian Bale — that guy from American Phycho — plays the main character.

But, it only received 35 at Metacritic and I didn’t think much of it again until recently. Now that we have Netflix, It doesn’t cost anything extra to watch bad movies ;), so I suggested that Mike add it to our queue.

So, Mike and I watched it last weekend. And, I was completely amazed by this movie — it not only had good story and character development, but also gunfights that rivaled or surpassed those of John Woo. There wasn’t a “lobby scene”, but there is one scene in particular which I enjoyed just as much (nah, I’m not going to spoil it here).

If you like guns — and lots of them — then this is the movie for you. As someone who appreciates intricate gun work, I was smiling from beginning to end. And before the movie was even over, I knew that it’d be among my top 10 favorite movies.

I thought about how it’d place on my top 10 list, and here’s how it fits in:

1. The Matrix. I saw this five times in theaters and I don’t think there’s a single part I didn’t like about the movie. “Guns. Lots of guns.” [buy on DVD]
2. Return of The Jedi. Yeah, critics often like Episode 5 more, but I preferred this one for its climactic action scenes. [not available on DVD]
3. The Empire Strikes Back. Some would place this as the best of the series, but I think we can all agree that it’s better than Episode 4. [not available on DVD]
4. Terminator 2: Judgment Day — Director’s Cut. One measure of a good movie, in my mind, is its quantity of guns & explosions. This has plenty of both :) [buy on DVD].
5. Star Wars: A New Hope. At times, this is a little hokey, especially compared with ESB and ROTJ (“But I was going to the Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!”). But, the lightsaber scenes were reason enough to include it ;). [not available on DVD]
6. Equilibrium. The mythical martial art that was invented for this movie, gun-kata, is astounding and almost plausible. [buy on DVD]
7. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yeah, the other two in the series were also good, but the second one seemed a bit off and the third one didn’t reach the levels of the first. [buy on DVD]
8. RoboCop — Director’s Cut. Favorite line: “Put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.” (and the resulting scene that follows). And, if you haven’t seen the director’s cut, it’s even more violent than the theatrical release (yes!). [buy on DVD]
9. UHF. Weird Al’s comedic masterpiece. Favorite line: “I’m thinking of something orange!” (you’d have to see it to understand). [buy on DVD]
10. Amélie. Before seeing this, I knew absolutely nothing about it (only that my friends had recommended it highly). And I was quite surprised to hear French dialog when the movie first started ;). Still, a charming movie. [buy on DVD]

I saw The Shawshank Redemption the other day, recorded from TNT on TiVo. I hadn’t seen it before, but I heard it was good and so I set TiVo to record it (and I’m glad I did).

It was actually excellent, and I was surprised to later learn that it was based on a short story written by Stephen King. Had I known that previously, I might have avoided it altogether since I dislike horror flicks (of course, this was more of a drama in any case).

After watching it, I thought for sure that it must have won some Oscars. So, I loaded IMDB to check on its awards only to find that it didn’t get any Oscars. I was puzzled at first but then realized that 1994 was also the year the Forrest Gump came out, winning Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Writing, Best Film Editing, and Best Visual Effects. Yeah, pretty much everything ;).

You’d think that there might be a lot lost between the original R-rated cut and the version of The Shawsharnk Redemption shown on TNT. But, it wasn’t too bad. Reading over the quotes at IMDB, some words were cropped but only the ones you’d expect. And, I also learned that [spoiler] the scene with the warden’s self-inflicted gunshot [/end spoiler] was heavily cut.

All the same, I really enjoyed the movie. But, I’m not sure I’d buy it on DVD — it’s the type of flick that kept me interested because I didn’t know what was coming next. Of course, now that I've seen it once, I know what happens during every scene.

There is one part that confused me. [spoiler] Why did the warden have Tommy shot? (He’s the Gil Bellows character who revealed that Dufresne’s wife was shot by another man.) [/end spoler]

(no spoilers) I went to see Terminator 3 on Friday with Cyrus (one of my good friends from high school). In the end, it may not surpass Terminator 2 but there were times during watching it that I thought it just might (it’s that good).

In a HHOS kind of way, I’ve noticed a pattern that Guns + Explosions make for a good action movie; I was not disappointed on either account. The 66 score at MetaCritic indicates generally favorable reviews and if you liked Terminator 2, I’d recommend this one. I wouldn’t even mind seeing it again sometime.

I’ll be vague in the rest of this paragraph, but if you’re really concerned about spoilers, you could skip it. My favorite scene: the manhole sequence (I’d watch it again just for that). And, my favorite line was Arnold’s “I.K.Y.” to John Connor (I haven’t spelled out the acronym so as not to spoil it, but if you don’t get it I can elaborate).

Oh, and T3 probably has the second best movie chase sequence this year ;).