Seen November 2003
Submitted by red on Tue, 11/18/2003 - 07:47
Tags:
- Identity - I really dislike these kinds of movies, and this was no exception. What was John Cusack thinking, he's so much better than this. The ending was laughable and i saw it coming miles away.
- Phone Booth - For a movie that's set in a phone booth for 95% of its duration, it actually worked really well. Flavor of the month Colin Farrel was very realistic and beleivable in the tense situation. A real hoot.
- Matrix Revolutions - I'm surprised by all the positive reviews i've read here for this. I found revolutions to be even worse than reloaded. I don't know, maybe i just can't stomach the wooden acting and horrible cliched dialogue as well as some. I also feel it didn't tie up any of the loose ends it promised to. It was just another CGI wankfest like reloaded.
- Indiana Jones Trilogy - I picked up the dvd set. Haven't been able to watch any of the features yet. Watched the 3 movies though. I think The Last crusade could be my favorite of the 3, followed by Raiders then the Temple of doom. Last crusade just seems to tie the action and comic releif together better than the others. All 3 are great though.
- Punch drunk love - I didn't really enjoy this movie. I found it too dark and wierd to be romantic in any way. Adam sandler puts in a hearty performance, but his character is just too demented and unbeleivable. The story never really developes into anything more than a fling.
- Kill Bill Vol 1 - The ultimate style over substance film. The plot is B-grade silliness but it's all so damn cool. How could you not love it. Oh, and Uma Thurman is sexy with a samurai sword.
- Gandhi - Very good tribute to such an amazing and complex historical figure. Ben Kingsley is brilliant as the little indian man. It's over 3 hours long, there was even an intermission on the dvd. Definately a must see once.
Hey, nice to see you joining the "seen" scene, and with mini-reviews! Looking forward to more!
I have to ask something though - I've seen many folks complain that the action in Revolutions (and Reloaded) is meaningless (or a wankfest :-) because it's CGI. The implication in many of these complaints seems to be that if the shot was done with models or other more traditional effects it would be more palatable. The complaint is not that the CGI is badly done (which I could understand), the complaint is that it's CGI, period (which I don't understand). It's all just fiction, nobody's life is really in danger (unless it's an older Jackie Chan movie), so why is CGI "more fake" than any other movie-making technique?
I don't mean to put words in your mouth. Perhaps you just meant that the CGI was badly done or didn't work for you in some other way. It's just an impression I've gotten from many of the negative Revolutions reviews.
Well I don't know about red here, but my problems with the actions scenes in "Revolutions" did not really stem from the fact that it was CGI. I enjoyed the Smith / Neo fight scene even though that was a good deal of CGI, and I even enjoyed the 100 Agent Smiths scene in "Reloaded."
But the sentinels' attack on Zion really bored me. I felt like I was just watching pointless clashing and explosions. And it went on for SUCH a long time, with the Wachowskis barely even showing us any of the characters, just showing off their masterful CGI skill. But even if they had used models, I would still have disliked this scene.
Thanks for the comments. I have no problem with CGI, it looked fantastic. What i meant was that the makers of the film could have spent a bit more time with the story and dialogue rather than showing off thier CGI skills.
I don't think the Wachowskis should spend more time on the dialog, I think they should hire somebody else to write it. :-) Definitely the weakest part of all three movies, although I've seen it theorized that the movie (dialog and all) are kinda like opera. You may not dig the singing, but it's intentional. Personally, I like the movies in spite of the dialog, and I have yet to grok opera.
I realize now, reading your and AJ's replies, that most people probably feel as you do - it's not the nature of the CGI itself kept you unengaged, it was this particular employment of the CGI. I was probably subconsciously reading the shallower interpretation because of my own bias.
As for the story, I linked to this on my own review of the movie, but have you seen this interpretation of the movies (note that you have to wait for the page to finish loading before it will skip down to the actual post I'm citing)?
To back up my argument. The "train man" scene where Neo is being held by Merovingian at the train station between the real world and the matrix. Was there really any point to this scene, other than giving Morpheus and Trinity one last slow motion gun battle? It had nothing to do with the story and wasn't explained well at all.
I think there quite a few ways to try to make sense of the movie, and certainly none of those ways are definitive, but if you like the interpretation I linked to above, I think the train sequence is an important piece of the puzzle. It helps explain how the machine world and the matrix world relate to each other.
Your link above isn't working for me, but I do agree with you, Jim. Even though the train sequence felt a bit disjoint, I did enjoy it. I'm not so cynical as to think the entire sequence was only there in order to put in that slow-motion gun battle.
Weird that link didn't work. I've reprinted it here, if you're still interested.
That's certainly the best and most logical explanation i have heard. It seems like a very complex way of saying "it was all a dream". I will have to watch the sequels again and try and peice the puzzle together myself with all those clues.
It's working for me now. But thanks for posting it just the same. I think it has some good insights, and a lot of it was probably stuff that the Wachowskis intended. However, I agree with dgeiser13 - they didn't do a very good job of making this clear, and we deserve better.
Aw come on, when did clarity become a cardinal virtue? If that were the case The Big Sleep would have fallen into obscurity long ago. :-)