#99: THE MATRIX

 

STARRING: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Annie Moss, Hugo Weaving and Joe Pantoliano. Written and directed by The Wachowskis. Produced by Joel Silver. Budget $63 million. Worldwide Box office $473.3 million. Running time 136 minutes. Originally released in 1999.

Originally released in the same year as my daughter was born, this and her are both 27 years old, and both seem to be timeless classics who just get better with age. I've seen it (the film, not my daughter) dozens of times and it never gets old (unlike my daughter who is actually getting older), in fact I saw it (once again the film) on the big screen just two years ago when it was re-released for its 25th Anniversary, whereas I saw my daughter, Lydia just a few weeks ago when she popped round to visit. I love this film, and her, and seeing it, the film, on the big screen was a pure delight, as is seeing my daughter. Love you Lyds. XXX

The story sees Neo (Keanu Reeves) find out he's not in Kansas anymore but in an AI generated CGI world when enigmatic Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and leather-clad ass-kicker and mistresses of the Bullet Time, Trinity (Carrie-Annie Moss), break him out of his dreamworld where he's lived his life as a human battery, and wake him up in in the 'real world' – a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland so he can eat porridge and do battle with a human-hating computer programme called Mr. Smith, played by Hugo Weaving, that is once he's learned kung-fu. 

What follows is a masterclass in how to do high-concept science fiction fantastically well. That, mixed with genre-defining special effects, some superb fight choreography, a clever script and a kickass soundtrack to boot! The effects, particularly 'bullet-time', which were ground breaking, moved the benchmark and heralded a new era of action tropes and beats for generations to come. This film is filled with iconic action scenes, the brilliant opening with Trinity beating up the coopers, or Neo and Trinity's police raid, just outstanding, as is the final fight between Smith and Neo. Shot through with a sickly green light for the world of The Matrix, each world has its own grungy future noir feel. It's hard to remember now the cinematic and cultural impact The Matrix had on the world back in the day, but it was the hands down the film of the year. Indeed I think it's fair to say it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Blade Runner in terms of its cultural significance and resonance.

Alas if only this had been left as a 'one and done' movie, but sadly Hollywood smelt dollars, and so unleashed upon the world, not one but two more movies with rapidly declining artistic merit and box office takings as both frantically tried to rebottle lightning but failed. With huge budgets compared to the originator, both sequels groaned under the weight of OTT action scenes and ludicrous special effects that flooded the Uncanny Valley and became quite repetitive and, dare I say, boring, I mean the awful CGI Burley Brawl between Neo and the infinite number of Agent Smiths, just looked stupid. The first sequel Matrix Reloaded did fantastic business but the second one, Revolutions underperformed taking less than the original, and the fourth movie released 18 years later, Matrix Resurrections, crashed and burned spectacularly earning $40 million less than it's $190 million budget. That said, the four film franchise still took over $1,793,712,515 billion dollars worldwide off of a combined budget of $553 million. 

Anyway, this got re-released to celebrate the 30th birthday of Cineworld, well that and the lack of new material, which has seen cinemas releasing a record number of classic movies and long may that trend continue, as it's an utter delight getting to revisit so many classic and 'old' films at the cinema writ large as nature intended.

Now, enough Shilly-shallying, it's time to take the red pill and escape The Matrix. 

10/10  

#98: HOPE

 

STARRING: Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Jung Ho-yeon, Taylor Russell, Cameron Britton, Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender. Written and directed by Na Hong-Jin. Budget $46 million. Running time 156 minutes.

When the sherif of a rural reason of South Korea, including the coastal town of Hope, gets a call about a mutilated cow it sets off crazy battle for survival across the town into the neighbouring forest for not just the sherif, but his second-in-command and several local hunters when a relentless, seemingly unstoppable monster goes on the motherfucking rampage and just downright massacres the entire town! But that's just the beginning of what's about to be unleashed on the unsuspecting world and audience. 

Bloody hell, but Korean films are wack. This is three films in one and at the end, the first of a proposed trilogy. It's long, and loses momentum between the action beats and there's a lot of chat as characters bicker, argue and generally talk too much. There are far too many characters and the film jumps from one focal point to the next with each scene. One of the main characters owns plot armour so powerful he's able to survive utterly insane amounts of damage with nary a blink, like being thrown through trees and falling from the height of 40 or 50 ft with only a light case of winding.

There are many scenes of chases as the monsters, there's more than one, chase nearly every human we meet in endless scenes of carnage and gore. An infinite supply of guns are used in every scene, despite the fact the monsters seem impervious to them, until it's required they're not. 

Presented in three major sections, the first in the town of Hope is exhilerating! The streets of devastation and carnage is genuinely unsettling and the sherif's fight for survival is fantastic! This sequence is both funny and gory and you'll find yourself laughing with it thanks to some very choice dialogue. The second sequence in the forest as a group of friends and hunters stumble across a crashed alien spacecraft is a visually and audio battering assault that shows us the monsters in all their glory and begins to paint a picture of what's going on. The final sequence is perhaps the weakest and most repetitive and features a death so shocking surprising that the audience I saw this actually gasped in surprise. It's also this portion that laid the ground work and filled in the blanks of what's actually going on and, well, it's a tad disappointing, left as we are with not so much a cliffhanger, but an end of part one. 

There's a fantastic film here if only the writer director Na Hong-Jin had been able to cut this back from it's 2 1/2 hour running time down to something more reasonable like 90 minutes, because there's a lot of filler here, which judging from the walk-outs tried the patience of the audience. 

I'm beginning to realise that I truly love the cinema of the Far East, there's a quality to Japanese and Korean films that I find truly satisfying, they're filled with tropes and dialouge and action beats I'm not used to, which keeps me guessing and on my toes, and that's deeply satisfying. The effects are mostly very impressive, but it's the practical scenes of destruction that really elevate this. And the cast of ordinary Joes and Joans make a welcome from the muscle bound lugs of Hollywood. There's also a satisfying lack of girl bosses saving the day to stick out like a sore thumb, what we have instead is a strong female character in the shape of the sherif's second-in-command who fights just as well and defiantly as the men. 

Anyway, it's a gory, frenzied demented ride, which despite suffering from being far too long was nevertheless utterly saved by the spectacular opening section set in the destroyed town of Hope.

8/10      

#97: AVENGERS: ENDGAME: ENCORE

 

STARRING: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Jon Favreau, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, Josh Brolin and many, many others like Robert Redford, Michael Douglas, Renne Russo, Bendy-Dick Carrot-Patch, Tilda Swinton and more. Screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. Budget $400 million. Box office $2.79 billion. Running time (original) 181 minutes. Originally released in 2019.

With just over three months to go before the release of Avengers: Doomsday, Disney are releasing this, the highest grossing film of all-times to get us in the mood. A film seemingly rather beloved with a Rotten Tomato score of 91%. It's a film that very satisfyingly concluded Phase 3 of the MCU and was a direct sequel to Avengers: Infinity War, which saw Thanos click his fingers and kill one half of the universe's population. It's also the film that probably marked the high water mark of the super hero genre and the birth of 'Super Hero Fatigue', a phrase so beloved by the critic-arti. 

Avengers: Endgame: Encore starts with the effects of that finger click as half the world's population dies and then follows the surviving members of the Avengers as they head off after Thanos and chop his head off. Then, five years later they set off for a wacky adventure, travelling back through time to gather the Infinity Stones before Thanos, so they reverse Thanos's flick leading to the greatest superhero battle of all times, and one of the most iconic shots ever shot, that of Cap America catching Thor's hammer.

Apparently, to set up Avengers: Doomsday work, the MCU had to go back and recon Endgame adding an additional four and a bit minutes to the already gargantuan running time of 181 minutes just so the conceit of Robert Downey Jr. playing Doctor Von Doom can work, especially since RDJ died at the end of A:E. In all honesty I don't really know if the tinkering has done that much. It looks as if one of the promised 'extra bits' wasn't in the version I saw, so who knows.  

So seven years since I last saw this at the cinema, it's become hard to remember that when the MCU was firing on all cylinders it was a true force to be reckoned with. Phase 3 brought to an end a superb run of films that was royally let down by the absolute dreck that followed in its wake and it's truly disappointing to watch this and know what was to come next. 

I remember really loving Infinity War the first time I saw it, with it's bleak, rather shocking ending and I seem to remember thinking that as good as End Game was it just wasn't as good, too tongue in check at times, too big and too shouty. But it has some truly incredible moments, like Captain America picking up Thor's hammer, that really resonates and had the packed cinema tonight roaring. That final boss fight is still exhilarating, but the multiple endings wears you down. Plus the sheer number of characters, some of whom pop up for one word, like The Wasp, before disappearing becomes a little fan service-esque.

But it was an entertaining enough romp and I found myself enjoying the trip down memory lane. 

What I didn't enjoy was the audience, or at least part of the audience, of young late teen boys who have taken up this deeply annoying game of fake laughing as loud as they can for as long as possible, like a shriek, which in turn trigger other groups of boys to do the same until the film became drowned out by the hateful noise. It finally took one man to slap one of the boys to stop it. Good. 

Anyway, this. An action packed romp, but long oh so bloody long and second time round there's not really anything else new to discover. And the so called new bonus material, well, don't blink. 

8/10 

#96: GODZILLA 2000: MILLENNIUM

 

STARRING: Takehiro Murata, Hiroshi Abe, Naomi Nishida, Mayu Suzuki and Shiro Sano. Written by Hiroshi Kashiwabara and Wataru Mimura. Directed by Takao Okawara. Budget $13 million. Box office $28 million. Running time 107 minutes. Originally released in 1999.

As any regular readers of my blog will know, when it comes to the movies of Godzilla I am utterly blind to his failings, indeed apart from the odd blimp I consider them to be works of near perfection. I've been a fan since I first saw a picture of him in my Octopus book of Science Fiction when I was ten years old and now 52 years later I'm getting to see Godzilla films on the big screen, whenever the Barbican shows them, which brings us to this!

The 24th official Godzilla film and the first of the Millennium era. Made after the 1998 Tri-Star Godzilla movie written and directed by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. G2K:M was the first Toho film in five years and was rushed into production months after the Tri-Star effort, it presented Godzilla as an out-and-out villain, a raging, furious force of nature. The suit (worn by Tsutomu Kitagawa) was based on the 'KingGoji' suit from 1962's King Kong vs. Godzilla and features big eyes, massive dorsal fins, pointy little ears, oh and a mouth full of huge fangs. In this film he's actually scary, just the way I like him!   

The plot, not that there's much of one, sees a million(s) year old sunken UFO recovered from the seabed when Godzilla decides its time to do a bit of stomping. Turns out the UFO is here to prepare the Earth for colonisation, while two teams of Godzilla watches try to predict, in one case, his movements while the other camp want to kill him. Queue a series of increasingly destructive engagements leading to one final showdown in the streets of Tokyo between an alien clone of Godzilla and the Big G himself in some utterly apocalyptic destruction. God, I miss the days of men in rubber suits trashing scale models of Tokyo.  

As always Toho try to fill the background or secondary plot with meaningful human characters, in this case two teams of people tracking and chasing Godzilla and as always you somehow come to care for them. But it's not them you come for in a Godzilla film, it's the main event himself and in this he doesn't disappoint. The destruction nicely augmented with CGI is brilliant and the scale perfectly handled. 

This was an exhilarating, rambunctious romp that managed to pull off something truly special by making the Big G actually feel incredibly threatening and scary! In the opening 20 minutes one group of our plucky heroes find themselves literally facing off with Godzilla and you truly feel the scale and the absolute terror an actual encounter with him would ellicit. As always in these Godzilla films you get a real feel for the collateral damage and actual scale of disaster, far more so than with the recent Hollywood films. That said, I can't say this one resonated with me as much as All Out Monster Attack (the second Millennium film), it's a tad too poe-faced for me and a little bit repetitive, but it's still filled with spectacular action set-pieces and scenes or extraordinary destruction. 

This is only the second time that a subtitled version of the film has ever been screened for an audience in this country and the chances of it ever being screened again are slim to say the least. 

A glorious, romp of monster mayhem, masterfully managed by the people who know him best. 

8/10 

#95: RESIDENT EVIL

 

STARRING: Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser. Written by Zach Cregger and Shay Hatten. Directed by Zach Creger. Based on Resident Evil by Capcom. Budget $75 million. Running time 95 minutes. 

Bryan (Austin Abrams) is a medical courier looking to finish for the night and go home to his newly pregnant girlfriend, Michelle (Sara Paxton) and discuss their future, that is until he's given a double fee job to transport a medical freezer bag to Racoon General Hospital and heads off into a snow blizzard where he accidentally runs down an old woman and everything goes wrong in ways so bizarre, so outrageous, so gory and so goddam insane that you'll start questioning your own sanity. 

Austin Abrams is perfect for this film, a nerd, a wimp forced to fight for his life using only skills he's learned from playing video games and at points in the film he finds those skills sorely wanting. 

Directed by Zach Cherry, the genius behind Weapons and Barbarian, who also co-wrote the script for this fantastically gory and exhilarating romp. He manages to honour the mechanics of the game itself with knowing little nods, like Bryan arriving at the hospital at the beginning of the film, filmed from behind, and having to decide whether to turn left or right, or the search of the abandoned farm house for ammo, or the absolutely delightful meta gag of Bryan drinking milk from a bottle and eating cereal straight from a box called 'Life'. Similarly Bryan keeps levelling up his weapons and even finds himself counting his rapidly diminishing meagre ammo, or his constant failure to shot padlocks, then there's the clever use of first person shoot 'em ups, as Bryan searches deserted corridors and sewers. Likewise there's a gorgous 'iris out' scene break where the actual forest slowly engulfs the hero's car as he drives off into the distance. 

This is a film packed with excellent jump scares, which don't telegraph themselves, plus revelations that are sure to cause gasps of horror, they made me gasp. The soundtrack is perfectly suited to the absolute gory bloodbath you're about to experience and never intrudes. And through it all runs a superb, thick vein of comedy that helps to break the spell, and boy do you need it. 

The audience seemed to unite as one, seeking comradeship in shared laughter at the horror unleashed upon them. It was a much need release, as the horror just kept building until the astonishing final boss level showdown at the top of a 28 storey hospital. 

Referencing a slew of famous horror films, like The Thing, Evil Dead, Day of the Dead, and channelling Train to Busan, this powers through the running time furiously and leaves you dazed but never bored, you find yourself rooting for Bryan and hoping he'll somehow managed to survive it all, only time will tell...

Goddam it I loved this, it was a fantastically fun and furious gross-out romp, brilliantly and hilarious gory, with The Thing inspired split-headed creatures and multi-limbed monstrosities, and more tentacles than a Shokushu Goukan. This was a horrific and deranged horror romp that totally nailed the landing and for once didn't bottle it, right down to the insane final shot. 

9/10 

#94: BAD APPLES

 

STARRING: Saoirse Ronan, Eddie Waller, Nina Brown, Jacob Anderson, Rakie Ayola, Robert Emms, Sean Gilder and Kerry Howard. Written by Jess O'Kane, story by Jonatan Etzler and Jess O'Kane. Based on De Oonskade by Rasmus Lindgren. Directed by Jonatan Etzler. Running time 101 minutes.

Primary school treacher, Maria Spencer (Saoirse Ronan) is having a bad old time of it, she's disliked by the parents of her students, the school's Head and staff think she's incompetent, her boyfriend's dumped her, her Scandinavian home is a building site and her life is been made a living hell by one of her 10 year-old students, Danny (Eddie Waller). He's a rage ball and utterly uncontrollable, violently disrupting classes and school outings, defying her and bullying all and sundry. On the verge of an Ofsted visit, Danny pushes fellow student, Pauline (Nia Brown) down a staircase and breaks her arm and he's suspended. When Maria tries to tell Danny's father Josh (Robert Emms) she ends up 'accidentally' kidnapping Danny and locking him in her basement. Over the next six weeks her life is transformed with his disappearance, her class thrives, the parents love her, and even her ex-boyfriend - the schools' deputy Head Sam (Jacob Anderson) sees her in a different light. However, Maria has a second problem student, Pauline (Nina Brown) who's fixated on Maria and blackmails her when she discovers Danny is locked in the basement. The town every man jack of them, save for Josh, thrives now that Danny's missing and things come to a head during a PTA meeting. 

This is Saoirse Ronan's film, she is superb bringing a desperate weariness to her portrayal of Maria, she's a victim of fate, and even the kidnapping isn't what it seems, and yet with Danny now her prisoner a bond develops between the pair of them and we get a glimpse of his life and reasons why he might be so horrible. This is when the film is at its strongest, the connection between her and him is great and offers an intriguing plot point, but this is squandered with the progressively more unhinged Pauline whose antics just cause you to groan in frustration. The film is soon to be revealed to be a black comedy and although laughs are in short supply it does have its moments. 

There are several plot points that seem to offer different routes which are ignored and a major plot hole late in the third act derail the whole thing.

There was a similar film out this year called The Good Boy starring Stephen Graham and Andrea Risenborough which covered a similar set up but with more skill. This can't decide what it is and ultimately leaves you feeling a little flat.

7/10  

#93: THE TRUMAN SHOW

 

STARRING:  Jim Carrey, Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich, Natascha McElhone, Holland Taylor and Ed Harris. Written by Andrew Niccol. Directed by Peter Weir. Music by Burkhard Dallwitz, Philip Glass and Wojciech Kilar. Budget $60 million. Box office $264 million. Running time 103 minutes. Originally released in 1998.

Written by Andrew Niccol and directed by Peter Weir this 28 year-old film seems more prescient with each passing year, predicting with apparent witchcraftian ease the prolific growth of reality TV. Jim Carey is Truman Burbank, the unknowing star of a world-famous live TV show called The Truman Show. His whole fabricated life, from birth has been broadcast live to the world to see. He spends his days in a fictitious costal town of Seahaven Island working as an insurance broker, and even his mother (Holland Taylor), his wife, Nurse Meryle Truman (Laura Linney) and child-hood best friend, Louis Coltrane (Noah Emmerich) are just actors playing out lines read to them through their ear-pieces. And from his office in the moon, Christof (Ed Harris) the god-like figure who produces and directs the Truman Show watches over Truman dictating every minute of his life. But Truman has an urge to explore, to travel the world and when, one day, he narrowly avoids death from a falling spotlight Truman begins to see the cracks in his reality and realise his world might be something else, something sinister and he sets out to escape, while the whole world watches with baited breath.

What a profoundly moving film this is, a brilliantly brisk 103 minutes of cinematic gold, funny, tragic and emotionally moving. Nowadays it would be an eight-part Netflix series, with one filler episode and dragged out across eight hours, although it wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't one in the works already.

But this glorious little film is a modern marvel, emotionally moving, powerful and superbly acted, Jim Carey is a revelation and showed in this one film that he could act and well, keeping his little comedic gimmicks in check apart from his crazy dance in the car and the rain storm on the beach and playing it straight. He's gone on to prove he was more than a clown in both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Man in the Moon. In this you'll find yourself drawn to his plight and rooting for him, yearning him on and when at last he triumphs you feel as if you've escaped too. Similarly the music is exceptional and the use of the main Truman hero music twice, first as he defies the system, and then when he finally sailing free. There's also a strange feeling of anti-climax at the end when you realise just how different and difficult his life is about to become and it's bittersweet despite the fact he's broken free, you want to know he's going to be safe and you wonder whether he'll be able to find true love with Sylvia, or if she'll turn out to be just an obsessive fan. And what of poor Christof, the other prisoner of the show, what now for him now that Truman has escaped, for him his life is effectively over there'll never be another event like The Truman Show for him while Truman himself is going to become a global megastar forever in the spotlight and glare of publicity. I'm sure there'll come a time for him when he realises he was never freer than when he was a prisoner of Seaheaven. 

If I had one criticism it would be the length (which is what my wife said to me on our wedding night) I wish it was longer (also what she said to me). Normally I winge about films being too long, but every now and then I watch a film and wish it was longer, this, Blade Runner, The Paper, Master and Commander and Spatacus. Actually, I'm lying about that last one, it's perfect just the length it is (which is what I said back to my wife on our wedding night).

One day, I'll find my own way out of the David Leach Show*, but until then I'll have to make do with Truman's adventure. Perfection is rare, so is this. 10/10

*FOOTNOTE:
Actually, if you're interested in reading David's own adventures in the real world then check out his autobiographical graphic novel David Leach Conquers the Universe available direct from the author and Dead Universe Comics in Aylesbury. It's all true!