james_a_young Reviews

The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

Continuing the downward trend set by its predecessor...

[4/10 · 9 November 2003]

To put this into context, I loved the Matrix. I was dissappointed by Reloaded - it had amazing effects and set pieces, but dreadful story.

*MILD SPOILERS*

Alas Revolutions continues that downward trend, to the extent that it has surely shipwrecked the entire Matrix franchise?

The main problems I saw:

1) Lack of discovery & surprise - in the first movie, the audience learnt the secrets of the real & Matrix worlds as Neo did. The only thing we discover is that the plotting/story of the first film appears a fluke, as all this dishes up is some religious nonsense.

2) The trekky ship vs sentinel bits of matrix were at the periphery - they were merely a tenuous backdrop for allowing all the really cool in the matrix outfits, kung fu, gun fights, bullet time effects etc. Here they are given almost complete prominence. I counted only 5 scenes in the matrix (including the train station) in the whole film, and only 2 of these were action sequences. No freeway chase here.

3) The show down with Agent Smith - grand finale and all, seemed to go on forever, didn't add or explain anything, and was also oddly similar to the end of Superman 2, flying supervillains and all.

4) Neo's powers extending beyond the Matrix (as shown at the end of Reloaded) is, frankly, ridiculous. In fact, the whole religious iconography of "Neo is the saviour" gave a philisophical edge to movie 1 - here it is just over the top and spoils things.

* SPOILER *

5) With Smith gone, what possible reason do the machines have for keeping the new found peace?

A stupid waste of an excellent franchise opportunity....

Mystic River (2003)

A bit slow paced, but overall very good.

[7/10 · 20 October 2003]

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It dragged it's heels in a couple of places, and really should have ended 15 minutes before it did, the final scenes adding nothing but minutes to the movie, but overall was

A quick summary:

1) It had likeable, believable characters, that were introduced bit by bit throughout the film until you thought you had a complete picture...

2) The ending was a suprise, but not a ridiculous one, and the whole thing was actually quite upsetting. (I haven't been moved by a movie since Matchstick Men).

3) Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins & Sean Penn all excelled themselves.

go see it!

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

Over-rated, incoherent and boring

[3/10 · 20 October 2003]

***MILD SPOILERS***

What a dissappointment, especially after the awesome trailer. I had several problems with this film:

1) I didn't care about any of the characters. There was no introduction to any of them (apart from the super-violent anime section introducing Lucy Liu), so I did not understand or care about their motivation. Why was any of this happening?

2) It lacked the dark humour of Tarantino's earlier films, especially in terms of the sparkling character dialogue (e.g. Samuel L Jackson & John Travolta in Pulp Fiction), of which there was none. The dark moments (e.g. the rapist hospital worker) were humour free and quite sickening.

3) Swapping the timelines around is an old Tarantino trick that worked brilliantly in Pulp Fiction, but added nothing to this movie except you knew the ending about 5 minutes into the film.

4) I got bored. The final battle lasts forever and becomes dull after the first few people get their limbs removed. The scenes where Uma Thurman convinces Sonny Chiba to make her a sword add nothing but minutes to the movie.

Why wasn't it edited down and made into a single, complete, BETTER movie? So dissappointed.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

Derivative action movie but perfectly entertaining...

[6/10 · 3 August 2003]

Well, I have to say that I enjoyed T3. It was not a taught B-movie thriller like T1, or a faultless big budget sci-fi classic like T2, but it certainly entertained for 2 hours without getting boring. (I couldn't say the same of the other summer blockbuster I saw recently, "Hulk". I had to see that twice to check I wasn't imagining how BAD it was the first time.)

***** contains mild SPOILERS ******

T3 doesn't really bother trying to explain why Terminators even continue to exist post the seemingly "final" events of T2, instead it attempts to capture the audience's attention, with the promise of some impressive stunts, action sequences and effects (right from the opening shot of a nuclear detonation), and a large helping of "more of the same".

It certainly delivers on more of the same, with some great action sequences (T-X driving the crane was particularly good), nice effects, and constant pursuit of John Connor by a particularly mean, seeming unstoppable (and this time not unattractive) machine (apologies to Robert Patrick!), which again is defeated in an ingenious manner.

Where it fell down for me was:

1) it lacked the originality of either of it's predecessors, both in terms of plot, and in terms of set pieces (I guess there are only so many ways a machine can bash another machine into a wall repeatedly, but Arnie shooting up loads of cops then do a "000" count of human victims? Surely we've seen that before!) 2) it had a few too many attempts at humour (that is how we spell "humor" it in England BTW), which I think robbed it of the tension of the earlier movies. For ever slice of "talk to the hand" genius, there was a dog line ("I'm back!" was easily the worst).

But overall, it was more fun to watch than a lot of blockbusters I've seen recently. I'm not likely to hold my breath for the DVD, but i'd recommend seeing it, just don't expect to be blown away the way T2 would have done.

Daredevil (2003)

Better than X-Men, not as good as Spiderman...

[7/10 · 17 February 2003]

I think this was always going to be slightly dissappointing after the excellent Spiderman, but I still enjoyed this movie. It was whole lot better than the shoddy X-Man nonsense we had to suffer a few years back!

It was coherent, well put together, fun and very watchable, although some of the CGI fight scenes looked a bit shoddy, and at times the hand held camera work was difficult to follow.

Affleck plays his regular "likeable guy" character, which is well suited to the heroic DareDevil/Murdock.

Farrell completely overacts as the ludicrous assasain Bullseye, who for some reason the screen writers don't try to justify the existence of. (A shame after the great jobs done bringing the Green Goblin and the Joker off the comic book page into the "real" world).

The film is also quite dark, both in terms of lighting and emotionally, with refreshing commentary on the thin line between good and bad walked by the vigilante.

Overall, well worth the entry fee, and I'm still looking forward to Hulk and Spiderman 2....

Reign of Fire (2002)

Nice looking and good idea, only let down by some dodgy dialogue

[7/10 · 5 February 2003]

I really liked the idea for this film, of groups of people trying to survive in a dragon scorched world. It was very well executed to take this ludicrous fantasy and apply all the rules of logic etc to it.

I also thought that the film looked amazing, particularly the dragons, with the effects only let down by some shoddy looking explosions at times.

The only thing that let the film down was the cliched and sometimes pointless dialogue, especially from the Matthew McConaughey character.

Gangs of New York (2002)

Visually exciting but lacking substance

[4/10 · 4 February 2003]

The film looks fantastic, but the story completely failed to generate interest for the events or the characters, who barring Bill the Butcher, are very wooden and 2-dimensional.

There are also some very dodgy, constantly changing accents in force!

Disappointing considering how good the trailer manages to make it look!