1 of 10
Cinematography by Bill Pope
Keanu Reeves
Laurence Fishburne
Carrie-Anne Moss
Hugo Weaving
Gloria Foster
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| The Matrix: Reloaded 1 of 10 |
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| Directed by the Wachowski Brothers Cinematography by Bill Pope Keanu Reeves Laurence Fishburne Carrie-Anne Moss Hugo Weaving Gloria Foster |
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| I really, really didn�t like this movie. Now, I liked The Matrix well enough�although I expect that the more I watch it the less I would enjoy it. But I really disliked this one. I don�t think it�s a change in me, particularly. I don't think I'm getting pickier. I just have no patience for films that are built on philosophical truisms and catch phrases. There is nothing to them, really. (That's why I didn't like Crouching Tiger either.) The first Matrix seemed to be mostly an examination of the Cartesian question as to whether or not you could tell if you were awake. And that single idea, which has real philosophical validity, held the whole film together. Here, there was no such single idea. In fact, I�m not sure there was really any idea at all. In the climactic scene, The Architect spewed a hodgepodge of empty philosophical platitudes for about 5 minutes. One of the most painful things I have ever watched. I felt insulted. And then there were the more technical details. �Cinematography� was very busy, and very distracting. (The brothers seemed to be trying to one-up themselves, but the effects were not what made the first one fly.) It felt like we were being rushed from one spectacular fight scene to the next. And then there was the acting. It was - how shall I say this - non-existent. It was superhumanly, incredibly, unbelievably wooden. Morpheus, my favorite thing about the original, was reduced to a one-dimensional figure. He wasn�t even allowed to be two-dimensional. (Fishburne must have been furious...I hope.) Moss was a shadow of her character from the first film. And Keanu was also wooden, which isn't exactly something to stop the presses about. But, his woodenness seemed to fit with his situation in the first film. There was no such escape this time. And then there were the effects. The film dropped badly into the Lucas problem. There was so much CGI, nothing looked real. Not that the first one looked real, but there was something non-animated about it. This one looks like a computer game at times. However, to be fair, I haven�t seen the finale yet. And, as my Cinema Production teacher pointed out, it�s really hard to make a sequel to a Messiah movie. Let alone two sequels. But I was very unimpressed with this middle chapter. It had nothing to say. | ||||||