Tag: Keanu Reeves
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The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a narrated character study. Protagonist Robin Wright is talking herself through her life while the film observes her, seeing where she’s gained the perspective of time and where she hasn’t. The film starts in the present, with Wright and husband Alan Arkin having just moved to a retirement…
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River’s Edge hinges on a few things. First, Joshua John Miller’s performance. The film’s about a group of teenagers reacting (and not reacting) to one of them killing another and showing off the body. Miller is protagonist Keanu Reeves’s little brother, who emulates and identifies with his brother’s worst traits. Second, Jürgen Knieper’s score. The…
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The Matrix Resurrections opens with a "cover" of the opening of the original Matrix movie. It takes a while before it makes sense in the narrative, but basically, new cast members Jessica Henwick and Toby Onwumere are watching the scene where Carrie-Anne Moss escapes from Hugo Weaving. Only it's not Carrie-Anne Moss or Hugo Weaving;…
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I understand there are reasons for The Matrix Revolutions. If that one rumor is true, it’s basically Keanu Reeves didn’t want to do sequels forever, and the Wachowskis wanted to do a long-running franchise. Old Internet gossip (oddly more reliably than some later Internet gossip, but still… Internet gossip). And then the costume changes… the…
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I’m trying to think of something nice to say about The Matrix Reloaded. None of the returning good guys give bad performances? None of the leading returning good guys? Like, Gloria Foster’s back and, while she doesn’t give a bad performance, it’s an utterly charmless one heavily leveraging her charm in the last movie. But…
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The Matrix starts kicking ass in the second half. The first act clunks along, introducing both Keanu Reeves’s plot and then the Carrie-Anne Moss and Laurence Fishburne one. The second act makes a lot of promises and stumbles delivering on them. There’s this big fight scene between Reeves and Fishburne, and instead of accelerating the…
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Much Ado About Nothing has a machismo problem. It’s not writer, director, and star Branagh’s fault; it’s just the historical patriarchy. Though Branagh does try to do some initial counterbalancing, opening the film with a quote about the sexual dynamics. Still, that moment only carries through the first scene, setting up Emma Thompson’s character… And…
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I belong to the demographic who’s going to read BRZRKR to the song, Berserker from Clerks, cover to cover. I can’t make the brain stop doing it. Especially since it fits the content so well. The content is an action comic about a Keanu Reeves character—while Reeves co-wrote the comic (and created the property), it…
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Even with conservative expectations, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum disappoints. Even with adjusted expectations as the film progresses; the first act seems like it’s going to be a two hour real-time action extravaganza with lead Keanu Reeves fighting his way through seventies and eighties New York City filming locations, only with twenty-first century fight…
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If—and it's a big if—there's anything interesting about John Wick: Chapter Two as a sequel, it's how poorly the original filmmakers execute the sequel. It feels like a contractually obligated affair, only with the original principals returning. Well, save David Leitch who produced the first film and was the (uncredited) co-director. Guess we know who…
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John Wick is all right. It feels like if it’d been made in the nineties, it’d have been revolutionary. Instead, it uses all the revolutionary and not revolutionary film techniques since the nineties to make the ultimate in mainstream heavy metal neo-pulp, with a twist of seventies exploitation for good measure. It succeeds because of…
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On one hand, with the Wojciech Kilar score, Bram Stoker’s Dracula can get away with just about anything. On the other, with Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves playing leads… well, it needs something to help it get away with anything. It helps neither Ryder or Reeves are the actual star of the film. Neither is…
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Rather terrible–but still on some levels competent–serial killer thriller about Keanu Reeves terrorizing Chicago in general and ex-FBI agent James Spader in specific. Really bad performance from Reeves (who did the film to fulfill a forged contract obligation) and Marisa Tomei (as Spader’s therapist and, natch, love interest). Rather elaborate Chicagoland filming but completely inept…
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There may be a pseudo-sly Speed reference in The Lake House, which reunites stars Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, but it’s a spoiler. Unfortunately it is not Bullock’s Speed 2 co-star Jason Patric as her wet towel boyfriend (Patric infamously replaced Reeves in the sequel). Instead, Dylan Walsh is the wet towel boyfriend. His performance…
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About halfway through Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the film becomes truly excellent. Dimwitted metal heads Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves have successfully brought historical figures to the present and loosed them on the modern world–the mall. That sequence of the film, along with Terry Camilleri’s Napoleon at a water park, is when the film…
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Until the last minute, which introduces the idea Keanu Reeves is going to be narrating the film (which doesn’t start with him and has a number of scenes without him), I was going to say nice things about Constantine. I wasn’t even going to point out the son of the devil who’s coming to Earth…
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I think The Matrix! Part Trois has to be better than the second one, if only because it’s not as terribly boring in its action sequences. The second one had that highway battle and it was bad and the Keanu Reeves versus a million Hugo Weavings and it was bad. Here, Keanu Reeves fights one…
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The Wachowskis get to do whatever they want with The Matrix Reloaded so they do this bombastic, pseudo-intellectual sequel and they’re totally bored with it. It’s very obviously not what they want to be doing with their time. They got about as much mileage out of the Matrix as they could in the first one…
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I have this vivid memory of seeing The Matrix in the theater. When the agents, dressed in their black suits, got out of the car, everyone groaned–they thought it was a Men in Black reference. Of course, the thing about The Matrix is it fakes being wholly original. One of the nice things about being…
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I’m trying to find a synonym for genial… excuse me a moment. I like the look of gregarious, but the definition doesn’t fit. Convivial is going to be the compromise word. Parenthood is convivial. Somehow, Howard and company manage to convince the viewer to be touched by the movie’s events, but not to give them…
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I wonder who came up with the title Street Kings, as it has nothing to do with the film’s actual content. I didn’t realize Fox Searchlight had a dimwit exec in charge of re-titling movies. Silly me. The original title, The Night Watchman, actually makes sense (especially since the movie appears to be shot with…
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For a while–during the film–A Scanner Darkly is a great film. It sets itself up as a significant examination of man’s identity and its relation to the people around him. It’s based on Philip K. Dick and that theme is one Dick used at least one other time (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). When…
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