[ greyweed ] -- and the bored shall inherit the earth...

I saw two films over the weekend…


The Matrix: Reloaded

Gone are the days where the audience needs to be spoon-fed the entire plot and premise of a film in order to understand it. There has certainly been advancement in that part; the audience is smarter now and prefers to figure out things on their own, which actually adds thrill and the enigma effect of the film. This revolution of some sort began after the showing of the Matrix, a couple of years back. It wowed a new generation of filmmakers and movie viewers with the ingenious merging of superb visual effects, the non-stop traditional action sequences reminiscent of the kung fu movies we grew up with, stunning cinematography and the twisted but brilliant take on reality. And this generation has been very grateful to Warner Brothers ever since.
A few months ago, along with the showing of The Dreamcatcher was the released of The Animatrix, a splendid series of animated short films on the Matrix's storyline, with all new characters, plots to squeeze the logic out of you and too much eye-candy for the visually diabetic. The first two shorts are 2D animations, the former done in the Akira-Ghost in the Shell kind of gloom and art, while the latter totally blows your mind in true Aeon Flux fashion. The last one, titled The Final Flight of the Osiris, is excellently done in 3D animation, which induces some comparisons to its predecessor, Final Fantasy, in terms of the quality of the graphics. All in all, the Animatrix is a string of new and original stories, if not innovative, created by traditional means in a not-so-new form. It breathes new life into a film inhibited by Keannu Reeves and Carrie Ann-Moss. The Animatrix is an essential fragment of the Matrix Universe, and made me want to kill myself for ignoring the less advertised and less publicized The Dreamcatcher.
And a month prior to the release of Reloaded, a PS2 game was launched featuring not Morpheus or Trinity or even Neo, but Naobe and Ghost, two key characters in the third sequel (I surmise) but introduced in Reloaded. Enter The Matrix carries a different plot but it is, nevertheless, still integral to the Matrix, it has been written that to fully comprehend the entire Matrix franchise, you must play the game. The cast confirms this, telling of scenes and sequences they shot that were exclusively for the game and not part of the movie. Warner Brothers, on the other hand, claims that the game is entirely a new story, and should not be missed.
Now the film comes back with the second installment, The Matrix: Reloaded.
The film starts off innocently with a dream sequence of Trinity on a motorcycle, making a section of a building rooftop explode with it. The scene jumps into a gunfight scene where Trinity is falling off the building and is followed by an Agent. A bullet punctures into her abdomen, killing her instantly. Then Neo wakes up.
A meeting then follows inside the virtual reality called the Matrix (you should have known that by now, shame on you). The people in attendance are talking about the final whereabouts of the Osiris (The Animatrix is integral) when they are visited by two of the agents, who Neo fights as the rest of them escapes. And then he flies off. Yes, in this film, Neo flies. And then we finally get to see Zion for the first time, the only human populated city in the real world. And in it, it is a very comforting feeling to know that not everyone believes that Neo is the one, or that it even matters.
In this movie, Zion is in danger of attacks from the machines that finally locates it, and intends to bring it down. And so as part of the prophecy, Neo is expected to save humanity, so they set off in search of the mysterious Oracle, who is to tell him what to do. Along the way, he encounters Agent Smith played by Hugo Weaving, who after being destroyed in the first Matrix returns somewhat like a virus. Just like when you delete a file or program, its components are not automatically removed. He is no longer part of the Agents (who have been upgraded); and instead he seeks revenge on Neo. And even infects other people to be just like him, both the physical aspects and the dry sense of humor, a far cry from his role as the mind-numbing Elron in The Lord of the Rings. The resultant is a battle between Neo and a hundred or so Agent Smiths.
When Neo finally gets to talk to the Oracle, she tells him that in order to save Zion he must search for the Keymaker, who happens to be a prisoner of a French aristocratic machine. Neo, Trinity and Morpheus battle their way through an ultra-fast car chase scene in a freeway, the Twins and Neo even gets to kiss the mouth-watering Persephone in front of Trinity. After which they finally rescues the Keymaker, who brings them to a doorway leading to the Source who would fulfill Neo's destiny to save Zion. Sadly, as it turns out, he meets the Engineer, who designed the current upgrade of the Matrix and awfully looks like Col. Sanders from Kentucky Fried Chicken, and sadly enough the prophecy had been misleading them. The One was never to save Zion, he was to choose survivors and rebuild it from the ruckus and rubble. And as the Engineer explained, it simply enraged me to know that humanity and Zion has been no different from Sim City or even The Sims, where everytime the Matrix would be upgraded, the city is destroyed and the One would be responsible in rebuilding it. It kinda reminds me of an issue of the Incredible Hulk, where his team, Pantheon, was trying to save the planet, but their leader, Agamemnon, turned out to be a maniacal madman who says, "We topple everything over. The fun is in the building."
And what came would be the greatest annoyance to the audience in attendance, the words in the middle of the screen proclaiming "TO BE CONCLUDED"
The camera swings around the environment in 360-degree magnificence, giving you a sense of absolute space and freedom.
But the dialogue was inconsistent but fun. Once you're listening to the French machine talking about cursing in French as, "It is like wiping your ass with silk." But everything else fall downhill from there, starting with Morpheus' speech. The acting is decent and beleiveable and the graphics are simply magnificent but not flawless! The scene where Neo pauses on air before plunging headfirst into the streets was so obviously CGI, and with the flight scene, you would almost swear that it was Harry Potter on his broomstick. The names of the characters were forgivable, except for Ghost and Link, which in my opinion, were just efforts of making their names cool. And then there's the five-second cameo of Rosario Dawson, who I simply adored, but five seconds?
And most annoying of all was the pumping scene with Neo and Trinity. I completely understand that it was an integral part of the movie, showing that their relationship has gone deeper and it takes the audience a step further, and that the whole damn thing was done in theatrical artsy fart fashion. And I must admit that the switch scene between the sex scene and the Zion party was quite creative, but the whole five minutes were filled with it! You can only see so much porn in your life, and I was flabbergasted that there was such in the film.





Ring 0: Birthday

Since the release of Ring, and after America has once again exploited the Japanese film industry (the others being the entire Godzilla fare and the Akira Kurosawa films) by making a western version titled The Ring (how drolly creative…), the Philippine public has developed a fear for women with long, unruly hair and osteoporosis-infected movement; not that we've had enough of that from the Sex Bomb Dancers and the G Girls.
Oddly enough, the sequence of the Ring storyline discreetly dictates that you watch Ring2 before Ring0. However, with the unavailability of copies of the second installment, and my torturous sense of excitement, I plunged in, guiltily sliding the first disc of the prequel (NOT PIRATED - in case you're getting ideas) before the sequel.
The story starts off with a girl animatedly talking on her cell phone about the cursed video. This scene seems to cue the start of the flashback, with everyone's favorite well-dwelling white lady, Yamamura Sadako. Unfortunately (for horror-buffs and fortunately for the males of this species) this Sadako is an introvert who is at the beginning of her membership with a Tokyo theater troupe, and not the faceless ghoul. Taking place thirty years prior to the original Ring, Sadako has moved into an apartment in Tokyo where she starts anew, away from the island, and away from her origin.
During a play's dress rehearsal, the lead actress is visited by a familiar sight, at least to us: the feet of a girl, garbed in a white dress. By the end of the practice, the lead actress dies, with the all-too-familiar wide-eyed, mouth-agape, terrified look in her face, usually identified with everyone's reaction to the Mahal & Jim Boy's "love" affair. And so, as the understudy for the role, Sadako takes over her part. Along the way, she meets and falls in love with Toyama, the play's sound engineer. Meanwhile, a research on Sadako is being done by a reporter (why is there always a reporter?), which has intrigued the country since the raise and fall of her psychic mother. Since her stay in Tokyo, Sadako has sought help from a psychiatrist, telling of her visions and her dream of her mother.
However, as the reporter digs deeper into the Yamamura family secret, she discovers the unfathomable death of one of the mother's detractors during one of the exhibitions, and comparing that to the death of the lead actress, she deduces that Sadako has inherited the mantle of her mother and is responsible. This does not pass the director's psyche, who fugures it all out by himself and attempts to kill Sadako, but is murdered by Toyama who came to Sadako's aid.
During the play, the reporter enlists the help of Toyama's assistant to reveal to the public the story behind Sadako. The body of the director is then discovered and she is immediately suspected. In a confrontation that followed, the cast clubs Sadako to death. Her body is taken to the island, to her father Dr. Heihachiro, who explains that during her youth, Sadako had split into two; one takes after her father (believed to be a goblin from the sea) and has been sedated with drugs preventing growth, and the second one, had been sent to Tokyo to thwart a possible remerging. However, as it turns out, the cast had killed the wrong Sadako, who comes back to life and finally meets her pint-sized twin. They merge and what follows is a gruesome murder of the cast, including Toyama who admits his love for Sadako before finally biting the dust. Thus is the story behind the television junkie murderer.
First off, as always I admire Japanese ingenuity. Unlike American horror flicks, Ring 0 does not rely on the gulat factor coupled over with the bass-ey sound effects. The movie is utterly quiet, which gives an even more chilling feel to it, sort of like the deafening sound of silence; stillness that denies tranquility and hints that something sinister is amiss. The cinematography is fairly decent…well; honestly, an overactive camera angle wouldn't have worked for it anyway. And as for the lighting, the crew utilizes not the dark gloomy sensibility so characterized with teen slasher flicks, instead to achieve a harrowing and baleful effect they made use of blurring the background.
Another cool thing about the film is the parallelism that cunningly connects Ring0 to Ring and Ring2. Notice that Toyama and Ryuji (Asakawa's estranged husband from Ring) wore almost the same clothes, which answers the question as who was the guy in the video with his face covered by the piece of white cloth, pointing to the cliff and the sea. It's both of them. As a very important part of Sadako's past, Toyama has been embedded in her mind and in her heart, and represents her past. Ryuji, on the other hand, represents her future. Remember that in Ring, Ryuji sees Sadako in the park; since she is psychic, she sees Ryuji's rebirth and their predestined alliance, as seen in Ring2. Didn't I say I admire Japanese ingenuity?
However, there may be some things these people had overlooked. For one, the film failed to reveal the origin of the videotape, as to where and when it began and how exactly did Sadako's anguish and anger got translated to it. During the final scenes with the reporter (and her hilarious gun), Sadako comes after them from the corridor, fear should have taken over by then, but it fails since the actress wasn't as competent and as creative as the one who originally played the role. What we get is a series of absurdly funny movements, as she inches towards her victims, making her look more like a life-seized marionette than a goblin's daughter.
Overall, the film is a piece of art, not exactly as I had expected, unfortunately, but it still is remarkable. Considering that it was actually more like a biography than a distressing picture, it stimulate not fear, (I never thought I'd say this) but pity and empathy for Sadako. Much like finding out that your worst bully came from a depressingly dysfunctional family and eventually understanding why he would pound your head during recess. It has more hits than misses, though.
Oh and well, I guess I'm gonna have to start looking for someone with an original copy of Ring2.