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| A- A- A- | |
| Review by Xibo | Date seen: May 24, 2003 |
| Viewing Location: West 34th St., NYC | Grade: A- |
| Summary: Can't wait for the Sane Editor's Cut | |
| Great special effects, great fight scenes, very exciting edge-of-the-seat movie. Also lots of great tunes as well. The shots of Zion were pretty impressive. And the wirework! Good lord, it was really over the top, and sometimes a bit too ridiculous. But visually the movie was stunning, breathtaking, and definitely original. My main complaint with the movie was a lack of proper editing. At 2.5 hours, there was 1.75 hours of real movie here, and 45 minutes of filler... I mean christ, we saw Trinity's entire fight scene twice. | |
| A+ A+ A+ | |
| Review by Finrod | Date seen: May 14, 2003 |
| Viewing Location: Atlanta, Parkway Pointe 15 | Grade: A+ |
| Summary: A more than worthy sequel | |
| When I heard that they were making not one, but two sequels to The Matrix, I was somewhat worried that it would end up like Dune, where the first book is a classic and the rest just kind of trail off from there. Fortunately, I was wrong. Of course, since they made the 2nd and 3rd at the same time, you just had to know that this one would end with a cliffhanger and a lot of things unexplained. The action sequences are unparalleled by anything made to date, and I didn't even mind the 'rave' scene in Zion that a number of people have complained about. To my mind, this one was actually a bit better than the original, because they had the original to build on, and they did a great job of it. See this one in the theater, or else you'll be kicking yourself that you didn't.
Oh, and to everyone that complains that they didn't understand it: hell, if I had actually understood everything in it, I would have been severely disappointed. And for those of you on crack that think the first one was lots better: what, you really got off on all the 'is he the one?' 'am I the one?' 'i'm not the one' 'you are the one' 'he is the one' that filled the first movie? C'mon. | |
| D D D | |
| Review by smeehrrr | Date seen: May 14, 2003 |
| Viewing Location: Bellevue, WA | Grade: D |
| Summary: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE | |
| This movie has a rare quality - the more I think about it, the less I like it. I posted a longish review on my livejournal, so I'm just going to copy that here, because I'm lazy.
The Dialog Here is all the dialog you will hear in this film: "The thing that you believe you know is not the thing that you know, but merely the belief in the thing you know that cannot actually be known but merely believed in." There's TWO FUCKING HOURS of this stuff. Sure, there was a certain amount of this shit in the first movie, but it was at least tolerable. The sequel is a non-stop hit parade of pseudo-intellectual gibberish. For a minute I was amazed that the actors could be delivering this material with a straight face, then I remembered that most of them aren't very good actors.
The Story First of all, be aware that this is only half a movie. It ends practically in mid-sentence. This is actually not a bad thing, because it gives you the opportunity to not waste another two hours. The part of the story that we get could have come out of any fantasy novel - it's essentially a series of meaningless quests designed to get the characters to some poorly understood goal. But the goal that I understand is not really the goal, but merely the understanding of the understanding of the goal. We meet or re-meet a bunch of characters, none of whom is particularly interesting. There's a surprising amount of crude sexual material, some of which I think was supposed to be funny. Mostly the plot is just an excuse to move us from one special effects sequence to the next. The script lacks the allegory and depth of the previous film. It's just your standard sci-fi shlock. Oh, and there's some really, Really, REALLY stupid shit that happens towards the end.
The Action This fell surpisingly flat. I'm not sure if the original film raised the bar enough that we're now accustomed to it, or if it was just poorly executed. Most of the action scenes were just kind of ho-hum. The sequence on the freeway looks incredibly expensive, which apparently it was. So at least they didn't spend a lot of money and end up with something that looked cheap.
The Effects For some reason they decided to do a number of the action sequences using a whole shitload of human-figure computer animation. The computer generated Neo doesn't look very much like the real Neo. The computer generated agents don't look much like real agents. I don't know why they made this choice, it's not like the shots they got were so groundbreaking that they absolutely had to be done this way. It distracted my attention from action scenes that were already not doing a great job of holding my attention.
The Conclusion Stay home and watch The Matrix on DVD. It is, in every single possible way, a much better film than the sequel. | |
| D+ D+ D+ | |
| Review by Jigen | Date seen: May 18, 2003 |
| Viewing Location: Burlington, WA | Grade: D+ |
| Summary: Soooo Dissapointed | |
| I'd like to call this Lucasization. Take an established franchise (yes, even after one movie the Matrix was a franchise), try to explain the crap out of everything interesting, mysterious, or spiritual, and throw in extra gobs of bad CG work. Just watch the dollars fly in! | |
| A- A- A- | |
| Review by hughjtoad | Date seen: May 20, 2003 |
| Viewing Location: giant googleplex in silicon valley | Grade: A- |
| Summary: fully satisfied | |
| I didn't have the highest of expectations for this sequel, but the ones I did have were more than satisfied. In the reviews I'd seen the reviewers glossed over the actual science-fiction part of the movie, which, as suspension-of-disbeliefy as it is, is really what made this movie interesting to me. There was nothing as startling in this one as in the first from a special effects point of view, although there were some really excellent things (in particular the last Neo-flying sequence I really liked). | |
| B B B | |
| Review by Princess | Date seen: May 25, 2003 |
| Viewing Location: Theater | Grade: B |
| Summary: Fight. Fight. Talk. Argue. Fight. Bad plot. More fighting. | |
| Okay, I will go straight to the directors for this one. They figured, "Eh people liked the first Matrix because of the action. Let's dedicate the whole movie to fighting." I'm sorry, this was not a good choice. A plot would have been nice. But the thing about the fighting is, instead of like 1 or 2 really good fights, they had like 2329847895 tiny, worthless, bad effect fights. Some of the actors didn't even know what the big words they were using were. Which, was quite amusing. Whatever, overall, it could have been a shit of a lot better, but I wasn't too dissapointed, because, I guess I didn't expect much in the first place. Keanu Reeves? Oh man is he good looking though. | |
| A A A | |
| Review by quadgrande | Date seen: June 29, 2003 |
| Viewing Location: TImes Square AMC | Grade: A |
| Summary: The more I think about it, the more I like it | |
| This movie drove me to Google to look up references and possibilities more than any movie I can remember. As an example, I particularly enjoyed the "Merovingian", which in my brief period of research, turned out to be a line of Frankish kings who, as the legend tells, was the keeper the true Holy Grail (Mary Magdalene and proof that Jesus was only a man). One instantly hates this obnoxious frenchman and longs for the day of confrontation. This movie is all candy and crumbs thrown to a hungry audience until the Architect scene. This scene contains the most dense dialog I have ever heard, and basically redefines the matrix for all of us. If you were daydreaming during this scene, I suggest you google it yourself. It is surprising and can become the equivalent of actually seeing the entire movie again just by reading through it. I especially enjoyed the line "If I were you, I would 'hope' we don't meet again...". There are numerous questions to be answered, such as the Agent Smith phenomenon, Neo's coma, and how many matrices there may be. Just like "The Empire Strikes Back", I think we're all mad at the machine world's victory over the good guys and are subconciously critical. Hopefully Revolutions will top Jedi, and if the entire movie is just Neo kicking the Architect and that French guy's ass, it will be. Like wiping your ass with silk. | |
"I should put quotes here."