What are you watching?

[Helikaon]

About to watch The Nice Guys for the first time. I've heard a lot of great things about this movie over the years, kinda shocked I've never seen it until tonight!

[NateDog]

About to watch The Nice Guys for the first time. I've heard a lot of great things about this movie over the years, kinda shocked I've never seen it until tonight!

I fucking LOVE The Nice Guys. One of Gosling's best performances. Enjoy!

[Helikaon]

About to watch The Nice Guys for the first time. I've heard a lot of great things about this movie over the years, kinda shocked I've never seen it until tonight!

I fucking LOVE The Nice Guys. One of Gosling's best performances. Enjoy!

Really enjoyed it! Gosling was hilarious, and it reminded me that he's currently shooting a fucking Star Wars movie, lmao.

Late night study session for me, taking a break to get back to Cowboy Bebop as I'm starting to get burned out a little.

[Dirty Duck]

Watched the first part of Stranger Things 5. The first episode had me a bit worried with some of the decisions but in the end I really enjoyed it, much as I have with the whole show. I do have some feelings about the representation of some stuff from S1 and overuse of its monster and whatnot but I think to enjoy Stranger Things you have to accept that its sequels, much like many 80s franchises, have never been concerned with the purity of the original. Looking forward to part 2. It'll be weird when it's over-I think it might be the only big show I've watched as it released...off the top of my head at least.

[NateDog]

I don't think I'll be able to bring myself to watch it. Lost all interest and them leading with "ooh all of our episodes are dragged out and unnecessarily long!!!" doesn't enthuse me.

[Dirty Duck]

I don't think I'll be able to bring myself to watch it. Lost all interest and them leading with "ooh all of our episodes are dragged out and unnecessarily long!!!" doesn't enthuse me.

Yeah the runtime on some of them is absurd. I remember when Netflix's unshackled approach to runtimes was novel and almost exciting. Now it just feels like a lack of restraint or need to consider pacing lmao

[Dirty Duck]

Watched Frankenhooker (1990) last night at a local cinema's bar. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

[Dirty Duck]

I don't know what compelled me to do so, but I watched The Matrix: Resurrections (Matrix 4) last night. Not entirely sure what to expect, except badness. But you know what? Wasn't bad. It was actually pretty fun, and at this point Lana Wachowski seemed to be focused on having fun with it rather than entirely making some social commentary. It's in there, for sure, and it's just a bit heavy-handed with it right at the beginning, but then it's just about doing cool Matrix shit. I could really tell that she's had a bunch of unfinished ideas from the original trilogy that she wanted to flesh out. She didn't fully succeed, there's like a dozen concepts introduced that went nowhere and were barely explained despite having a runtime of 2 Hours 30 Minutes, but that's all very par for the course with Matrix movies.

They jump the shark a little around the halfway mark though (they actually jump like 3 sharks at once), make no mistake, and as the second hour of the film passed I was like "come on, wrap it the fuck up, Lana" but it was fun to see Keanu do his thing. The man does not age, I swear. Keanu Reeves is a great example of a human being that has visibly done very few drugs.

Gotta say though, there was no green tinting in the new one. The green tint was a criticism of the original trilogy, but now without it, it just feels wrong. At this point it's kind of necessary, the film overall was too colorful for a Matrix movie.

Matrix super-fan here.  Without going too much into my thoughts on the fourth movie (dislike it but it has redeeming qualities) - the absence of the green tint wasn't a mistake, per se.  

Spoiler:

In the original trilogy, the green tint differentiated the Matrix from reality - along with a severe absence of the color blue beyond the pills.  That is, of course, until the end of the third movie.  With The Truce in effect, and Sati's influence, the System has its first blue sunrise (note Trinity's reaction to seeing the sky in the real world - she had never seen a blue sky in her entire life.  No living human had!) - and the green tint is absent.

In The Matrix Online, which took place after the third movie and is mostly upheld by the fourth (only one line contradicts) - the green tint came back, but would be almost invisible whenever Sati controlled the sky, which was typically once a week.  Some people called these, "Sati-days".   

That said, there were incidents where the sky's color changed significantly.  In one short story arc - A Piece of Blue Sky - some absolute nutjobs tried to revert every awakened human to ignorance, as though they had taken the blue pill.  As they attempted this, they transformed the sky to be a vibrant blue - just like in the new movie!  The Analyst's Matrix was designed to keep more humans subservient than The Architect's efforts.  As such - green tint gone, blue saturation up.  I dislike the aesthetic, to be sure, but it does mesh with the deep lore.

Now, what really bakes my noodle - in the movie's many, many flashback sequences, we see Trinity's death twice.  Once, it appears as it did in Revolutions. The second - it has the green tint.  Even though it happened in the Real World.  What the hell THAT means?  I have no idea.  The implications are huge, and it's almost literally blink and you miss it.

So I watched Matrix Resurrections a couple weeks ago (my grand ideas of playing the games first and seeing it in a cinema got dashed as film choices in my girlfriends house is often left to fate as we spin a wheel with a selection of films on that everyone has put in and the one it lands on has to be watched-no vetoes. My girlfriend hated this film on her first watch so she wasn't too pleased). I have to say it was a little awkward...but I feel like it had a lot of heart, especially for a legacy sequel, and I have a good deal of respect for it. I'm gonna wax lyrical for a bit.

The Analyst works as a great representation of the evolution of our real-world internet and tech. He is a lot 'lamer' than The Architect, the internet's status as this respectable, unknowable monolith made up of 'locations' fixed in a somewhat objective geography that netizens can 'visit' has given way to self-perpetuating environments that are made for every individual user based on what the environment has gleaned about them, whether they like it or not. Despite the fact that these environments are presented under the guise of socialising they have no interest of promoting genuine human connection and instead are often used as tools to keep us complacent and stuck in the feedback loops we’re already in. The coffee shop, Simulatte (lmao), is the physical manifestation of this design philosophy. It creates the illusion of an environment made to meet, but said illusion is its entire purpose. It keeps Neo and Trinity close enough to hope for human connection but uses it as a carrot on a stick. The yearning for something real stops them from seeing how fake it all is. The sheer amount of blue in The Analyst’s immediate proximity is nice too, the brazen nature of this new Matrix that almost flaunts what the previous version worked so hard to obscure-the desire to keep you there, to placate you, to deny reality.

I was initially disappointed at the lack of a meaningful soundtrack and, more importantly, of steezy fits. Despite characters having their same iconic silhouettes they seemed flat, and while there was more colour across the board in their wardrobe the clothes were made of fabric that visually lacked punch, edge, and any sort of sightly sheen. At first I thought that this was some aspect of costume design that had dropped the ball. But after thinking on it I feel as if it ties in nicely to the themes the film is playing with about the assimilation of culture by the corporate machine. The Matrix and the Matrix have divorced what they are exploiting from the counterculture that once gave it power and a voice. The seedy underground raves and shining leather that guided and empowered Neo are replaced with soulless corporate coffee shops and a cast of cotton-blend costumes. It's almost as if Neo has been made to 'grow out of it' and is now living the mature life expected of an upstanding member of society. That which set him on the path to revolution is something for the young, and now that he is old (something the new Matrix works overtime to portray him as to others) it is not his to yield. This narrative is one many people may have had thrust upon them in the years since the original trilogy, expected to abandon the fashions and lifestyles associated with any kind of radical ideas once they hit a marker society deems as the time to straighten up and fly right.

The meta-elements were sometimes genius, and when they weren’t they were at the very least fun. “Why use old code to create something new?” Is such a strong opening line to a legacy sequel that dares to try and do something different. The fact that the in-universe answer to the line is the new Morpheus, a character that is so displeasing to witness due to his status as not-Laurence Fishburne, who was created to try and reignite the consciousness of an aged Neo who has forgotten what he once was woken up to (stay woke, Neo!). New Morpheus is the reification of Resurrections. Something new made from something old that is (almost disturbingly) not said old thing, but still exists to remind us of the lessons the old thing taught that the passage of time (and advancements in corporate greed) have so effectively eroded. The fact that Neo made the new Morpheus as a way to remind himself paints a picture of a Lana Wachowski who's found herself at the same place she was when her and her sister first created the original film-time and success has replaced small offices with big offices but it is all too easy to leave behind the causes and lessons that once helped us break out of the systems that kept us down, and fall straight back into those very same systems.

While new Morpheus paid off for me due to the way his recasting worked with the film’s story and themes…new Agent Smith was, unfortunately, just a real disappointment. I could think up no purposeful point to the somewhat deflated feeling I had when watching someone who wasn’t Hugo Weaving carry on the rivalry with Neo. This is supported by the fact that Weaving's absence was purely due to a clash of schedules-which makes it that much sadder! Regardless, I did get great satisfaction in the brief exploration of Smith as the 0 to Neo’s 1, making up a binary of opposition wherein Smith is the negative and Neo is the affirmation. After Reloaded I really thought this would be something discussed in Revolutions and when that film didn’t touch on it I worried I’d thought too hard about it (Thankfully there is now proof I thought about it just the right amount!). The film's second act wherein we see how the society of those free of the Matrix has progressed was also a little bit too meandering. It still had its moments but I think pound for pound it's the segment with the least interesting stuff.

Now most of this post has been me talking about the ways the film baked its societal commentary in in ways that I enjoyed, but I have to say beyond all of that I did also just appreciate the sheer sincerity of the actual plot. After all of the meta-reflection on being a cash-grabbing Matrix sequel and the somewhat stunted advancements of the "real world" story, Resurrections is about loving each other and how that is vital for our survival in the face of adversity. The scene where the Analyst throws everything he has at them to stop Neo and Trinity touching was a great moment and the satisfaction when lovers reunited felt very earned. Making Trinity's faith in Neo essential to his becoming The One and having Neo return that favour and then some here feels like a beautiful addendum to the messages of the original trilogy. It's all for the ones we love, and it's all thanks to the ones we love. The fact Wachowski only made a new Matrix film due to the death of her parents and the fact she couldn't save them but she could save Neo and Trinity feels like art at its purest. It's wish fulfilment, it's catharsis, it's important. It's not perfect...but it's human.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️★★★

(My girlfriend was also swayed from her original position as a hater who wouldn't let us watch it #ResurrectionsGangRiseUp)

[NateDog]

Watched A Muppets Christmas Carol last night as has become tradition. Not sure if it was tradition when I was a child but I know I loved it then (alongside anything else Muppets related).

[starschwar]

@Dirty Duck I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm still let down by it, but I'll say that anything to do with Trinity and Neo as characters is well done.