The Matrix Resurrections: It's déjà vu all over again

The Matrix Resurrections (2021) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence and profanity

Available via: Movie theaters and HBO Max (until January 21)

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.31.21

Charles M. Schulz sagely observed that a cartoonist is “someone who has to draw the same thing day after day, without repeating himself.”

 

Lana Wachowski, on the other hand, is a writer/director who makes the same movie time after time, while repeating everything.

 

Although not entirely convinced, Thomas (Keanu Reeves) instinctively senses that much
of what Bugs (Jessica Henwick) says is true ... and that his supposed life on Earth
isn't actually what he thinks.

Great gig if you can get it, I guess.

But the utter absence of originality in this fourth Matrix installment is both tedious and disheartening: in its own way, a contributor to the death of imagination. Wachowski — abetted by co-writers David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon — apparently can make the same movie ad infinitum, and fans don’t seem to mind.

 

What was novel and mind-blowingly audacious, back in 1999, has become familiar and boring.

 

A brief prologue introduces the feisty, blue-tressed Bugs (Jessica Henwick), a “white rabbit” on a covert mission in what clearly is a dangerous Matrix rabbit hole, seeking clues that will reveal more about “The One,” who sacrificed himself for humanity 60 years earlier.

 

Following that, we drop in on Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), a wildly successful computer programmer who has made a fortune for himself, and his company, with a three-part immersive game called The Matrix Trilogy.

 

Given that Thomas — known in the “real” world as Neo — died nobly at the conclusion of 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions, his appearance here clearly indicates fresh bad behavior by the intelligent machines that control the Matrix. (As a quick recap, all of humanity unknowingly exists within a simulated reality of our familiar world, their physical bodies actually trapped within pods that suck their life force for energy.)

 

Thomas suffers from bad dreams, despite having shakily moved beyond a recent psychotic break that prompted a suicide attempt: a crisis expertly managed by his warmly sympathetic psychiatrist (Neil Patrick Harris). Worse yet, Thomas is confronted by his boss — Jonathan Groff, suitably smarmy and condescending, as Smith — and informed that they’re going to make a fresh sequel to the Matrix game trilogy: something Thomas swore he’d never do.

 

In a bit of cheeky meta, Smith explains that they have no choice; their corporate owners, Warner Bros., will do the game with or without them. 

Always Be My Maybe: No doubts here!

Always Be My Maybe (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for sexual candor, drug use and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.24.20

Much the way the Hallmark Channel has become (in)famous for its insufferably sweet Christmas movies, Netflix has been unleashing a steady supply of original romantic comedies.

When Marcus (Emerson Min) and Sasha (Miya Cech) treat themselves to a night on the
town, of course they have to participate in a cute photo booth session.

Many fall into the so-so category; some are positively dire. (I strongly caution against Love Wedding Repeat, which debuted a few weeks ago.)

Always Be My Maybe, on the other hand, is a cut above.

The premise and execution may be familiar, but the snarky script and sharp acting — with solid, character-rich performances even by minor players — makes this a thoroughly scrumptious experience. It’s a dream project by co-writers Ali Wong and Randall Park, both accomplished actors and comedians, who wanted to produce their own version of When Harry Met Sally…

With solid assistance from co-scripter Michael Golamco and director Nahnatchka Khan — a noteworthy feature film debut — Wong and Park succeeded.

Aside from the engaging core story, their film is laden with nonstop asides, retorts and one-liners — all delivered with impeccable comic timing — and droll bits of visual business, some so subtle that you’ll have to watch a second time, just to catch them all (a not-at-all painful experience). This may be a modest endeavor, but it’s quite entertaining.

It’s also a hilarious — and dead-on accurate — send-up of pretentious foodies, and the vacuous celebrity culture.

But that comes later. We meet Sasha and Marcus — initially played engagingly by Miya Cech and Emerson Min — as 12-year-old neighbors in a friendly San Francisco neighborhood. She’s a latchkey sole child of parents forever busy elsewhere: essentially an orphan. 

She therefore spends considerable time next door with the traditional family that Marcus is lucky enough to possess; he and parents Harry (James Saito) and Judy (Susan Park) dote on each other, and Sasha becomes a grateful surrogate daughter.

Khan and her scripters breeze through the next few years in montage, hitting all the usual “young love” cute points. Because, clearly, they’re meant for each other … although each is too nervous — shy, uncertain, whatever — to acknowledge or act upon the bond.

Until, at the verge of adulthood — now played by Wong and Park — they do.

As often is the case with childhood best friends, sex ruins everything.

Toy Story 4: Shopworn

Toy Story 4 (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated G, despite some scary sequences
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.21.19

The familiar faces are as welcome as longtime friends; the new characters are both adorable and — in some cases — shiveringly disturbing; the dialog remains witty and funny; the incidental encounters are amusing, clever and well-paced; the voice talent is as sharp as ever.

Bo Peep, aware of the dangers awaiting those who unwisely venture into the antique
store's main aisles, carefully leads her friends — Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Bunny, Ducky
and (on her shoulder) Giggle McDimples — behind dusty cabinets, as they try to rescue
a captured comrade.

But the driving plotline for Toy Story 4 — arguably, the reason for the film’s existence — isn’t nearly as satisfying as those of its predecessors. It feels contrived, rather than organic. The whole remains less than the sum of its well-crafted parts.

One can’t help feeling that this is a case of Slinky Dog’s tail wagging the rest of its body: a film dictated more by crass commerce than artistic justification.

2010’s Toy Story 3 gave the franchise a warm sense of closure, with now-grown Andy passing his beloved plaything companions to preschool-age Bonnie. As we’ve constantly been reminded, a toy’s noblest endeavor is to bring comfort and enchantment to an imaginative child: a mission that cannot be accomplished if tucked into a box that gets stored in an attic, like Puff the Magic Dragon sadly slipping into his cave.

Toy Story 4 similarly concludes with a different sort of torch-passing, which — depending on one’s emotional involvement with these characters — will prompt tears, bewilderment, snorts of displeasure, or a feeling of outright betrayal.

Full disclosure: I don’t approve of what scripters Andrew Stanton and Stephany Folsom — working from a story by eight (!) credited writers, including John Lasseter and Rashida Jones — have wrought.

But that comes much later.

The film begins with a prologue dating back to Andy’s era, which explains why Bo Peep (voiced by Annie Potts) was MIA in Toy Story 3. She, her three sheep — Billy, Goat and Gruff — and matching lamp were tumbled into a box with other items to be donated elsewhere, much to the dismay of Woody (Tom Hanks). Turns out he’s long nurtured a crush for Bo Peep, likely to the surprise of those who figured he and feisty Jessie (Joan Cusack) were an unspoken item.

Back in the present day, Woody is enduring insult on top of injury, since little Bonnie prefers to pin his sheriff’s badge on Jessie. Woody, in turn, has been relegated to the back reaches of a closet laden with other neglected toys: among them Melephant Brooks (Mel Brooks), Carl Reineroceros (Carl Reiner) and Chairol Burnett (Carol Burnett).

That’s a cute bit of stunt casting, but their appearances are so brief, you’ll scarcely notice.

John Wick: Should be snuffed out

John Wick (2014) • View trailer 
No stars (turkey). Rated R, for relentlessly strong, bloody and gory violence, profanity and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang

Vile, reprehensible trash.

Ineptly scripted, badly directed and atrociously acted by the name “star” — Keanu Reeves — who, as one of this tawdry turkey’s executive producers, likely is the only reason it got made in the first place.

Having reached this point in his vengeance-fueled crusade, Wick (Keanu Reeves) hasn't
killed anybody for at least 5 seconds ... so it must be time to shoot another nameless
thug in the face. Wick does that a lot, to rapidly diminishing returns.

The fact that Reeves keeps getting assignments remains a source of amazement; he can’t emote a lick. Indeed, he makes Clint Eastwood look like Laurence Olivier. Reeves lucked into two popular genre franchises awhile back, Speed and the Matrix trilogy, which granted the illusion of A-list credibility.

But everything else he has touched in the past 20 years has bombed, in most cases with ample cause. Really, now ... have you even heard of Hard Ball, Ellie Parker, Thumbsucker, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Generation Um... or Man of Tai Chi, let alone had the opportunity to actually watch them? Could anything have been worse that his laughably pathetic efforts at romantic leads, in A Walk in the Clouds or the ill-advised remake of Sweet November?

Is it perhaps time to wonder how much better both Speed and the Matrix movies might have been, with a better lead actor?

Reeves never offers anything beyond a grim scowl apparently intended to convey a wealth of emotion. Far from it; he simply seems smug and contemptuous ... and not necessarily within the parameters of the part he’s playing. It looks, sounds and feels more like a deliberate absence of acting: a smirky sense of superiority, as if he’s delighted to once again make a pot of money for doing no work whatsoever.

I’m not sure which would be worse: that Reeves knows he has scant talent, and keeps trying to fool us into believing otherwise ... or that he truly has no talent at all, but has failed to recognize as much. Still. All these years later.

He also needs to wash his hair more often. And get a better style to begin with.

Sadly, when it comes to no-talent behavior, Reeves has plenty of company in this revolting excuse for a revenge thriller. John Wick is “directed” — and I employ the term in the loosest possible sense — by David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, both of whom have impressively long Hollywood résumés ... as stunt and action coordinators.

Leitch and Stahelski apparently believed that they had learned something, operating under the guidance of other directors for the past two decades.

They believed incorrectly.

Street Kings: Dethroned

Street Kings (2008) • View trailer for Street Kings
Two stars (out of five). Rating: R, for pervasive violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.11.08
Buy DVD: Street Kings • Buy Blu-Ray: Street Kings (+ Digital Copy) [Blu-ray]


Street Kings is a movie for folks who thought the characters in 2001's Training Day were too genteel.

Santos (Amaury Nolasco, left) and Demille (John Corbett, right) are visibly
disappointed that their partner, Ludlow (Keanu Reeves), has left them nobody
to kill, in a typical scene from this tawdry cop flick. And let us remember:
These are the good guys. Don't you feel safer?

If Joseph Wambaugh has devoted his career to exploring the psyches of flawed but noble police officers, James Ellroy has been much more intrigued by the unredeemable corruption of those granted the privileges that come with a badge. Both novelists wonder whether inherently decent men can survive a polluted system with their integrity intact: Wambaugh generally holds out hope, whereas Ellroy obviously has none whatsoever.

Factor in a director — David Ayer — who views South Central Los Angeles as a war zone, and the result is quite bleak and distasteful.

But even that would be tolerable, if Ayer were willing to explore the topic with any degree of credibility. Alas, Street Kings isn't drama; it's overwrought burlesque, littered with giggling psychopaths on both sides of the equation. These characters shoot first and don't bother with the questions.

We got a taste of the Ayer/ Ellroy mentality with 2002's Dark Blue, an equally ludicrous tale of bent cops gone from bad to worse. Apparently determined to sully the LAPD badge even further, we're once again thrown onto these mean streets, expected (as viewers) to buy into macho nonsense where vile cops are so far gone that they don't even watch out for each other.

On top of which, Ayer is a lousy director. His film has no sense of time and place; the action within this story might be unfolding within hours, days or even weeks. He extracts truly dreadful and overwrought performances from just about everybody in the cast; every line of hard-bitten dialogue emerges from teeth so firmly clenched that the actors must worry about long-term lockjaw.

Indeed, Ayer manages the impossible: He makes Forest Whitaker look and sound like a bad actor.

Goodness, Whitaker even managed to escape from Vantage Point with his integrity intact, and that film's also a mess. Here, though, his line readings are shrill and hysterical, his eyes literally popping out of his skull; he looks for all the world like a junkie in desperate need of his next fix.

And we're supposed to accept Whitaker as a police captain on the rise, with visions of being anointed LAPD's master chief?

Puh-leaze.