Andy Cocker

I’d like to start by declaring that I’m a big big fan, so there maybe a slight bias in this review. It blew me away when I saw it. Action films generally get the adrenaline up, but this one was so much more. It contained all the right ingredients that I like in a movie. Science fiction, action, adventure, kung-fu, a little romance and some religious overtones. These things alone don’t necessarily guarantee a great film as the plethora of bad sci-fi demonstrates, but they help. The special effects, plot and camera work really make it stand out above the rest.

It’s easy to see why it appeals to so many people. The main character is a computer nerd who finds out that the world isn’t real, learns kung-fu, gets some cool sunnies and a coat, dodges bullets and gets the girl. Sounds like every geek’s dream. It’s unfortunate that they then try to be cool by buying long coats and jackets, thereby devaluing the coolness of the long coats in general.

Anyhoo, I came out stunned. I’m not a Keanu fan and his acting here is hardly award worthy, but it suffices. It does have a nice contrast with the rest of the actors. His main expression is a mixture of surprise and disbelief, compared with Morpheus’s self belief and zeal. Admittedly, he does get hit with a few big revelations, but a little more range of expressions wouldn’t have hurt.

The script is definitely cult. There are a few standard cliches but these are mixed with some really cool lines. This results in nearly the entire movie being a series of quotes. Morpheus even gets thunder after some of his lines.

One of the enjoyable parts while watching it for the first time was the ambiguity of the good guys at the start of the film. Trinity kills a group of cops in the first scene and Morpheus’s instructions that the only escape is down the scaffolding seems crazy and delusional. These hardly seem like the actions of the good guys. Neo has to choose a side in a war he knows nothing about. Of course, when the agents stick the bug in his belly button, Neo’s already chosen his side. He wasn’t very keen on the establishment in the first place. This is where the lack of any idea of what the film is about helped. Although there are no shades of gray here, there’s plenty of mystery at the start.

The action and special effects are ground breaking. CGI has made a lot of progress recently and this is one of the best. The rotating camera and slow motion have been imitated many times demonstrating it’s success.

One of my favourites is the end of the sequence after Morpheus is rescued where Neo sees the helicopter about to crash and knows what to do. I get shivers down my spine from the excitement, or possibly because I watch it late at night in the cold. Neo is better than most action heroes, because he gets to perform super cool moves. Because he’s the one, he can do pretty much anything, unlike a lot of action movies where the hero does something lame or unbelievable at the end of the movie. It’s much more satisfying to have the hero using different physical rules.

One of the subtler effects is the different lighting effects. The matrix usually has a green tint to it. This is just one of the many touches that make this film great. Another of these is the very sad scene where Switch and Apoch die. They were given enough character to make you care about them. It was very sad for them to get so far and then die like that.

I’ll admit that this film has a couple of rough edges. Aside from Keanu, there are a couple of plot holes that weren’t fully explained, but I’m quite happy to gloss over them. Also, the matrix idea isn’t entirely original, but it’s very close. Some reviewers complained about this a lot but it’s nearly impossible to have a completely original sci-fi plot. There’s likely to be some sort of borrowing of ideas, even if it is only subconscious. I think it’s a fantastic idea and I don’t know if they’ll be able to top it in the sequel. One other problem I have is that there was a couple of irritating exposition moments where the term EMP was explained. I know the general audience is daft and needs to have these things explained to them, but I would have thought Neo would already know these terms. I’d like to see a 1940’s film where they explain radar or laser.

“I’ve got a Messerschmitt on the radar coming in fast”
“Radar?”
“Yes, it’s this new radio detection and ranging machine that we can detect stuff far away with.”

But these are minor points. This is a fantastic film that everyone should love and if someone hates it, beat them until they’re converted. Especially those reviewers who didn’t like it when it came out (a too far fetched plot was a common complaint), yet now say it is a classic and bag the sequel for exactly the same problem.

Alas, it looks like mid-season Buffy has once again fallen into a slump. There’s a lot of things wrong with this episode, making it one of the worst this season.

Often a new character freshens up the show and gives new angles to explore. Unfortunately, they’ve added a bunch of useless whingers in the form of potential slayers or just ‘potentials’. Currently their role seems to be to eat all of Buffy’s food. I’m surprised she can feed that many people with her salary. I guess Giles must pay for some stuff. It’d be amusing to have all my friends living at my house and spending all my money.[ftn] How could I possibly get sick of that? Bludgers.

The potentials’ worth can be easily explained with a little analogy. Potentials are much like leaf pikmin. They’re slow, weak, fall over often, are easily distracted and die by the hundreds. Losing Buffy is much like losing all your flower pikmin. Most of the potentials look very young and … what’s the word I’m thinking of … useless. You can still get the job done, it’s just going to take a damn lot more of them. As for the regular gang, they may be using the potentials as a plan B, but it’d be better if they had a plan A. Hopefully, the potentials will keep dying at this rate and we’ll be rid of them soon.

Matrix. Their one good point is their reaction to Buffy’s pep talks. They know she hasn’t got a plan and she’s just talking shit. Speaking of which, when does Buffy find the time to write her speeches? Unless she gets Willow to do them but perhaps Willow’s time would be better spent on thinking up plans. No wonder they rely on the Giles so much. Despite his brief absence, Buff still assumes that the others will find the answers and the bad guy’s weakness.

The plan to kill the vampire at the end was hardly a masterstroke. “How about I fight this vampire at someone else’s place so my stuff doesn’t get trashed and I think I’ll get the potentials to watch me so they can see my awe-inspiring fighting skills. Better get Willow to make up another speech. Those potentials really lap it up.” Not a skerrick on the actual killing part, which seemed to be the place that Buffy was having the most trouble with. She’d been badly beaten by the vamp previously yet was very confident that she’d win. I’ll stab him in the eye and cut his head off. Whoa, radical. Why didn’t you do that the first time.

It’s nice to see that Buffy’s fighting skills are as consistent as ever. The minions at the beginning were easily dealt with but she was badly beaten by the nasty vamp otherwise. Bus shelters are dangerous places. Go see the Matrix. It’s also nice to see Buffy making the most of her slayer healing powers. They seem to be pretty good, even if ‘the day after Buffy still had a bruise’. It’s not as if the vamp was tougher than anything else she’s fought, she just seemed afraid of it and it took her a couple of episodes to get over this fear. There didn’t appear to be any real source of her fear though unless she’s become too reliant on staking to solve a problem and when that didn’t work, she panicked. That sounded almost plausible. I’m getting the hang of this.

Since when could Buffy initiate telepathy? Or does Willow routinely scan everyone’s mind? She should check to make sure no-one’s keeping pointless secrets. Maybe Buffy gave her one of those ‘I want to talk to you telepathically’ looks.

Maybe I’m missing something but, what’s the danger from the first? It’s not directly causing any damage and it doesn’t seem to have any immediate plans. I wouldn’t worry about it yet. They’ve now killed its lackey so they can relax a bit. I’m sure it’s brewing something for the end of season but that’s eleven episodes away. There’s one thing easy thing that would foil most of its plans. A quick check to make sure everyone is corporeal. POKE! You’re real, let’s get on with this episode. Potential 1, poke not evil. Potential 2, poke — evil. Giles, poke — and so on. It’s not that hard.

This episode wasn’t a complete loss. There was some nice Anya character development. Sometimes she shows glimpses of being a better character. Andrew the nerd kept up his end with a few choice lines. He’s carrying the entire comic burden of the show with a little help from Xander.

Footnotes

1. Irony. Don’t take it as an invitation.

I’d just like to start out by commenting on my fellow reviewer’s top ten list. No doubt everyone everwhere is around water coolers debating this polemical list as we speak, and before you all condemn her for her heretical choices and her denial of the great earlier seasons, I would like to defend a few of her choices. The musical episode was really funny and action-packed at the same time yet I agree that the final shot prevents it from being numero uno. That asylum one was good too, from what I remember. I’d love to get the choice that Buffy gets.

As for the earlier seasons, they all kinda fade into one big mush in the background. Season 1? There was that one with the .. uh … nope. Season 2? I saw 7 hours worth in a marathon but I’ve repressed the memory for health reasons so nothing there either.

As for flashbacks… it is impossible to state how cool and exciting they are. Background info, memory refreshers; I barely remember what happens between ad breaks, let alone between episodes, so those at the start of the episodes are life savers for me. “What show is this? Buffy? hmm, Buffy. I’ve heard that name before somewhere. Oh yes, thanks to these handy flashbacks it’s all flashing back to me.”

Speaking of flashbacks, there was a distinct lack of them this week. Not a good start. It’s about time they moved the Buffy/Spike storyline on a bit. That’s been dragging on and it’s about time it was resolved. The whole Andrew part was great despite the fact that he’s a loser. Killing pigs, they want to kill him, people don’t know his name, good cop/bad cop, being used as a shield. I guess only diehard Buffy fans know the significance of Buffy’s dramatic statement about the First and the rest of us will have to wait until next week for the flashbacks to refresh our memories.

This First guy didn’t make an issue over where Jonathon’s body went so I can only assume that he and the principal are in cahoots.

Please let me keep reviewing. I’m so sorry about my previous lax efforts. I don’t know what I’d do without this job. I’ve got 5 kids to feed and a mortgage to pay and my wife’s sick and we’re snowed in for the winter with no food or firewood and there’s wolf outside and I think my mother-in-law’s a zombie…

As for that reviewer last week trying to drop hints and spoilers about the rest of the season; how unprofessional. About Tara (may she stay dead for ever), this site appears to have the shooting scripts for Buffy rather than transcripts of the episodes and it has Tara written in last episode instead of Cassie. I don’t know if it’s significant and frankly I don’t care.

Following last week’s allegedly good episode, we had another strong one this week. There was some witty dialogue (which has always been one of Buffy’s strong points), some classic non-communication between the group and a good demonstration of how much they distrust each other.

I can understand why they don’t trust Spike. He’s still evilish, insane and has a thirst for blood so naturally if they need a likely suspect… In my my opinion Spike hasn’t changed much at all since getting his soul. He might spend a little time brooding over his past wrongs, but his actions still seem to be reformed. The chip gives him more trouble than his soul.

But I’m still surprised at what a well-knit group the rest of them all aren’t. After this many years of evil fighting, I would have thought that they’d all share info and get some real teamwork going. It’s not like they’re on Angel and actively betray each other but neither do they fully trust each other… I realise that without this there’d be a much shorter show each week but it still annoys me.

A better plot device to the keep them busy is this mysterious shapeshifter. The ambiguity over who’s the bad guy is more satisfying than the group’s mistrust, when you know at the end of the episode they’ll just go “Ooh why didn’t I trust you in the first place. We’re such good friends. Let’s not fight again, at least until next episode.”

Another thing that annoys me is Anya. All I’ve got to say about her is this: Why isn’t she dead yet?

Buffy has a deadly aim with that broomstick. A couple of them died as she just wiggled it around in their general direction. I guess the anonymous vampires have a larger kill zone in their chests.

Yay Giles! Yikes Giles!

It’s building up to be a good season. Hopefully it won’t loose the plot like last season after a few good initial episodes.

I must say that I agree with Shannon about this episode. It was very funny to see them so worked up over such trivial things. I liked the bad guy who didn’t know he was bad guy idea. There a few episodes where someone accidentally causes trouble and they spend a whole episode on some lame problem. Fortunately this wasn’t one of them.

The music got on my nerves after a while. I agreed with Dawn for most of the episode. Buffy’s always ‘me me me’. Someone should take her down a notch. I’m surprised that none of them use some sort of ‘globe of invunerability’ or ‘protection from spells’ spell. I guess that’d rule out too many amusing adventures.

[Longer next time, or I’ll get someone else not prone to spontaneous interstate trips to do these — Ed]

I’m impressed. I thought Buffy had run out of good episodes towards the end of last season and I wasn’t looking forward to another season. Yet they keep on coming.

Unlike Willow, whenever people haven’t arrived to pick me up at the airport my first thought is ‘They must have turned invisible and we can no longer see each other.’ This has, however, not yet proved to be the case but now that I know it can happen, I’m going to be extra careful.

The dialogue is this episode was of a better standard than of recent times. Often it just feels like stuff is happening but without any real point, but in this episode everything seemed to fit together better.

Spike, who I disliked intensely all of last season (and the one before too) was amusingly insane. I only hope that when I go insane it will be half as good as that.

It was an odd contrast switching between the horror of Willow being eaten and the comedy Dawn’s posable paralysis. It was unexpectedly disgusting watching Willow’s skin being pulled off. Usually scary monsters don’t come off as scary but this one did. I haven’t felt much empathy towards Willow for a while but her loneliness and the torment of having your skin pulled off, little by little, stuck a chord with me. And then back to Dawn’s funny posable body. Such an odd transition. And back to probably one of the most disgusting monsters in Buffy.

Unfortunately the episode was let down by a lame ending but then everything man touches becomes a mixture of good and evil.

I recently had the misfortune of reviewing the new Charman house. No, not misfortune. What’s the word? Pleasure.

It was pure enjoyment from the moment I stggered out of bed with a hangover until I fell asleep drunk again that night. The spacious rooms are combined with a concise backyard complete with a neighbourhood loon.

The guest accomodations are extensive, with backyard access, bunkbed, desk, closet and drawers. There was one small issue about the bed and the low roof. Some perverse person had placed the bed so that if one sat up in bed, one would bang their bed on the low overhead beams. This causes trouble if one sits up in the brief moments between waking and the brain turning on. I am a great believer in the use of pain as a memory enhancer and this soon ceased to be a problem.

The aforementioned low roof restricts juggling to five balls or less and the electric oven is luke warm at best. The only other concern is that there is no quick getaway from the house for those on the run. These are easily compensated for by the delicious water and the proximity to Southland. The trees in the backyard, apparently fragile, withstood much damage during filming.

Entertainment was provided by a loopy neighbour called Steve. His anctics were easily observable from the safety of the observation deck in the luxurious front room or from a reinforced shark cage on the front lawn.

I give this house 4 thumbs up.