A thread about the films that start with The Matrix (1999)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
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27 January

One good thing leads to another...

It's going to have to be back to 1999 and The Matrix (*all of the films* - not rubbishing any of them) ! pic.twitter.com/7xOryMERhh

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 28, 2018

The greatest film that I never proved to have a chance to watch in a cinema.

After The Matrix Revisited revisited, it'll be The Animatrix (2003)...

The animosity, generated by the malevolence of Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith), between Neo (Keanu Reeves) and him is tremendous.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 28, 2018

[...]

In The Matrix (1999), naturally enough, Neo lives in Room 101.

Where the principal action starts (with Trinity having been traced) and ends (Neo taking the call after he has run inside Agent Smith and exploded him) is Room 303 (Heart o' the City).

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 31, 2018

Meanwhile, there is Jimmy Brians's review, as posted on YouTube...

That Tweet's dedicated to Jimmy, @rydcook !

There's no clear view of The Oracle's door (would have to freeze-frame it). But she lives on the 11th floor - could it be Room 1111 ? !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 31, 2018

The Matrix (1999) is perfectly right :

With the potential for highly vivid dreams of those whose unusual experiences are prosaically diagnosed as such as schizo-affective disorder, massed in an array, the power would be immense !

So let's unite and sleep away all that hinders. pic.twitter.com/QYFo08I2vH

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 3, 2018

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Drowning the piglets

This is a Festival review of Upstream Color (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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25 September

This is a Festival review of Upstream Color (2013)

* Contains spoilers *

When, after the film, I encountered @mob61uk, I hesitated to elicit another one-word review - mine was, in its true sense, Awesome...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 25, 2013

We agreed that it was well made (as, at any rate, we did about The Taste of Money (2012)), and @mob61uk assented to my assertion that Amy Seimetz was excellent (as Kris).

I then propounded that, as many a film does, it treats of mental ill-health - here, the appearance that Kris had a breakdown and lost her job is belied by seeing how she had been deliberately infected, thereby rendered incapable of independent thought, and had been manipulated to cause her to obtain multiple amounts of credit, and use the equity in her home, on the pretext that she was finding the ransom for her kidnapped mother.

The financial excess, the wild behaviour, would easily have landed her with the diagnosis of bipolar disorder and with the two chunky tubs of tablets that she puts on the table in front of Jeff when first they get to talk properly, saving them, as she puts it, 3 to 4 weeks. He does not quite understand what it might matter, what the implications might be, but does not seem put off.

One level on which the film works is a bit like that of Contagion (2011), of tracing the infection back to its root, and, thereby, of validating the experience of Kris (and others), even down to the pigs. Or The Matrix (1999) - when Neo is first captured by Agent Smith and, with the help of two other Agents, a literal, living bug is put into Neo's body, getting it out is as wrenchingly disgusting as when the deceiver makes Kris vomit. Not the only similarity, because there is feeling, when Jeff is directing Kris through the building at work to where the car is, of Cypher or others directing, say, Trinity to an exit, and of the same sense that the real feels unreal.

Back further, we have such touchstones of <i>Madness in Movies</i> as Cary Grant (as Roger Thornhill) being framed in <i>North by Northwest</i> (1959) (so everyone else seems mad, and he to them, for not believing him), likewise exploiting James Stewart's weakness as Scottie in <i>Vertigo</i> (1958), or, on the other hand, Stewart being credited by a psychiatric Ingrid Bergman in <i>Spellbound</i>, or Sean Connery (Mark Rutland) looking out the psychological basis of Marnie's (Tippi Hedren's) behaviour, because he loves and believes in her.

In Upstream Color (2013), Jeff is an Ingrid or Sean to Kris. They wear each other's identical ring, and there is more than a chemistry between them, because, through each other, they can trace the pig-farmer, and, just as he seems able to project himself into places and to observe people unseen, so Kris sees him, and looks right through him.

I think that this is really a tremendous piece of work by Shane Carruth of writing, directing, producing and starring in this provocative exploration of the nature of reality, and I can see myself hoping to watch it again very soon.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

A cloudy prospect

This is a review of Cloud Atlas (2012)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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31 March

This is a review of Cloud Atlas (2012)

dear Cloud Atlas the movie, I'm going 2 c u today. please boggle my mind. it's a sunny day and 3 hrs is a long time. nae pressure.
— mark cousins (@markcousinsfilm) March 21, 2013

In his review of Cloud Atlas (2012), Philip French – not at all showing off – seems to give every example that he can think of in films where actors play more than one role. (Thankfully, he did not trouble us with Alec Guinness’ eightfold cameos as members of the d’Ascoyne family.) To French, that historical view may be important, but I agree with the person (was it he ?) who said that one might be too bothered working out which actor / actress is on screen to pay attention to other things.

For me, trying to think of Hugo Weaving’s name (by reminding myself of The Matrix (1999) and its Agent Smith) was not too much for my poor little brain (not, that is, in the way that some of the intense stretches of action were, acting as some sort of overload). Having thought of some counter-examples, I cannot think that the following Tweet is correct in alleging a significance, other than damn’ good fun on the part of cast and crew (Weaving as a nurse to put Ratched in the shade ! ), in these multiple roles (which is properly the stuff of The Hours (2002)) :

As far as I am concerned, the territory that the futuristic parts of the film occupies is that before the time of the trilogy that began with The Matrix, and whose antecedents were ‘filled’ in by the collection of short works that make up The Animatrix (2003). It may be that, with his novel Cloud Atlas (published in 2004), David Mitchell was aware of this material, and has an interest in the ethics, possibilities and implications of AI (Artificial Intelligence) – I almost cannot believe otherwise, rather than that it is a layering on the book from the Wachowskis, who co-wrote and co-directed the film with Tom Tykwer (who was also one of its three composers).

We are shown an agent from Union (Hae-Joo Chang, played by Jim Sturgess) who is seeking to recruit Sonmi-451 (Doona Bae), very much in the same way that Trinity recruits Neo in The Matrix and introduces him to Morpheus : the aim in both cases is to tell the truth about the situation that fellow ‘fabricants’ and humans, respectively, are in, when they are deluded as to the reality of their existence and purpose.

Neo, before he is ‘awoken’, is in one small pod of a huge human power-source for the machine world, but, believing otherwise because of the stimuli provided to his inert, supine body (which generate the matrix in which he seems to be alive), has to be shown the truth, which shocks him. Even more shocking, in a way, is for him to be told that he is the chosen one, just as Sonmi-451 is. In her case, the lies that fabricants such as she have been told, when unmasked, cause her to engage with Union’s cause and to seek to broadcast the truth. (One is almost reminded of the closing scene of The Matrix, where Neo is making the sort of ‘wake-up call’ that was made to him by Trinity at the other end of the film.)

In another era, that of the continuing slave trade in the States, Doona Bae is Adam Ewing’s (Sturgess’) wife Tilda, to whom he returns from the colonies a changed man because of having his life saved by Autua (David Gyasi), a black slave who had stowed away : we do not learn more of it, but Adam and Tilda intend to head eastwards to campaign for the abolition of slavery. Is the multiple-character aspect significant here ? Well, yes, Bae plays both Tilda and Sonmi-451, but, in the former role and in those times, she would probably have been no more visible as a force for change than as Adam’s supporter.

There is thus a link between the mid-nineteenth century and the mid-twenty-first century in terms of seeking freedom and helping others in that search. Dr Henry Goose (Tom Hanks) would have prevented the latter, but, as Zachry, he helps, rather than hinders, escaping a stricken place, so it would appear that any pattern is not one of direct correspondence, and, if not dictated by logistics, may be little more than fortuitous.

i saw Cloud Atlas...Now I shout it from the highest hills, even told the golden daffodils- it's a glorious multiverse of jodorovsky+Griffith
— mark cousins (@markcousinsfilm) March 21, 2013

Continued as In the clouds


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