It ends here. Let’s hope. The finisher to the Matrix trilogy begins where we last left off from “Reloaded”. Now the Sentinels are making their way into Xion faster and faster and the crew are looking for a way to seal off their exit. Meanwhile Neo has awoken from his coma and is unaware of the traitor in their ranks. You’ll have to forgive me for not finishing, it gets a little confusing from there. But nonetheless you have to wonder why the classic “The Matrix” was so poorly received when the sequels made its way into theaters years later. Was The Matrix, after all, just a one trick pony? Just a fad? Or was it the Wachowski Brothers’ plan to have the sequels fail? Maybe the Wachoski’s didn’t give their all in the sequel story arcs, or is it all a trick of the architect?
Tag Archives: Adventure
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Twas once a skeptic to the quality of the film now am a believer that Disney can still trot out quality films. My Mea Culpa was to assume that even with such a cast as Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Depp aboard that this would be a stinker, but once more I was wrong. Gore Verbinski who did an excellent directing job in the recent thriller “The Ring” conveys the true spirit of swashbuckling films in “Pirates of the Caribbean”, a film that is very reminiscent of the old Errol Flynn Pirate epics that stunned audiences in the early 1900’s in its truest essence; the swashbuckling film genre is dead only recently being brought to the screen with the bland “Cutthroat Island” a film that had style but little substance.
A Man Apart (2003)
Diesel stars as Sean Vetter a DEA agent who with his friend Demetrius Hicks are in the midst of taking down a brutal drug cartel led by Memo Lucera (Geno Silva); after busting him and taking down the crime ring that they’ve spent seven years investigating, Sean finally can take some off-time. Enter wife Stacy, the loving beautiful wife to the character of Sean. By now, if you haven’t seen the movie, you can guess what will happen next, and do I even have to tell you anything else besides the fact that she becomes a motivation for vengeance? Watch the trailer and you won’t even have to see the movie. Simply because the plot twist is predictable and formula.
Open Range (2003)
Based on the novel “The Open Range Men” by Lauran Paine, Charley is a free ranger along with his superior whom he calls boss; the two friends are teamed with two other young employees and live a simple life out on the open range as nomads herding cows for a living until one of the young employees is badly beaten and imprisoned in a town. When Charley and Boss go to retrieve him they come across a crooked Marshall and town mayor and upon their arrival to their campground, they’re soon being watched and stalked by masked men upon their return to their home, but when Charley and boss decide to take it upon themselves to stop the stalkers, they return to their home ravaged beyond belief and their friends hurt badly.
Hey Arnold! The Movie (2002)
I’m a fan of the “Hey Arnold!” television animated series. I grew up with it. It’s one of Nickelodeon’s banner television shows about growing up. Sadly, what we see in “the movie,” is just a glorified three part TV special that’s mashed in to a movie. And it’s a god awful closer for such a great show. What the animated series thrived on was the large cast of magnetic characters from the neighborhood, but this fails to bring anything truly magnetic to audiences to watch. “Hey Arnold! The Movie” is a half-assed effort that does no justice all around to a truly entertaining cartoon. What many of the executives at Nickelodeon do with their products when making them into feature films is completely take away what made the cartoon so likable to begin with.
Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat (2003)
We received an onslaught of merchandising and advertising once this bomb was released, and the cat in the hat was literally everywhere you looked, an obvious sign of studios spending too much money on a crappy film, when it could have been spent on a better film. The filmmakers don’t call it “The Cat in the Hat”, they call it “Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat”, just to assure everyone this definitely is the book their children and their children’s children read. This is not, however, Dr. Seuss. It’s an embarrassment.
Old School (2003)
What would happen if the guys from “Animal House” grew up into men with families and jobs but refused to grow up? Such is the rhetorical question posed to the audience in this charming frat house comedy intended for the young male audiences. Mitch Frank and Beanie are men who refuse to grow up and are terrified at the notion of moving forward in life and can’t deny the men they used to be despite the fact their wives try to change them into the men they used to be. Will Ferrell gives a hilarious yet subdued performance as Frank, once known as “Frank the Tank”; we never learn about their past exploits in college and whatnot, but somehow we get the sense of their past persona’s and it all comes out in the open as they open up a fake fraternity so Mitch can stay in his home due to new college campus laws.