Matrix

Excerps from Roger Ebert's Review

Neo (Keanu Reeves), is a mild-mannered software author by day, a feared hacker by night. He's recruited by a cell of cyber-rebels, led by the profound Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and the leather-clad warrior Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss).

They've made a fundamental discovery about the world: It doesn't exist. It's actually a form of Virtual Reality, designed to lull us into lives of blind obedience to the "system." We obediently go to our crummy jobs every day, little realizing, as Morpheus tells Neo, that "Matrix is the wool that has been pulled over your eyes--that you are a slave."

The rebels want to crack the framework that holds the Matrix in place, and free mankind. Morpheus believes Neo is the Messianic "One" who can lead this rebellion, which requires mind power as much as physical strength. Arrayed against them are the Agents, who look like Blues Brothers.

The movie's battles take place in Virtual Reality; the heroes' minds are plugged into the combat. (You can still get killed, though: "The body cannot live without the mind").

eXistenZ

Review by Roger Ebert

First Ted licks Allegra's bio-port. Then he says, ``That wasn't me--it was my game character!''

Allegra is the world's leading designer of virtual reality games. her newest game is named ``eXistenZ,'' and the bio-port plugs directly into the lower spine and connects to the game's control pod via an ``umbrycord.'' When you're hooked up, you can't tell the game from reality. Not even if you designed the game.

``eXistenZ'' is the new film from David Cronenberg, the Canadian director who must be a thorn in the side of the MPAA ratings board. He's always filming activities that look like sex, but don't employ any of the appurtenances associated with that pastime. In his previous film, ``Crash,'' the characters exhibited an unhealthy interest in wounds. This time it's bio-ports. And what about those ``MetaFlesh Game Pods,'' input devices which combine the attributes of a joystick, a touch pad and a kidney? They pulse with a life of their own, and Allegra holds her as if it's a baby, or a battery-powered shiatsu machine.

``eXistenZ'' arrives a few weeks after ``The Matrix,'' another science-fiction movie about characters who find themselves inside a universe created by virtual reality. ``The Matrix'' is mainstream sci-fi, but ``eXistenZ,'' written by Cronenberg, is much stranger; it creates a world where organic and inorganic are not separate states, but kind of chummy. Consider the scene where an oil-stained grease monkey implants a bio-port in the hero, using a piece of equipment that seems designed to give a lube job to a PeterBilt.

Jennifer Jason Leigh, that fearless adventurer in extreme roles, plays Allegra, whose new game is being marketed by Antenna Research. Jude Law is Ted, the company's marketing trainee. Allegra barely misses being killed during a demonstration of ``eXistenZ,'' when an assassin slips past the metal detectors at the door with a gun made of flesh and blood. Ted helps her escape, and later, when he cuts the bullet out of her shoulder, he discovers it's not a bullet but a ... hmmm, this is interesting ... a human tooth. She decides Ted needs his own bio-port, and looks for a ``country gas station.'' When she finds one (with a sign that says Country Gas Station) we assume they're inside the game, which is why she knows the station's name: She wrote it, and maybe also created its owner, named Gas (Willem Dafoe).

She knows her way around this world and isn't surprised when they're told, ``Look for a Chinese restaurant in the forest--and order the special.'' The owner rattles off the chef's daily selection, explaining that ``mutant reptiles and amphibians produce previously unknown taste sensations.'' But Ted insists on the daily special and gets a dish that's really bony. No wonder. The bones click together into a gun. And soon they visit the Trout Farm, where organic game pods are grown, and come up against Kiri Vinokur (Ian Holm), who's the owner of Cortical Systematics, a rival game firm.

Cronenberg's film is as loaded with special effects as ``The Matrix,'' but they're on a different scale. Many of his best effects are gooey, indescribable organic things, and some of the most memorable scenes involve characters eating things that surgeons handle with gloves on. He places his characters in a backwoods world that looks like it was ordered over the phone from L.L. Bean. Then he frames them with visuals where half the screen is a flat foreground that seems to push them toward us, while the other half is a diagonal sliding off alarmingly into the background.

``eXistenZ'' is likely to appeal especially to computer game players, since it's familiar with that world and speculates on its future development. Allegra explains to Ted such phenomena as ``genuine game urges''--``something your game character was born to do.'' She regards her programming handiwork with musings like, ``I've devoted five of my most passionate years to this strange little creature.'' At one point she's alarmed to discover, ``I'm locked outside my own $38 million game!'' And without the password, it looks like neither she nor anyone else can get back inside. What? You mean she didn't back up her disc

S1m0ne

Review by Roger Ebert

"Simone" tells the story of a director at the end of his rope, who inherits a mad inventor's computer program that allows him to create an actress out of thin air. She becomes a big star and the center of a media firestorm, and he's trapped: The more audiences admire her, the less he can reveal she is entirely his work.

The movie sets this dilemma within a cynical comedy about modern Hollywood; it's fitfully funny but never really takes off. Out of the corners of our eyes we glimpse the missed opportunities for some real satirical digging.

Al Pacino plays the director, Viktor Taransky, once brilliant, recently the author of a string of flops. Only his young daughter Lainey (Evan Rachel Wood) still believes in him--a little. His ex-wife, Elaine (Catherine Keener), the head of the studio, has lost all hope for his career and pulls the plug on his latest project when the temperamental star (Winona Ryder) blows up.Into the life of this desperate man comes another one, Hank Aleno (Elias Koteas), who has devised a computer program that creates "synthespians." Viktor isn't interested--but then, when the wizard leaves him the program in his will, he starts noodling around with the software and the beautiful, talented and (above all) cooperative Simone is the result. She needs, Viktor exults, no hairdresser, makeup, driver, car, trailer, stand-in or stunt woman--no, not even for the fall from the plane. She is always on time, never complains, says the words just as they're written and has no problem with nudity.

Viktor creates Simone's performance on a computer that stands all alone in the middle of an otherwise empty sound stage. The other actors in the movie are told Simone will be added to their scenes electronically. The premiere of the first movie is a huge success, and of course paparazzi from the supermarket tabloids stalk Viktor in hopes of photographing Simone. No luck.The movie was written, produced and directed by Andrew Niccol, who wrote "The Truman Show" and wrote and directed "Gattaca," both films about the interface between science and personality. "Simone" is not in that league. He wants to edge it in the direction of a Hollywood comedy, but the satire is not sharp enough and the characters, including the ex-wife, are too routine.

And there's a bigger problem: Simone always remains ... just Simone. The computer image always looks as if it's about to come to life and never does. One can imagine software bugs that recklessly import other online personalities into Simone: Matt Drudge, for example, or Harry Knowles, or Danni Ashe. One can imagine Simone suddenly being possessed by Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, and breaking up a serious dramatic scene with video-game violence. One can imagine ... well, almost anything except that she remains a well-behaved program. When Simone "appears" on a chat show, for example, it's kind of funny that she sticks to well-worn subjects like dolphins and smoking, but why not go the extra mile and put her on the Howard Stern show? Pacino, that splendid actor, does what he can to bring Viktor to life. But the screenplay's too narrow and prevents him from taking the character beyond a certain point.

Most of the big events are handled with sitcom simplicity, and the hungry gossip reporters are presented as they always are, a howling pack with no wit or originality. Even Keener, as the studio head, simply plays an ex-wife who is a studio head: There's no twist, nothing unexpected.The problem, I think, is that in aiming for too wide an audience, Niccol has made too shallow a picture. "The Truman Show" and "Gattaca" pushed their premises; "Simone" settles for the predictable. The story elements echo the sad experience of the team assembled to make "Final Fantasy," the summer of 2001 sci-fi movie that failed at the box office. That movie was made up entirely of "real" characters generated by computers, including Aki Ross, the heroine, who, all things considered, is a more intriguing woman than Simone (whose appearance is provided by the actress Rachel Roberts). The "Final Fantasy" team labored four years and achieved everything they dreamed of, and were rejected by the public. Much more interesting than a director who has unimaginable success fall into his lap.

The Game

Review by Roger Ebert in Chicago Sun Times

The opening scenes of ``The Game'' show Michael Douglas as a rich man in obsessive control of his life. The movie seems to be about how he is reduced to humility and humanity--or maybe that's just a trick on him. The movie is like a control freak's worst nightmare. The Douglas character, named Nicholas Van Orton, is surrounded by employees who are almost paralyzed by his rigid demands on them. ``I have an Elizabeth on line three,'' says one secretary, and then a second later adds, ``Your wife, sir.'' ``I know,'' he says coldly. We have the feeling that if the second secretary had not spoken, he would have replied, ``Elizabeth who?'' His underlings are in no-win situations. It is, in fact, his ex-wife; at age 48, Van Orton lives alone in the vast mansion where his father committed suicide at the same age. His birthday evening consists of eating a cheeseburger served on a silver tray and watching CNN.

Van Orton's younger brother Conrad (Sean Penn) visits him and announces a birthday present: ``The Game,'' which is ``sort of an experiential Book of the Month Club.'' Operated by a shadowy outfit named Consumer Recreation Services, the Game never quite declares its rules or objectives, but soon Van Orton finds himself in its grasp, and his orderly life has become unmanageable. ``It will make your life fun again,'' he is promised, but that's not quite how he sees it, as a functionary (James Rebhorn) leads him through the signup process.

Soon everything starts to fall apart. His pen leaks. His briefcase won't open. Wine is spilled on him in a restaurant. He is trapped in an elevator. The level of chaos rises. He finds himself blackmailed, his bank accounts are emptied, he wanders like a homeless man, he is trapped inside a cab sinking in a bay, he is left for dead in Mexico.

Of course many of the physical details of what happens to him are implausible or even impossible, but so what? The events are believable in the sense that events can be believed in a nightmare: You can hardly worry about how a horror has been engineered when you're trapped inside it.

The mounting campaign of conspiratorial persecution is greeted by Van Orton with his usual style of cold contempt and detachment: He knows all the angles, he thinks, and has foreseen all the pitfalls, and can predict all the permutations. But he finds he is totally wrong. Even those few people he thinks he can trust (including a waitress played by Deborah Kara Unger--or is she a waitress?) may be double agents. There is even the possibility that the Game is a front for a well-planned conspiracy to steal his millions. Michael Douglas, who is superb at playing men of power (remember his Oscar-winning turn as Gordon Gekko in ``Wall Street'') is reduced to a stumbling, desperate man on the run (remember his unemployed engineer in ``Falling Down'').

``The Game,'' written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, is David Fincher's first film since ``Seven,'' and projects the same sense of events being controlled by invisible manipulation. This time, though, there's an additional element: Van Orton is being broken down and reassembled like the victim of some cosmic EST program. And it is unclear, to him and to us, whether the Game is on the level of a fraud, or perhaps spinning out of control.

The movie's thriller elements are given an additional gloss by the skill of the technical credits, and the wicked wit of the dialogue. When Van Orton's brother asks, ``Don't you think of me anymore?'' he shoots back, ``Not since family week at rehab.'' And when his ex-wife asks if he had a nice birthday, he answers, ``Does Rose Kennedy have a black dress?'' The film's dark look, its preference for shadows, recalls ``Seven'' and also Fincher's ``Alien 3.'' The big screen reveals secrets and details in dark corners; on video, they may disappear into the murk. Like ``Seven,'' the plotting is ingenious and intelligent, and although we think we know the arc of the film (egotist is reduced to greater humility and understanding of himself), it doesn't progress in a docile, predictable way; for one thing, there is the real possibility that the Game is not an ego-reduction program, but a death plot.

Douglas is the right actor for the role. He can play smart, he can play cold, and he can play angry. He is also subtle enough that he never arrives at an emotional plateau before the film does, and never overplays the process of his inner change. Indeed, one of the refreshing things about the film is that it stays true to its paranoid vision right up until what seems like the very end--and then beyond it, so that by the time the real ending arrives, it's not the payoff and release as much as a final macabre twist of the knife.

Solaris

simplified excerpts from David Edelstein's ( in slate ? ) review









Is she or isn't she?

The movie is wondrously strange.

Solaris is Steven Soderbergh's ravishing lament for lost love. Solaris is essentially a solemn, splintered meditation on lost love: a movie about personal space, in space.

Steven Soderbergh's new James Cameron-produced sci-fi picture is the second adaptation of a 1961 novel by the prolific Polish writer Stanislaw Lem.

A psychologist named Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) sometime in the future, voyages to a station orbiting a distant, purplish planet (Solaris) in response to a desperate summons from a researcher and old friend. And when he reaches the near-deserted station, he comes face to face with his dead wife, Rheya (Natascha McElhone), alive and lively.

What is this new Rheya, exactly? A vision? A ghost? Is she matter or mind? And what are the other beings who scuttle around the bloodstained corridors, among them Gibarian's little son? Answers aren't forthcoming from the two other scientists on board, the etherized, cryptic Snow (Jeremy Davies)—"I could tell you what's happening but I don't know if that would tell you what's happening"—or the reclusive, paranoid Gordon (Viola Davis). Even the entities themselves profess little idea how they got to this place. They obviously emanate from the living oceans of Solaris, which seem to be reaching out to the people on the orbiting station with eellike tendrils of vapor. But does the planet have designs on them, for good or ill? Or is it just trying blindly to fill a sort of spiritual vacuum?

Since the novel's publication (oddly, the English version, from 1970, was translated from the French, not the Polish), the themes and devices of Solaris have turned up in countless sci-fi scenarios, from sundry Star Trek plots to Michael Crichton's novel Sphere (made in 1998 into an inert Barry Levinson picture) to its first cinematic adaptation, in 1972, by the Russian Andrei Tarkovsky.

Soderbergh's Solaris is regarded as cinematic Valium. But I got on the movie's wavelength and stayed there. To me, it's like listening to a harrowing, minor-key piece of chamber music—a threnody for the dead set against a planet that's like an abstract painting of woe.

Soderbergh took from Lem's descriptions of Solaris' surface, of the palpable yearning under the movement of the planet's mists:

On the fifteenth day … I woke up earlier than usual, exhausted by the previous
night's dreams. All my limbs were numbed, as if from the effects of a powerful
narcotic. The first rays of the red sun shone through the window, a blanket of
red flame rippled over the ocean, and I realized that the vast expanse which had
not been disturbed by the slightest movement in the past four days was beginning
to stir. The dark ocean was abruptly covered by a thin veil of mist which seemed
at the same time to have a very palpable consistency. Here and there the mist
shook, and tremors spread out to the horizon in all directions. Now the ocean
disappeared altogether beneath thick, corrugated membranes with pink swellings
and pearly depressions, and these strange waves suspended above the ocean
swirled suddenly and coalesced into great balls of blue-green foam. A tempest of
wind hurled them upwards to the height of the Station, and wherever I looked,
immense membranous wings were soaring in the red sky … as if the ocean were
mutating, or shedding an old scaly skin. … Wings of foam planed all around me,
only a few yards from the window, and one swooped to rub against the window pane
like a silken scarf. As the ocean went on giving birth to these fantastic birds,
the first flights were already dissipating high above, decomposing at their
zenith into transparent filaments

Matching George Clooney with Natascha McElhone was a glorious idea. He's dark Irish and impudently mortal; she's of the fair, rare, chiseled variety; but they're both in the same Hibernian key. Her face, with its sharp planes, is angular and rather mysterious. Even when Soderbergh flashes back to their first meeting—when she is unambiguously alive—there is something vital hidden away, from herself as well as her suitor. So their gropings onboard the ship become an extension of their earthly relationship: She was a phantom before she was a phantom.

There isn't a lot of extraneous dialogue in Solaris­—the vacuum of space sucks the small talk out of the air—and most of the movie is Clooney staring into space. For real. In flashback, the fate of the real Rheya turns on a decision that doesn't get the dramatic weight it deserves. And the timeline in the movie's last 10 minutes is confusing, as if Soderbergh simply recycled early footage: Is it fantasy, flashback, or flash-forward? Or does Soderbergh think there's no difference?

He might not, and that's mostly a good thing. He shoots fluid sequences, but he's not afraid to nip and tuck them, to find a flashback or a flash-forward that can rupture an instant and thereby give it infinite resonance.

Soderbergh in Solaris can bring the past literally to life: a past that can't be buried or cast off, that is destined to rise and rise again like the curly wisps of vapor from the oceans of Solaris.