파반느 Pavane - 2026

Taken from the novel Pavane for a dead princess and same title composition by Ravel. This review is conflicted, because it’s a good film, full of feeling, but it made me cry. Some might call it bittersweet. 

Story in details:

It’s about three people, not just two. Mi-jeong is a young woman working in the storeroom of a huge store; since she was a child she kept her head down and lived in the shadow, doing what she had to do away from people. She’s considered ugly because she doesn’t wear make up or fashion clothes (which too often is the difference between popular and not), she’d rather be ignored, but Gyeong-rok doesn’t.

At first he feels sorry for her, because she works a lot and nobody helps her, and she’s always alone. He starts helping her sometimes, talking to her. She loves classical music, she’s the one that explains the title, the musical piece for pianoforte by Ravel. He loves to dance and she encourages him. He didn’t like her at first glance, but he finds that with her he feels real and like he can be himself.

They spend a lot of time together, they talk and lauh, but when he goes to a dance school or whatever, she feels a bit like he doesn’t really need her. 

She found it surprising how easy it was to love him, she felt precious and happy, but also confused by all those emotions, and when she realized she kept thinking of him all day long, that he was her first and every thought, she left.

It had become painful to feel that he could live and be happy with his dance friends without her; she goes away but leaves him a letter to explain this reasoning and tell him that she loves him. 

The third person important to the story is Yo-han; he works with Gyeong-rok and he’s the son of the boss, but his mom was his mistress not his wife, and he left her and some time later she killed herself.

He always acts confident and happy, but he has great pain inside. Nobody knows it until he tries to kill himself.

After weeks alone, Gyeong-rok is given Mi-jeong’s address by a coworker and writes her a letter. He misses her and they spend a day together. Before going away, he tells her he loves her and doesn’t want to stay away, he wants to meet her again, and they set another date; she will wait all day for him but he will never show up.

Some time later, Yo-han writes a book and speaks on the radio about it. He says the book is about two friends that he mete a few years before, when he didn’t know how to live or if it was at all worth it to do it. He says he was full of doubts and questions, but then he met them and they gave him hope.

He says they helped him grow up. He says they’re fine, because youth is eternal, an illusion that will last forever.

His book’s last chapter explains how she waited but he never showed up, because his bus crashed into a big truck, and even when he could walk again his memoires were never the same again, and it was difficult for him to go back to his normal life…  Yo-han sent Mi-jeong a copy, and she reads it, and we see the truth. He chose a different finale, but the truth is: Gyenog-rok died that night on the bus. 

Yo-han says that love is imagination and survives in it.

Now Yo-han and Mi-jeong live better lives, they feel better with themselves and are still friends. He’s more balanced, she doesn’t avoid everyone but smiles at people she knows, and she feels that the light he gave her is still inside her.

So that’s what I meant. Sad, but also bittersweet, because there was understanding and love, and both Mi-jeong and Yo-han are better off now than they were before. The bit at the end, when she goes to see him play the drums, and she smiles at him and also at a woman, is a lovely scene.

Google ai says:

Ko Ah-sung (or Go A-sung) is Mi-jung

Moon Sang-min is Kyung-rok

Byun Yo-han is Yo-han

ITA Pavana

The half of it - 2020

It was ok, and it was unusual. My review is positive, after all: it’s rather slow and a little bit boring at times, but it leaves you well, and when you’ll think back on it some day it will give you a sense of ‘yeah, that was life, and growing up, and finding something important to keep always inside you’.

I say, I’m glad I watched it. This is not so much about the love story, they just move around it. Yes, it is a kind of Cyrano story, and yet the love story is just a part of it, a moment in their lives, but what’s really important here is the friendship that grows between Ellie and Paul, but most of all how it is to find someone who understands you and who seems to speak to your soul, like Ellie and Aster. I really liked that none of them formed a couple, and also that there was no clearly bad guy in here: the worst thing someone did was to mock Ellie’s name because she’s Chinese, her name is Ellie Chu and a guy yelled “chugga chugga chu chu” everytime he saw her. Childish and very annoying because it refers to her being the only Chinese girl around there, but not something that breaks bones or leaves emotional scars. 

The reason I liked that there were no couples at the end is because it would have changed it, that would have become the whole point, with one of them ‘winning’ and the other ‘losing’, which would have been wrong. This way it was a moment in their lives that meant something for all three of them.

Story in details:

Ellie came to America when she was a child, five I think, and came to Squahamish because her father was an engineer and he found work minding a train station, but he never got a real hang on the English language, so this and the fact that his engineering credentials were all Chinese kept him from ever getting a better jo, meaning an engineering job, and he stayed a railroad signalman.

It’s just the two of them because her mom died when she was like 13, and she makes some money doing homework for the other kids in her school. 

Paul approaches her for help in writing a love letter. Not homework, he says he doesn’t want to cheat, but he’s looking for some nice words to finish the letter he wants to give Aster, a pretty girl in their school.

Fact is, Ellie likes her too. Paul’s attempt at the letter wasn’t really good, and Ellie needs money for the bills, so she accepts.

She uses words from a Wim Wenders movie, and Aster likes it too and writes back. This starts something. 

Ellie writes to her about books and life, and Aster replies. When Paul texts her, he sends a short, childish message made of emoji, so Ellie writes again from some app on her phone, and they keep doing it, even when Paul and Aster meet in person. 

Aster was looking for a friend, something different and meaningful, but when Paul says he wants more they hold hands and kiss. 

Always running after Ellie’s bike has improved his physical condition, and he becomes famous at his school because he scored a touch down in a football match ‘putting their school on a board’ : it had been years since they last scored a point.

Spending so much time together they become friends, even if they don’t say it out loud: she rites letters to food critics for him and his taco sausage idea, he helps her buy clothes for the school show and helps her perform her song; the school claps for her, and now they see her differently.

This causes Paul to look at her differently as well, and one night he tries to kiss her, and Aster sees them. It’s only now that Paul understands that Ellie likes Aster too.

Aster spent a day with Ellie before this, talking and hanging out, and it appears that Aster doesn’t have a clear idea of what she wants/can do. She says she heard her dad talking to her boyfriend Trig about their wedding before telling her, and that she might accept… no particular emotion one way or the other, it just seems and feels like what she has to do.

When it happens and she accepts, Ellie yells No, and then both she and Paul talk in front of everyone in the church about pretending and lying and stuff, Ellie asks her if this is the boldest move she can make, and the whole thing is finally clear to Aster. That all the written words had come from Ellie.

She’s hurt of course, she’s been deceived, but not too much and when they next talk Aster speaks of art school :-) They were all thinking about their future and what to do, and she loved art.

Ellie wanted to go to school too, and I really loved the scene of her dad making dumplings, a lot, he’s usually rather apathetic, but now he cooked a lot, for the journey to the university in another state, because “we didn’t come here so you could be like me, we came here so you could be like your mother” :-) lovely.

She leaves for college and Paul is there to greet her and run after the train, making her smile and cry :-) 

Lovely.

Leah Lewis is Ellie Chu

ITA L’altra metà

Metal lords - 2022

How can I review this, it’s not bad at all but it’s rather age-limited, meaning I might have liked it more as a young teenager. I won’t watch it again now, but all in all it wasn’t bad. There’s lots of rock music, and I hear there’s even a scene with four rock legends.

Story:

Friends Kevin and Hunter form a metal band, but while Kevin is a normal guy, Hunter has anger issues and is obsessed. Hunter’s mom left them, dad is a plastic surgeon who doesn’t communicate with him. Since they’re best friends, Kevin follows him in this metal crusade, but when we start he can’t play well.

As he says: “I don’t play the drums. I play the drum” in the school marching band, simply to avoid P.E. Lessons. Still, he’s talented, and learns quickly. It’s only them though, and they’d need a bass player.

Kevin is fascinated by Emily since he saw her yell and throw stuff because she got angry - she has problems too, when she doesn’t take her meds - and they start talking about music, he gives her the same song titles that Hunter gave him,   And sh’s good, they even play together and start dating, but Hunter is firmly against her. He is so out of line in a class that when she hits him everyone is still against him.

Kevin learns so well he’s asked to help out a band of school mates at a wedding. 

Hunter is arrested when he tries to barge in and ruin the party. His father is so fed up - also by the fact that Hunter spent 13k dollars on instruments - that he sends him to a wellness center. The doctor there was once in a metal band and makes Hunter understand how important it is to behave well with your friends.

When Kevin learns where he is, he breaks him out so they can compete in the school’s “battle of bands”. 

Hunter apologizes to Emily and asks her to play with them. She refuses at first, not feeling ready, but then shows up in full metal look. They play Hunter’s song “machinery of torment” and they’re good, the school likes them, but then Hunter moves too much and causes what I think is a loudspeaker to fall on his leg breaking it. They don’t win, but it’s okay, Hunter feels good now, not so angry at the world as before, and anyway the accident got a big article in the papers, so everyone knows about them now, and they continue playing together, the three of them.

Emily didn’t break them up, she joined them :-)

And they’re better than they were before.

Kevin is Jaeden Martell who was a really good choice

Hunter is Adrian Greensmiht

Emily is Isis Hainsworth

Moxie - 2021

It’s an ok movie, and the message is so right it’s painful. This is a review of a movie, unfortunately I know this is not reality because in this world, here and now, women don’t even notice that they’ve buried feminism themselves. Many think it’s alive because they didn’t notice, but it’s buried.

The story: Vivian’s high school Rockport is run by principal Shelly who covers up everything that might damage her image or cause her trouble. When new girl Lucy repeatedly goes to her complaining about Mitchell harassing her, Shelly ignores her. Vivian is so used to such male behaviour she stopped noticing, she just kept her head down, but Lucy doesn’t want to.

Mitchell is captain of the school’s football team, the star so he can do what he wants.

Every year the boys make lists votiing on ‘best ass’ and stuff like that, it only goes down from there, and this time they added a new category, best c-word for Lucy. Shelly does nothing.

Vivian is so angry - she got voted most obedient - that she goes home. She found her mom’s school stuff about feminism and protests, and now wonders why they’ve all accepted this. She takes paper and stuf and creates a sort of fanzine. She makes copies and puts them in the girls bathroom, voting Mitchell and his best friend as the worst. Many girls read it, and then a girl is sent home because she’s wearing a tank top and she’s got curves, let’s say, as if that school has any dress code… after that, some girls start talking to each other, meeting, about this, so Vivian makes a new edition. In the first, she asked to paint stars and hearts on their hands, in the second to wear a tank top.

The only candidate for student athlete ambassador is Mitchell, so Lucy stands up and “nominate Keira Pascal, the captain of the girls soccer team” whose team wins a lot but nobody cares. They campaign for her a lot.

Vivian’s Chinese best friend Claudia, a sweet introvert, registers the zine “Moxie in the office”, because she cares but she just acts her own way. She did it because Shelly was taking down all of their posters. It’s like a club now. Many girls come together but Mitchel goes to speak on the school news-showor however it’s called, saying Moxie bullied him, targeted him and could do it to everyone else tomorrow.

Mitchell wins best athlete, and it’s a 10.000$ scholarship. The girls lay in defeat.

Vivian makes a++hole stickers to stick on all their lockers or backpacks. Mitchell mocks them and Shelly complains about them defacing school property. She’s angry because Moxie targeted her. Vivian steals her ‘best principal award’.

Next day, Vivian learns that “Claudia got suspended for Moxie”, and Claudia put her name down when she registered it, because she knew Vivian started it. When Vivian goes to talk to her, it’s not nice, for Claudia and her mom it’s a big deal, so Vivian is in an awful mood when she gets home to dinner with Set - her new boyfriend - and John - mom’s new boyfriend. She yells at them all, treating even Set badly.

Next day she finds a letter to Moxie, a girl who was assaulted and didn’t know how to find help, so Vivian wears mom’s old jeans jacket and paints R+peport above the school steps and breaks Shelly’s award, and then sets for the girls and whoever supports this to walk out of school at the bell, and… a lot, a lot of students walk out, and Vivian confesses: “I hate that we are shoved aside, that we are dismissed, ranked, assaulted, and nobody does anything about it, nobody listens to us” and that she started Moxie, and then the girl who wrote the note comes forward to tell everyone Mitchell r+ped her. 

Now he is called into the principal office. Claudia and Vivian’s mom come to support her. 

It ends here, with all girls together, and even some boys listening and agreeing.

A few words on Seth, they got together after Keira’s nomination, but throughout the movie, from the start, he’s the nicest, sweetest guy, cool and adorable, and he stays that to the end, a wonderful character in a movie about feminism, because feminism is not women against men, no, it’s simply about rights, about being considered ‘people’ and not ‘just girls’. 

Vivian is Hadley Robinson

Claudia is Lauren Tsai

Lucy is Alycia Pascual-Peña

Seth is Nico Hiraga

Kaitlynn is Sabrina Haskett

Michell is Patrick Scwarzenegger

Kiera is Sydney Park

Lisa is Amy Poehler

Marlene Shelly is Marcia Gay Harden

John is Clark Gregg

U-copy clerk is Ron Perkins

Claudia’s mom is not credited? I thought all characters with lines got credited, she only spoke Chinese but she did speak…

ITA Girl power - la rivoluzione comincia a scuola

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 - 2003

Yeah, I like it. This is my review: it may be bizarre but it’s artistic in its own way.

The plot is very basic: she wanted to leave her old life as a killer but Bill didn’t agree, sent the other 4 members of her old squad to kill her, Bill shot her too, but after 4 years in a coma she woke up and remembered, and started a path of revenge. The making however is not that basic: there’s an animated segment to tell the story of the Japanese girl, there’s Morricone music, there’s blood flowing everywhere but in a sort of anime way, where blood does not drop out of a cut arm, it is sprayed outwards with force. The story is not told in a linear way but there’s no chance of losing the plot, because there are big chapter titles explaining what we’re going to see. It’s a colourful movie with black&white segments. The protagonist’s name is bleeped out of all this first film. It can make you puff in annoyance at how over the top it is, but it still keeps you watching.

I didn’t know that “revenge is a dish best served cold” was an old Klingon proverb :lol: one shouldn’t believe everything that Khan says :lol:

Plot and details of the movie:

There was a mass+cre at a small chapel. It was a wedding rehearsal but they were all in their wedding attires, so she’s called the Bride because she was wearing a wedding dress. She was pregnant at the time. Everyone died: her man, their friends, the reverend and his mother, the pianist, everyone. Bill shot her in the head to make sure… and yet she didn’t die.

You can understand right away what kind of sick f*ck Bill is because while she’s on the ground covered in blood he tells her that he’s not sadistic, he’s masochistic, right before he shoots her. 

She was part of Bill’s Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, and Bill was the father of her baby girl.

The first chapter (“2”) shows us her fight with the second one on her list, Vernita aka Copperhead. She had a beautiful little house in Pasadena, green walls, shiny grass, child toys all around, it’s so pretty. And as soon as she opens the door, they start fighting and wrecking the house, but they stop when her 4-year-old daughter Nikki comes back home on the school bus.

When our Bride introduces herself, there’s a bleep over her name, that will remain a mystery for this first film. 

The child is sent to her room because mommy and ‘her friend’ have some ‘talking’ to do. They do talk a little bit over a coffee: in Vernita’s new life her new name is jeanne, married to Lawrence Bell. 

They agree not to do it in front of the child, and to meet somewhere outside and have at it undisturbed, but then, while she’s fixing Nikki’s cereals, Vernita takes her chance to shoot her, and gets killed with a knife to the heart. Vernita was also quite pissed that she didn’t get to be black mamba, and for being a mother with a new, changed life, she sure swears a lot, maybe more than anyone else in both films.

The child appears in the kitchen, so She tells her: “it was not my intention to do this in front of  you, for that, I’m sorry”, she adds that “your mother had it coming” and that “when you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I’ll be waiting”.

<<for those regarded as warriors, when engaged in combat the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior’s only concern. Suppress all human emotion and compassion, kill whoever stands in thy way, even if that be if that be LordGod or Buddha himself. This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat.>>

She drives away in a yellow truck with pussy wagon written colorfully on it, and we’ll soon see how she got it.

Chapter 2 is titled “The blood-splattered BRIDE” and explains what happened “four years and six months earlier in the city of El Paso, Texas” and shows us more about her. After the mass*cre, the cops came, and the sheriff kept talking with his cop son for a while about what happened before he finally noticed that she wasn’t actually dead. Her ‘new’ name was Arlene Machiavelli. Elle tried to finish her off at the hospital while she was in a coma, appearing in a nurse outfit complete with red cross on her eye-patch, when Bill called her telling her to “abort the mission” because She deserves better. Four years later, she wakes up suddenly, like from a nightmare, remembering Bill’s last words before he shot her in the head, and of course finding that she has no pregnant belly anymore. She screams and sobs, but her mind is working already and she can tell that it’s been 4 years, she clearly says so while looking at her hands. I mean, “four years” is quite specific of her, but she’s not a normal girl, we’ll see she’s done lots of hard trainings, and so this is a way of showing us how out-of-the-ordinary she is. Well, she already saw the state of her belly, she touched the metal in her head, now covered in her blond hair, and she looked at her hands closely, so it’s not so impossible. Quite specific, but not impossible. I’d say because of the hair more than the skin, but whatever.

She pretends to be still asleep when people come in: it’s the nurse (oss) Buck who is letting men f*ck her in exchange of money. I’m glad to say that she rips the trucker’s lip off with her teeth  -I’m pretty sure it’s the lip and not the tongue. We don’t see the ripping itself, but she’s covered in blood so it mush have been ripping. Her legs don’t work so she crawls on the floor. When Buck comes back in 20 minutes, the trucker in on the floor, not moving and covered in blood, the bed is empty and she sticks a knife into his leg and bangs the door on his head a bit to know where Bill is, which of course he doesn’t know, and then she remembers hearing his words when she was first brought in - which horrifyingly makes one believe that what the trucker tried to do to her happened many many times already, and by Buck first of all. I’m not sure here if she kills him, but I think so, maybe she slammed the door on his head with all her strength… and her arms did have strength. I hope she did.

She takes his car keys and his uniform, then she gets out in a wheelchair. She gets to the hospital car park and has no trouble at all finding his vehicle, because in a sea of black cars he’s got a yellow truck with pussy wagon written in pink in the back. She lifts herself inside the car and then she spends some hours regaining strength in her legs, starting from one toe and going on. It takes her 13 hours, at which point she can walk and drive.

Her first target is O-Ren Ishii, “the easiest to find”, because she had become “queen of the Tokyo underworld”.

The third chapter (“the origin of O-Ren”) is all about her. She was half Chinese half Japanese, born “on an American military base in Tokyo”. When she was 9 she witnessed the murder of both her parents. 

Her story now is showed as an animated sequence, but this is no shojo manga I assure you. The drawings are crude, nothing delicate in their faces, very mature indeed. From under the bed, little O-ren saw yakuza boss Matsumoto and his men slash her parents to death, and her home was set on fire. Her narrating voice tells us that “she swore revenge. Luckily for her, boss Matsumoto was a p*d*phile” which means that she could get close to him easily, and then she killed him, at 11 years old. “By 20, she was one of the top female assassins in the world”. “At 25, she did her part in the killing of nine innocent people, including my unborn daughter, in a small wedding chapel in el Paso, Texas”.

As soon as she’s back on her feet, She flies to Okinawa.

Indeed Chapter four is “The man from Okinawa”. She goes to Hattori Hanzo who she’s never met before because she needs “Japanese steel”, because she’s got “vermin to kill”. It’s reverential the way she looks at the swords he has along the walls, but he’s not selling those. Well, she’s not there to buy, she wants him to give him one, because “my vermin is a former student of yours”. 

He “swore an oath to God, 28 years ago” to never make another one, to never again create “something that kills people”, because it’s Bill, he feels an obligation this time, and lets her sleep there while he makes her a new one. A month later, his “finest sword” is done, and it’s hers.

Chapter five is her fight with O-ren Ishii (“Showdown at House of Blue Leaves”). Her “powerful posse” is called the “crazy 88”; her lieutenant, lawyer and best friend is Sofie Fatale, half French half Japanese, who for some reason was present at the chapel. Gogo Yubari is O-ren’s personal bodyguard, a 17-year-old girl wearing a school uniform, and “what she lacks in age, she makes up for in madness”; Johnny Mo is the general of the crazy 88. When O-ren “assumed power over the crime council” only one man objected, Boss Tanaka was disgusted by her, he speaks of “the perversion done to this council which I love more than my own children by making a Chinese Jap-American half breed b*tch its leader!”

She walks quickly on the table and with a swish his head is off in a moment. All the men gasp, Gogo and Sofie smile. 

The Bride now flies to Tokyo, and she keeps her sword with her on the plane… she rides a yellow/black bike that goes perfectly well with her yellow-black jumpsuit, the same as Bruce Lee’s yellow tracksuit.

The girls band playing punk rock and roll music is quite cool, I like them. It’s the 5.6.7.8’s, and they were really cool, barefoot and wild, and good music.

In the bathroom, She takes her jumpsuit off… and underneath she’s got an identical outfit, only it’s a two pieces. She gets Sofie there, and yells for O-ren to show herself. Before She can kill her though, She has to go through all her posse. She goes swish on Sofie’s arm and leaves her bloody on the floor, then She kills the first few guys that go at her, then it’s Gogo’s turn. Gogo almost manages to strangle her with her chain, but then She gets her with nails in her head, dead on the spot. At this point, She hears motorcycles and asks: “is that what I think it is?” - “you didn’t think it was gonna be that easy, did you?” - “you know, for a second there, yeah, I kind of did” - “silly rabbit”

She has to fight a lot of them at the same time, so she’s got to take as many of them out of the fight as quick as she can, and so not everyone dies, many of them only get something c*t off - unless it’s their head, in that case they die, but it often is just an arm or a foot. Most scenes of this fight are in black and white, and there’s some sort-of-flying as is usual in martial arts, there’s Her jumping on a guy’s shoulder and standing there, She also has the balance of a cat. It’s not clear to me while this fight ends in darkness, who switches off the light? Anyway, there’s only one guy left, but he’s trembling so much that She only breaks his sword into pieces, spanks him with her sword and tells him to run. He does. 

She only has to kill the ‘general’ now and it’s finally O-Ren’s turn, who really hopes She might be too tired now to be at her best. They fight in the back garden, a winter garden with snow. A beautiful place. They sword fight, She gets injured in her back, O-Ren says “silly Caucasian girl likes to play with samurai swords; you may not be able to fight like a samurai but you can at least die like a samurai”, but of course She’s not done, She never gives up, on the contrary She says “attack me with everything you have” and now She injures O-Ren drawing blood. “For ridiculing you earlier, I apologize” - “Accepted”

They continue until She goes swish one last time and her head is off at her forehead, and O-Ren can still utter the words “that really was a Hattori Hanzo sword”…and it’s quite a beautiful image - a tough one in its meaning but beautiful in its visual - how O-ren in her white kimono falls to her knees and then down on her side while our Bride, exhausted, sits on a bench in the beautiful white winter garden…

The next is Sofie, she’s left alive in front of  a hospital, but I guess without both arms, fort wo reasons: information and so she can tell Bill what happened and what’s coming.

We see her death list=1.O-ren,2.Vernita,3.Budd,4.Elle,5.Bill. And it’s a felt image that after she wrote Bill’s name we see her smiling at him when he showed up at her wedding (rehearsal).

The film then ends on shocking news, we hear Bill (don’t see but hear) asking Sofie: “is she aware her daughter is still alive?” 

The Bride is Uma Thurman - aka black mamba

O-Ren Ishii is Lucy Liu - aka cottonmouth

Vernita Green is Vivica A. Fox - aka copperhead

Budd is Michael Madsen

Elle Driver is Daryl Hannah - aka California mountain snake

Bill is David Carradine

Gogo is Chiaki Kuriyama 

Sofie is Julie Dreyfus

Hattori Hanzo is Sonny Chiba

johnny Mo is Gordon Liu

“Young 88 (spanked boy)” is Hu Xiaohui    :lol:

The bride stunt double is Zoe Bell

The bride martial arts stunt double is Satya Bellord

The credits say this is the 4th film by Quentin Tarantino

ITA Kill Bill: volume 1

The Matrix Reloaded - 2003

A positive review, no doubt about it. I wasn’t sure at first that they could do justice to such a legendary movie as the first one, but these two sequels are good. Connected, so if you watch Reloaded you must also watch Revolutions, to finish the story. You will want to. Sure, they are not as cool as the first one, but they do right by it, expand the story to the end of the war. Good movies.

This second movie is about the very serious threat to the lives of all free humans, and Neo’s journey to fulfill the prophecy… or to learn what that prophecy really was.

The big difference is that Zion may be fighting against the machines, yes, but Neo is not fighting against the matrix as before, he’s fighting against Smith and against a new character that does not like him.

Smith is the biggest change, because we saw Neo destroy him… and indeed this is a new Smith, not the same Agent as before, but a sort of freed-Agent, who now acts for himself and can change other people into copy of himself.

It starts with what turns out to be Neo’s nightmare: Trinity attacking a building, setting it on fire butdying trying to escape the Agents. These dreams don’t let him sleep; Trinity tries to talk to him about it but he can’t tell her what it is, just that he doesn’t know what to do. 

The next, great threat to all free humans is that machines have started digging, straight down to Zion, and Commander Lock has ordered all ships to go back and defend it. Morpheus thinks that the only way to end the war lies with Neo. He asks one ship to stay behind… in case the Oracle tries to contact them? When three Agents appear, Neo fights all three then flies away. Morpheus and all other ships go back to Zion. He would have stayed himself, but his ship needed recharging.

Apparently Morpheus and Lock do not get along… well, it’s Lock that can’t stand him, and that’s because captain Niobe was with Morpheus before him… but probably not just that, more like the fact that Morpheus is a believer, has been since he went to the Oracle and started searching for the one, while Lock does not believe in all that stuff.

Well, both have their reasons, but this time Morpheus is not as all-knowing as he once was. He tells Councillor Hamann of the Zion Council that they can tell people the truth without fear because “that army will never reach the gates of Zion”…

He also says “in the past six months we have freed more minds than in six years”, does that mean that it’s been six months since the end of the first movie? That would explain why Trinity and Neo appear so desperate to be finally alone :-p

Of course not everyone believes in the prophecy, but many people do, and they treat Neo like he was Jesus. 

Link is their new operator on board. His woman Zee lives in Zion. Cas’ children call him uncle Link. Zee’s not happy that he works on that ship and is never home, but he made a promise to Dozer. I think Dozer was with Cas, and Dozer and Tank were Zee’s brothers… which means that Tank died, after all.

Zee is afraid to lose him too, because both brothers died on that ship, but Link assures her that he’ll be back, because Morpheus told him that it will be over soon. “Link, Morpheus is crazy” - “No doubt. But Tank and Dozer believed him, and I’ll tell you what, after being on that ship and seeing Neo do the things he can do, I gotta say, I’m starting to believe him too”

Morpheus sure does a heartfelt speech to the people of Zion, he’s quite good at convincing people.

Thing is, everyone is gathered to listen, talk and dance, so Trinity and Neo can finally have some time alone :-p

A man on a mission inside matrix, Bane, was caught by Smith and trasformed, so when Smith picked up the phone he got… inserted into the man’s mind? Like an actually living Smith.

That last ship came back, the Oracle did make contact. Before he can go, he’s also given a ‘gift’, from “one of the orphans”, and it is a spoon :-) The kid that worships him gives it to him.

Lock is upset that Morpheus is allowed to leave, but the councillor hopes/believes in Neo’s mission.

Neo enters Matrix to meet the Oracle, but first he meets Seraph and they fight… because “the Oracle has many enemies.I had to be sure”… personally I am not at all sure of how this fight can prove anything.

Anyway, reassured that Neo’s the one, leads him through “back doors”… a sort of long white corridor full of doors on either side, one of those doors lead him to a bench and the Oracle. Both she and Seraph are not humans but programs. They talk a bit about programs then she tells him he must go to the source, the machine mainframe, “where the path of the One ends”. She tells him that if he fails Zion will fall, that he can save it if he reaches the source, and in order to do that he needs the keymaker, who is “being held prisoner by a very dangerous program, one of the oldest of us, he is called the Merovingian”

After the Oracle goes away, Smith appears and they have a long chat - he’s changed, no more an agent, free and yet not free, without purpose or reason to be - so he’s still here because of Neo, to take his purpose away from him… Smith tries to ‘change’ him, but Neo rejects him and he starts fighting; it’s not just Smith though, there’s lots and lots of him, and when an Agent appears to check, Smith changes him too, one more Smith. Neo fights, but there are so many, Smith loves to say that “it is inevitable”, but Neo pushes them off himself and flies away. 

Somehow politics always leaves me baffled for some reason; if anyone could explain one thing: the council wants news on Neo, Lock doesn’t want to let another ship go away, and to his objection that “it could take one ship days to find the Nebuchadnezzar” a councillor replies “then send two”… I mean, I understand he said ‘find’, not ‘reach’, like the problem is not that it’s too far, but that they don’t know where it could be… and why is that? They just need to reach a place where they can broadcast and enter the matrix, right? Morpheus didn’t even leave a simple direction before he left, like I’m going east or something?

Anyway. When the council asks for volunteers, Soren of the Vigilant is the first. ‘Bane’ tries to get his captain to volunteer but he won’t. Bad choice. Niobe of the Logos is the second. 

(I found it really annoying that they kept repeating that some things never change and some do, well duh, there’s no nobel for that discovery, it means nothing)

Neo, Trinity and Morpheus go to see the Merovingian. His wife Persephone appears fed up with his nonsense, and for being a program, he appears to enjoy the same things human men enjoy.

He is very annoying, “a trafficker of information” so he knows everything; the only thing h doesn’t know is exactly how fed up with his attitude Persephone is. He tells our heroes to go back to the Oracle and tell her that “her time is almost up” and then he stands and goes to meet a woman that he caused to be aroused with something in her cake. Our heroes go away but Persephone stops them, with a deal: she says that he was different once, and she knew how it felt to be loved back then, so now she wants Neo to kiss her as he she were Trinity, as if he loved her, because she wants to remember what it felt like. He manages on his second try, and she leads them to the keymaker as promised. She kills one of her husband’s men with a silver bullet - a much older program - and opens the keymaker’s cell. Of course he and his men catch them before they leave, and Neo satys back to “handle them” while Morpheus and Trinity take the keymaker away. “Your predecessors had much more respect”, he says, and it’s peculiar that nobody questions these statements. None of them apparently could stop bullets like Neo, though.

Neo fights the most of them, but the two guys in white, the ones that can appear and disappar like ghosts, go after the others. Once they reach the car park, Morpheus fights them a bit then they drive away…

Neo can’t find them, he opens a door and he’s “all the way up in the mountains” so he flies to reach the others. 

Niobe is in the matrix too, and wants to help. There’s a long car chase on the freeway, with the twin ghosts and the Agents trying to get them, until the car can’t go on so she takes the little man and jump down where bikes are being transported somewhere so they take one, he has a key that works, being a keymaker and all that. Morpheus stays behind to stop the chase and he goes all Goemon on the twins car. Trinity starts a wild ride, on a Ducati, and riding against traffic too! I guess she eventually reaches where she left Morpheus because he takes the little man off the bike so the Agents might follow her for a bit… but no, soon an Agent is on the same truch as they are - on the top of it, not inside - and Morpheus has no other choice but to fight him. He’s great, but that’s an Agent. Morpheus falls off but is caught by Niobe’s car, so he jumps back on and pushes the Agent off instead. There’s a bad car crash where their huge truck crashes onto another one just as huge and they fly off, but a flying Neo comes to get them right in time.

The keymaker explains of a building with a level where no elevator can go, and no stair can reach, filled with doors that lead to many hidden places, but one door is special, it leads to the source. 

That “building is protected by a very secure system” because “every alarm triggers the bomb”, but no electricity no alarm, so they need to destroy a power station that will cause a blackout in 27 blocks, and they also need to deactivate the emergency system, and Neo can’t do it because he must be at the door, he’d only have 5 minutes to open that door. Captains Soren and Niobe will help. 

Neo is so plagued by his nightmares/visions that he asks Trinity to stay out of it, to stay on the ship and out of matrix, and she agrees. 

I think Soren’s ship got attacked by sentinels and that’s why they’re all dead; Niobe did her part, but Soren’s group couldn’t, so Trinity has no other choice, giving up is not one, doing nothing will mean the building will explode with Neo inside it, there’s not much time but “in five minutes I’ll tear that whole g+ddamn building down”, she reaches her destination and is once again called “little lady”… not for long.

Neo and is group are stopped by Smith and all his copies, but he seemsto ignore enough the keymaker that he manages to sneak past them and open the right door, so Neo and Morpheus hurry in, cutting Smith out. Still, the keymaker is shot and dies, having fulfilled his purpose. He points Morpheus to the door that will take him home, and gives Neo the key: “you will know which door”. 

The door with the bright light leads into a room with many tvs showing his face and just one man, the Architect, who created the matrix, and this is when we learn the shocking truth. “An unbalanced equation”, an “anomaly” in the matrix causes all this over and over, and finally Neo asks “what others?”. There has been five before Neo, basically the matrix’s way of controlling the situation, every time there has been a resistance, the One, the whole fight, and for five times already Zion has been destroyed. After the one returns to the source, he will select 23 individuals, “sixteen female, seven male, to rebuild Zion”, and if he doesn’t it will cause a “cataclysmic system crash killing everyone connected to the matrix”, and since they’re already destroying Zion, that will “result in the extinction of the entire human race”. As much as the One knows that the machines need humans as batteries, there is also the fact that, as a human being, can he accept to be the cause of the extinction of the human race? Can he risk it?

Now, thing is, it is the Architect now that talks about love making Neo think of Trinity, and it is the Architect that informs him that Trinity entered the matrix to help him, he had no way of knowing because inside that room he is not connected to the others anymore. The Architect shows him two doors: one” leads to the source and the salvation of Zion”, while the other “leads back to the Matrix, to her and to the end of your species” and it is his choice which door to choose… and I’m not sure I understand here what he means by “salvation of Zion”, I guess he means that he’ll choose 23 people to rebuilt it again?

I understand the ‘extinction’ dilemma, but has it never happened before that someone fell in love? Oh I see, he chooses the second door because he knows from his dreams that she’s going to die, and indeed things are going exactly as in his dreams, while if she wasn’t in danger, the other door would save her… it would cause everyone to stay in the matrix and things to go back to what they were before… is this right? Have I got it right?

 

So, his love and fear for Trinity lead him to overcome “logic and reason” and not realize that “she is going to die and there is nothing you can do to stop it”. No matter, he goes to save her: she’s indeed fighting an Agent and falling down the building, and Neo flies Superman-style to reach her, faster than ever, and he does catch her midair before she hit the ground, but the Agent shot her. He takes the bullet out with his powers, she tells him that she had to and that she’s sorry, and then she dies… just like Neo did in the first film, and now it’shis turn to talk to her after she’s died. He can’t let her go, so he puts his hand inside to touch her heart and restart it, I mean, he sees the world encoded, as green lights and stuff, so he does it and she comes back to him. 

Morpheus is confused, the war should be over, the One reached the source and it should be it, the end, but it’s not. Still, Neo says that if they don’t do anything, Zion will be destroyed, he tells them that the prophecy was a lie. 

They evacuate the ship because of a bomb, and then run away from sentinels; Neo can feel them, even if they’re outside the matrix, and so he raises his hand like when he stops bullets, and the sentinels stop and fall. Neo falls too, from exhaustion. Another ships picks them up and they learn that someone ruined their defence, activating an EMP that took out five ships at once, and it that mess only one survived, the Bane that nobody knows is not Bane anymore. 

Thi is how the first movie ends, with Neo still sleeping and Bane as well.

P.s. The oracle is “an intuitive program initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human mind”.

The Architect spoke in a weird way, so I think I got it right but am not 100% sure.

I really like that the credits at the end show the cast ordered alphabetically by the actors last name.

Neo is Keanu Reeves

Morpheus is Laurence Fishburne

Trinity is Carrie-Anne Moss

Persephone is Monica Bellucci

Seraph is Collin Chou

The oracle is Gloria Foster

Zee is Nona Gaye

Link is Harold Perrineau

Niobe is Jada Pinkett Smith

Smith is Hugo Weaving

Hamann is Anthony Zerbe

Ghost = Anthony Wong … ? I thought Seraph was what they called the Ghost…

ITA Matrix reloaded

The Matrix - 1999

Of course any review on Matrix can only say how spectacular it was when it came out, and it still is a great movie, I still love it. And I do appreciate that it’s got one of the greatest female characters in movie history, of course I’m talking about Trinity, and I’m very happy that it stays true to herself even in the 2003 sequels. I even appreciated her more after watching those two movies as well, because we see more and better understand her character. Back in 1999 there were those who said that she was trying too hard to be cool, that she acted like a man (what a horrible thing to say) but that’s not the heart of the matter. .She doesn’t speak much because that’s her character, she’s a warrior and has seen a lot and is simply tired with wastes of time and stuff like that. She says and does what needs to be said and done because she’s not living in a Barbie world, but she has feelings lilke everybody else. Just because she doesn’t giggle or make heart-shaped eyes at him it doesn’t mean that she’s not in love, she’s an adult who’s had a hard life. If you think about it, most of Zion’s adults are toughened by hard life.

To the movie:

It starts with her, Trinity is found out by the police - not sure why th normal police was after her, she was alone in a room with a telephone… not very criminal, and yet there’s many police cars and agents ready to arrest her. Maybe they were sent or she’s probably wanted as some serious hacker, but then two Agents arrive so we know the police were ordered to not arrest her, that it was for their protection - how it always annoyed me that that lieutenant refered to her as a little girl. Indeed, in a few moments Trinity kills them all, and there is that very cool scene where she jumps and the camera rolls around her, with her arms stretched and her legs bent at the knees before she resumes the attack. it was super cool then and it holds very well now.

She runs to reach the next “exit”, avoiding the Agents as much as possible. She jumps from one building to the next and enters through a window and lands at the bottom of the stairs with her guns aimed at the window, but nobody appears so she runs to the public telephone that was her target. She can see a truck aiming at it, but it’s already ringing and she has to try so she runs and answers the phone right before the truck smashes the phone box. Of course she had to try, three Agents were there, and she made it, she’s disappeared. The Agents say that it doesn’t matter that she got out, because “the informant is real” and because of that they have “the name of their next target”.

Thomas A. Anderson, Neo in the digital world, sees weird words appearing on his computer: “The Matrix has you” and “Follow the white rabbit”. He sells computer disks like it were drugs, and he sells one now, and then follow the group because the girl has a white rabbit tattooed on her shoulder.

At this club with loud music Trinity approaches him, and she knows her by reputation. Neo thought that “you were a guy” - “most guys do”, which is a great answer.

She warns him that he’s in danger, that they’re watching him, and that once she had the same question that bugs him now: “what is the matrix?”

We move to the next day, when he wakes up late and rushes to work, where he gets scolded and then he receives a phone by mail: Morpheus is calling him, and Neo knows his name; “they’re coming for you, Neo” and indeed there’s Agents and policemen looking for him. Neo follows his instructions, but when it comes out that his only way out of that building is either with the cops or using a scaffold outside the window to reach the roof, he can’t do it and is arrested.

Agent Smith does a nice speech, meaning that he should keep doing his job as a software programmer and leave his hacker life, stop it. Smith wants to use him to get Morpheus, “the most dangerous man alive” for  them. Neo actually acts very rude and cocky here, knowing his rights and demanding a phone call… until his mouth disappears, they hold him down and put a sort of robotic-bug inside him - it enters his bellybutton.

He wakes up at home thinking it wasn’t real. Morpheus calls him, “they’ve underestimated how important you are, if they knew what I know, you would probably be dead”; Morpheus also says “you are the one, Neo, you may have spent the last few years looking for me, but I’ve spent my entire life looking for you”.

They arrange a meeting: under a bridge he gets in a car with Trinity. Apoc is driving and Trinity uses a strange device to free Neo of that bug.

Finally Neo and Morpheus meet. The famous scene of the two pills :-)

Of course Morpheus wears a long black coat, they’re super-cool, Neo will wear it too later.

Morpheus says that Neo is there because “you know something, what you know you can’t explain but you feel it, you’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world”, and it’s about the matrix, which is “everywhere, it is all around us”, “it is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth”, “that you are a slave, Neo, like everyone else”, that he was “born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch, a prison… for your mind” and here it’s his last choice to go back to his old life - yeah, I wonder what would have been Morpheus’ reaction had the one chosen the blue pill…

To the pills: a blue pill and the story ends there, he’ll go back to his old life, red pill and “you stay in wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes”

That pill is “part of a race program” so they can pinpoint his location. They strap him to some equipment and search… and the real Neo wakes up in a tub of weird liquid, with metal tubes attached to him, in a place full of pods like his, as long as the eye can see… they retrieve his body and bring it aboard their ship, to “the real world”. They “work” on him for a while because his body has never really been used, his muscles, his eyes that ‘he has never used before’… then they let him rest.

Neo wakes up with some clothes, and Morpheus explains that they’re not sure but it’s not 1999 anymore, it’s maybe a century later. They’re now in his ship, the Nebuchadnezzar, it’s a hovercraft and it was made in the year 2069. He meets Apoc again propery, and also Switch the blond woman, Cypher with the moustache, Tank and his big brother Dozer, and young Mouse. By attaching a metal thing to the plug in the back of their necks they ‘enter’ the matrix, or any part of it they want. They have loading programs where they can train or do anything they need. 

The matrix now is a neural-interactive simulation set at the end of hte 20th century. They don’t even know the full story of how the Earth got to this point, they only know that “at some point in the early 21st century all of mankind was united in celebration, we marveled at out own magnificence, as we gave birth to AI”, “a singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines”. Mopheus also says that “we don’t know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky; at the time they were dependent on solar power” so humans took that energy away from ai thinking it wouldn’t survive without it. Humans have always depended on machines to survive, and now the machines are using humans to survive. “The human body generates” a lot of bioelectricity and body heat and the machines are using it. “There are fields, Neo, endless fields, where human beings are no longer born, we are grown”. He says the matrix is “a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control” in order to use them as batteries. It’s really a lot to take in, so of course Neo doesn’t want to believe it. It’s difficult for everyone at first. He needs rest before he can calm down. There’s no going back now though. That’s why they usually only “free a mind once it’s reached a certain age”, because an adult mind finds it much more difficult to let go of everything it used to know and face the truth. There was once a man “who had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the matrix as he saw fit”, he was the one “who freed the first of us”, then he died and the Oracle “prophesied his return and that his coming woul hail the destruction of the matrix, end the war, bring freedom to our people” and Morpheus is sure that Neo is the one. 

Tank and Dozer have no plugs because they’re born free, “genuine child of Zion”, “the last human city”, placed “deep underground, near the Earth’s core where it’s still warm”.

Tank is Neo’s operator, and he loads his head with training programs, so that in Matrix he knows all kinds of martial arts and combat training, starting with Jujitsu through Tae kwon do and Kung fu, 10 hours straight of loading… which means a lot since Jujitsu was loaded in like three seconds…

Morpheus loads a sparring program and they fight, and Morpheus goes Yoda on him: “don’t think you are, know you are”… which in this case is important because it’s a basic notion on how things go in the matrix.

Neo does really well, very fast :-) The jump program though places them both on top of a very tall building, and they should reach the other building with a jump… but he was terrified of heights, when he couldn’t get out the window and got arrested before… so of course he can’t make it on his first jump. 

This is where we are told that if one dies in the matrix, they die in the real world too because their mind makes it real, and a body can’t survive without the mind… which means that everytime they kill people inside the matrix, they’re really killing them… because ‘they’re part of the system and therefore enemies’…

The Agents can become anyone - this is not clear to me, the person taken over by the Agent dies or they come back to themselves once the Agent leaves them?

The Agents are sentient programs and nobody has ever beaten an Agent before, they all run from them.

In the real world is not at all easier, there’s what they call a Squiddy, sentinels, killing machines designed to search and destroy. The only way is to avoid them if possible, if they’re near then shut off all power and only when the power is off-line they arm the EMP, electromagnetic pulse, which “disables any electrical system in the blast radius”, the “only weapon we have against the machines”.

Cypher looks at the programs “encoded”, which means that we see green symbols cascading on a black screen… and I guess he sees things in it, he says “you get used to it” and that he sees blondes and brunettes in there… mah. He tells Neo what is probably the only sincere thing we’ve heard him say till now: “why oh why didn’t I take the blue pill?” Neo thinks it’s a joke and chuckles, but he meant it, and the proof is in the next scene, when he makes a deal with Agent Smith: he wants to be reinserted into the matrix because “ignorance is bliss” and he wants to remember nothing of this reality, he wants to be “someone important, like an actor”, and in exchange he’ll give them the information they want: since he doesn’t know the “access codes to the Zion mainframe” he will give them someone who knows them: Morpheus.

To make that scene stand out even more, while he tasted a delicious meal inside the matrix, in the “real world they ‘eat’ something that looks disgusting, “a single-celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins and minerals, everything the body needs”… and that may be true but it still looks disgusting…

The whole group minus the operators enters the matrix… not sure why, since t’s only Morpheus and Trinity that take Neo to see the Oracle. She is a guide that has been with them since the beginning of the Resistance. Neo meets a child that can bend a spoon with his mind, and tells him: “do not try to bend the spoon, that’s impossible, instead only try to realize the truth” which is “there is no spoon”.

The Oracle is a woman baking cookies; she makes a show of taking a good look at him then says that he already knows what she’s gonna tell him, and it’s him that says he is not the one. Later Morpheus will tell  him that she only told him what he needed to hear.

She tells Neo that Morpheus believes in him so much, so blindly, that he’s going to sacrifice himself to save him. And then Neo will have to make a choice, because one of them “is going to die” and it’ll be his choice. 

Cypher left a phone with the line open in a trash can as soon as they ‘entered’ the matrix, right outside the building they’re using and entry/exit. When Neo sees a cat walk twice he says “déjà vu” out loud, allowing the others to know something is wrong because “a déjà vu” is usually a glitch in the matrix, it happens when they change something” and right now they’ve changed the building, the windows are walled. Mouse dies first… shot by the police? The others ask Tank for a new route, and he guides them. They hide inside a wall, a wall cavity of some kind, and move downwards as silently as they can… but Cypher coughs and Smith finds them. When Morpheus sees that an Agent has grabbed Neo, he breaks the wall with his head and falls on Smith, separating him from Neo, and shouts at Trinity to get Neo out, to safety, because “he’s all that matters”. He tries to fight valiantly, but can’t do much against an Agent.

Neo doesn’t want to leave, so Trinity grabs him and drags him away. 

That moment, when Morpheus saves him, is another great moment, very powerful.

Cypher separates from the others and calls Tank before them, so he gets out first. Cypher takes some kind of lightning rifle, a heavy weapon that shoots an ‘intense bolt of electrical energy’, getting Tank before he can bring out Neo. Dozer sees Cypher shooting his brother and tries to defend him, getting shot too, and worse than his brother. This time, when Trinity calls it’s Cypher who answers… and here it’s the scene that I didn’t like of the whole movie.

I know they probably thought it built suspence or something, but it was so absurd and so very annoying that Cypher would start talking and talking, and worst of all jumping on Morpheus real body and talking directly to him as if he could here, when of course he can’t, only Trinity can hear him because she has the phone. I understand that he couldn’t kill Neo right away, of course not, but let’s admit it, it makes no sense that here Cypher would start killing them starting by the less important (to the plot, sorry Apoc and Switch), no sense at all.

I know that killing them was part of the deal he had made with Smith, but I don’t like how it went. Maybe there was no other way, since he certainly could not go for Neo first, but it was still bad. And anyway, the deal makes sense for Tank and Dozer that were on the ship, but it makes no sense for the others inside the matrix, I don’t think those deaths were part of the deal. 

Anyway, this is how it is: Cypher starts a monologue, sniffing Trinity’s body  :-/  telling her that she’s beautiful and he used to dream about her, and on and on, and then he pulls the plug on Apoc and he dies, and while Switch looks at her crying “not like this” she dies too, poor thing, after all they’ve been through this is so not the way they thought they’d go.

Twice now Trinity has looked at one of them - the one Cypher mentioned to her - and that one died, and now she looks at Neo. Cypher thinks that if he’s really the one then some kind of miracle will happen to stop him… and indeed it happens, because Tank was not yet dead, and he managed to shoot Cypher.

This was the first time Trinity admitted believing that Neo was the one, but only Cypher hears it. Also, Cypher calls Neo’s eyes “big” and “pretty”.

Tank is still alive and brings out Trinity and Neo. I really liked this short moment between Trinity and Tank, their hug, even before they bring Neo out, short but meaningful.

Smith has Morpheus tied up, they give him some kind of injection that should weaken the mind, they want those access codes that he knows; Smith talks a lot, for being just a program, although sentient, and he explains to us how the first matrix “was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would be happy” but it was a failure because people could not accept to believe in it.

On the ship, there’s a difficult decision to maek, because as a ship captain Morpheus does have those access codes, and Tank says “Zion’s more important than me, or you, or even Morpheus”, and their only solution might be to pull the plug on him. This is why the Agents wanted the ship crew dead, so that nobody would do exactly that.

Neo stops him, of course, and obviously he doesn’t tell them what choice the Oracle told him he’d have to make, or they wouldn’t have let him do it. Neo tells them he’s not the one - “you have to be” - and then he says that he believes in something, he believes that he can bring Morpheus back. So they accept, and she goes with him… he tries to say “no” but she tells him what’s what and she does have big eyes :-)

Smith keeps talking, saying mammals work with their environment and find a just equilibrium, therefore the human race can’t be that, it’s more like a virus, that multiplies and consumes.

He wants to stay alone with Morpheus so the other two Agents Brown and Jones leave the room. Smith takes off his ear piece and says that he hates this place, that’s why he wants to destroy Zion so much, so there will be no more need of him here.

Neo and Trinity enter this military-controlled building with two black bags full of weapons, all dressed in black and of course with long black coats, because those are so cool. They are.

A big shooting scene starts here, and with that cool music this was one of the legendary scenes. There’s lots of shooting and jumping and breaking walls, then they take the lift, go above it and reach the roof, where there’s the other iconic scene, when Neo moves so quickly - we see it in slow motion though - that he can dodge bullets. Tank loads Trinity with a helicopter course so she can fly the one there. She takes the helicopter right in front of the huge glass walls of the room where they’re keeping Morpheus, and it is a cool scene when Neo starts shooting with the machine gun - that Google ai says it’s called a minigun because it’s smaller - and bullets start dropping like rain drops, but really, how is it possible that he doesn’t hit Morpheus? Is he able to shoot only above chair-level? 

Well, why not, after all… and Morpheus, whose mind has not given up yet, manages to free himself and run out, but since he can’t jump well with an injured foot, Neo jumps too and catches him. Trinity flies until they can safely land on the top of a building, and then Neo saves Trinity, and brings her back up. Morpheus is ever so sure that he’s the one, and sure that the Oracle told him what he needed to hear at the time because “there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path”. Wise words.

There’s a phone on the subway, Morpheus goes first, then Trinity.

This is the scene I never understood, she tells him that everything the Oracle told her came true, “everything but this”… what does she mean? She knows he’s the one, and she knows she’s in love with him, that’s what the ‘No, you have to be!’ was about, right?  Or it’s just that she hasn’t admitted it to herself, not really really? Then why say anything here and now? This is the second moment I didn’t like, after Cypher’s monologue.

After she’s out, Smith takes over the body of a homeless man cutting the connection, and Neo doesn’t run, he turns and confronts Smith. It’s a long hard fight where they’re basically at the same level, only Smith doesn’t feel tired or in pain ever, Neo does; still, despite Smith’s words of inevitability, it’s him that ends up hit by the train, giving Neo time to run to the next exit. 

Sentinels are approaching the ship but they can’t use the EMP while Neo is in the matrix, it would kill him, severing the connection. 

Tank guides Neo through streets and doors and stairs and doors on ‘his other left’ :lol: 

The sentinels reach the ship and breach the hull; finally Neo reaches the door, we hear the phone ringing, he opens the door and… surprise, Smith is there and shoots him dead! That was such a surprise back then, a shock to the system, and Morpheus “it can’t be” mirrored our thoughts, because Neo in the Matrix was dead… Trinity talks to him (after he’s died) saying he can’t die because the Oracle told her she’d fall in love with the one so he can’t die, meaning she’s in love with him so he must be the one. She tells him she loves him and kisses him reversed-SnowWhite style.

His heart starts beating again, and inside the Matrix he gets up and doesn’t need to dodge the bullets, he can stop the bullets with one hand, they stop before reaching him. He can now see everything and everyone around him encoded, and can stop the Agents with just one hand, then he runs and jumps into Smith, and blows him up from the inside out. When Trinity yells his name he somehow hears her voice? Or does he simply hear the phone ringing? Anyway, he must get out as quick as he can because the sentinels are inside the ship, so at the last minutes the Emp destroys them and Neo is out, and they kiss, of course.

The last scene is a phone call to… the Agents? Then Neo gets out of the phone box and… flies up high…

P.s. Why did Trinity have a different outfit when they were above the elevator? Where did that high-collared outfit come from?

Neo is Keanu Reeves

Morpheus is Laurence Fishburne

Trinit is Carrie-Anne Moss

Smith is Hugo Weaving

The Oracle is Gloria Foster

Tank is Marcus Chong

Cypher is Joe Pantoliano

ITA Matrix

The scandalous four - 2011 (/2015)

This is a lovely story, lovely, but not a well-turned out film. I’m so disappointed because thee idea is wonderful, but the end result not so much, no.

Penelope is in love with her poor music teacher Richard but her parents give her to wealthy Jonathan, who is looking for a wife. Because he has to, but neither of them is in love. Then he starts a relationship with their butler George, in secret because they hang gay people around there; she finds out and wants to confront them, but isn’t sure what to say. Then their gardener dies and the brilliant George hires Richard! She’s quite happy about it, indeed; she goes with Richard where the other two men go to be together and se acts like it’s all perfectly alright so they start getting comfortable together and drop all pretenses, and start living more freely even inside the house. They’re all happier now so they’re kinder to the two maids as well and they’re all happy, until Penelope gets sick and they all worry about her very much, but she gets better ad the six of them now know they all love each other and keep living together and raise her baby with love.

Such a beautiful story, but the telling of it was not as good. 

Point 1: Penelope, George and Jonathan sounded very much like those ‘learn English’ videos; point 2: George and Jonathan’s story was too sudden, no idea when or how it started, especially with a character like Jonathan; poinnt 3: it’s so annoying and unpleasant that he would insult her and try to separate her from Richard when he knew perfectly well that he cheated first; point 4: it’s lovely that Jonathan cares for her at the end, but that is also sudden because there was no warning before her illness, and the laughing all together doesn’t count because he was happy near George and she near Richard, not near each other; point 5 the ritual done by George to ‘cure’ her is so silly and absurd, presented like ‘something we didn’t know about him’… meaning what, that he’s a magical healer? Nonsense.

I hope I’m not offending anyone here, because even if it was taken from something real, in this film what I saw was nonsense

It says at the end that the dialogues were improvised by the actors, but internet also says they rehearsed for a long time so they sort of had a script by the end, they simply didn’t pay someone else to write it.

How these characters had fun was rather silly too, running barefoot and wildly. 

Sadly indeed I would not watch it again because even if the idea is lovely the execution is very much flawed and not emotional in any way, even the scene when George wants to quit his job because he feels Jonathan is distancing himself is not really touching like it should have been… I’d really like it if someone made another go at this scandalous four idea, but taking it seriously, like professionals instead of amateurs.

Do revenge - 2022

Terrible movie, I didn’t like it at all. The protagonist Drea treats people terribly to be with the popular crowd, only thinks of herself but when anything is done to her then those who did it are evil… I mean it was bad, yes, but 90% of the time in this movie she acts like she’s the poor innocent girl that she isn’t.

The story:

Drea is friends with Tara, Meghan and Montana, and her boyfriend is Max, they’re the populars, the royals; Drea and Max say they love each other, he asks and she sends him a hot video that next day is on everyone’s phone in the school. He says he didn’t do it, she punches him in the face.

He’s the school’s golden boy, super rich, and her friends believe him. She cuts them all off and after the summer ends, at the start of the new school year, he talks about it in his opening speech masking it as if he cares, so everyone remembers.

The new girl Eleanor approaches her, and even after Drea is not exactly nice to her, she keeps playing sympathetic. Eleanor tells her that a girl’s gossip hurt her so much it conditioned her life: she says when she told Carissa that she liked her, Carissa told everyone that she manhandled her to try and kiss her making her appear like a predator. So they join forces to exact revenge on those that wronged her. 

Carissa is easy, she secretly grows marijuana and magic mushrooms so Drea puts some in the school’s soup then alerts the headmaster so Carissa is expelled.

Because Eleanor told her that Erica shared that video at their tennis club, Drea frames her putting cocaine in her things so Erica is out of the club and out of school, while she was innocent, and later we see that her ruined life led her to drugs and rehab for real. That’s it for her, she may not have been ‘nice’ but she became collateral damage and nobody cares.

Drea wanted Eleanor to enter the popular crowd, hence a makeover to have Max notice her, but when they’re all nice to her Eleanor likes it, and it’s true that they throw her a surprise birthday party while Drea doesn’t care about her birthday at all, only about herself.

When Drea talks to Carissa about what Eleanor told her, a truth comes out: Drea knew her already at “day camp”, and it was Drea who gossiped about her, who started it, and now instead of feeling guilty for calling her Nosy Nora or for saying she ‘tried to hold her down and kiss her’, she is angry because she now understands that Eleanor’s revenge is against her!

Now she acts like Eleanor is evil.

Then there’s an absurd plot when Eleanor crashes her car into Drea’s because sending Drea to the hospital is the best way to get her old friends back to her… Eleanor has nothing herself and nobody even knows she was in the crash… and it works, they all texts her worried…

Tara apologises to her and tells her to join the party for all seniors admitted to uni, and this I think is the last we really see of her, even though it’s not the first time she speaks about missing Drea.

At the party, Drea is mean telling everyone Eleanor is Nosy Nora. People laugh at her and now Drea is all sorry sorry, and poof, now she knows she was toxic and all that, says ‘I’m sorry you really were a great friend and my happiest moments were with you’ and voilà, all’s forgiven, Eleanor and Drea are best friends now.

Thinking they’re alone Max admits to Drea and Eleanor that he’s manipulative like her and that he did send that video, Eleanor secretly recorded him and shows it to everyone, and all of a sudden the whole senior year is against him and he’s even expelled from school.

Drea makes peace with her new boyfriend and Eleanor with her new girlfriend, Max’s sister… and Max enters a “toxic patriarchy” support group…

So the two girls are happy, nobody cares about the others, and everything’s good? 

Meaningless.

I liked Sarah Michelle Gellar’s bonsai talk, but it wasn’t enough to care about this movie.

The only nice scene was when Gabbi gave Eleanor a ‘tour’ of the school, the fact that she approached her before the makeover and liked her like that. One scene. Everything else is terrible.

ITA Do revenge

Easy A - 2010

A nice, funny enough movie, although a bit forced at first. I mean, it’s all based on the idea that everyone at school is shocked that a girl in her final year had sex one time… I mean, really?

Anyway, it’s a fun story of how gossip flies, how lies can be dangerous, how they can hurt, andn maybe also how easily things can get out of control.

It all starts because Olive doesn’t want to spend the weekend at her best friend’s house because her parents are weird - they are: eating naked even when you have teenage guests? Really? - so she says she has a date. Rhi won’t let it go, and keeps asking questions, both before and after the weekend, and Olive keeps adding to the lie, saying what Rhi wants to hear so she’ll stop asking, and so she says she had sex, a one-night stand and so isn’t a virgin anymore. They were in the girls bathroom and Marianne heard them. She’s like a religious fanatic, and now considers her a sl*t, easy - after just one time, yes, but Marianne thinks one should wait for marriage.

At school they’re discussing the Scarlet Letter and Nina, a friend of Marianne, calls her “you abominable tramp” but it’s Olive who gets sent to the principal’s office for replying “you abominable twat”. 

Really? Come on!

She has detention along with Brandon, who gets bullied because he’s gay. She tells him to pretend so to avoid bullies, so Brandon asks her to lie for him, to pretend they did it. They choose a school girl’s party, get in a room and pretend to be having wild sex while everyone listens at the door. 

Rhi hears about it from someone else and is angry and calls her a dirty skank, weird slang but I get the meaning, and they have a falling out because of it and Olive is so angry she sews a red A on all her tops.

Then it starts.

Evan plays the pity card and promises her a 100$ gift to say that he touched her, and there are other guys, all the unpopular that hope to improve their standing, so she fake-hooked up with Phil, Eric, Ryan, Chris, Sanjay… pity they’re actually all cheap and horrible gifts.

Professor Griffith is a bit worried about her, and his wife the counselor gives her condoms. Seeing Marianne’s boyfriend Micah crying, Olive asks about it and Marianne explains that his parents are divorcing, so Olive tries to comfort her when she cries too, she’s nice and Marianne thinks she got through to her and they can now be friends, and for a day they are. Until Micah ends up in a hospital wiwth chlamydia, and when his mom becomes aggressive he panicks and says he did it with Olive.

Micah calls Mrs Griffith to warn her, because she’s the one he slept with, and she’s also the one to explain to Olive why Marianne is suddenly furious and smacked her.

Mrs Griffith is panicking as well, and tells her everything. The woman has the face to tell her that her wedding isn’t working and they haven’t slept together in months - we just saw her avoiding and escaping every touch from her husband - and she slept with Micah who is in Olive’s year but is actually older, he’s 21.

Mrs Griffith tells hershe’ll put things right, tell the truth even if it’ll cost her her job - she doesn’t seem to care about her marriage  and once again Olive feels bad and wants to help, so she accepts the lie and lets it go, lets everyone believe it was her. 

Now these kids are clamouring against her, picketing outside school with insulting signs, and Rhi is there too, against her. 

She wanted to ask a pastor for advice, but she runs out when she finds out he’s Marianne’s father. She feels really alone now, and even worse when Anson asks her out only because he thinks that he can sleep with her for real if he pays her. She cries so Todd drives her home and he’s nice and does not believe the rumours because in 8th grade he was “a scared little kid”, “who was not ready for his first kiss” so she lied for him. So now Olive wants everyone to know the truth, and tries to get help, but Brandon ran away with a guy so he’s not here, and both the other guys and Mrs Griffith refuse to admit the truth. Olive here was so mad at her that she told prof Griffith, her favourite professor, that “your wife has chlamydia and she’s sleeping with a student, and she gave it to him and she’s trying to blame me”. She feels guilty about telling him because she likes him.

She also tells her wild mother. So she plans to explain everything to everyone via internet so she sings and lets them think they’ll see her doing it if they log in, so they all oper the computer an the right time and listen to her, even her professor and her parents.

At the end of her “live webcast” Todd appears outside her window with a song on speakers and a borrowed mower, like in the 80s movie she loves.

It’s a lovely ending but I don’t see why Olive texted Rhi to say sorry for lying to her. She did say one lie because Rhi kept pushing and pushing, but Rhi insulted her and yelled at her, and that’s way worse.

Olive is Emma Stone

Todd is Penn Badgley

Dad is Stanley Tucci

Mrs Griffith is Lisa Kudrow

Brandon is Dan Byrd

Marianne is Amanda Bynes 

ITA easy girl

Rescued by Ruby - 2022

My honest review is that I was rather disappointed. I mean, this is a beautiful, lovely story with a wonderful dog, but the movie did not do it justice. Not at all. So disappointing.

At first it’s ok, wiht the lovely lady working at an animal shelter, so worried because if the dog Ruby does not get adopted it’ll have to be put down, by law, and this dog is young, one year I think, and full of energy, and nobody has the patience or the heart to try more - ok  I get it that she’s really a handful, but she’s also not a toy poodle, she needs excercise and space, what did they all want, a puppet or a fully trained dog?

She can’t keep Ruby because she has a family and a house full of animals already, and people keep bringing Ruby back, giving up on her.

Then there’s Daniel, whose dream is sto be a part of the K-9 group, he’s a cop but until now he’s always failed… not sure  how since he’s never had a dog before, so… what did he fail? Was he lent some already trained dog? It makes no sense at all. Was it a written test? But he did no test after he got Ruby, she was the only one tested on the field…

Anyway, he keeps trying.

To get a German Shepherd you need a lot of money, as for every breed dog, but at a shelter you don’t need to. Ruby has no pedigree, the woman says she’s half border-collie, and Dan adopts her… and he almost gives up too, rather quickly, because he can’t get Ruby to obey him… instead he asks at the shelter what Ruby likes - wurstel - and things go a bit better… but not enough to pass and get into the ‘class’ to become K9 agents… but then Dan starts training Ruby himself, at his own pace and in his own way ,and when it’s exam time again Ruby aces it! They’re junior agents now! First time he’s called on duty, to find a corpse at a murderer’s place, Ruby finds it but Dan can’t see it and believes she failed, and is so annoying, dismissing Ruby like a failure, like she’s nothing but trouble… Ruby runs away from home during the night, and while he’s out looking for her, full of guilt, as he should be, his boss calls to say Ruby was right, he took the wrong decision not trusting her! He calls and calls for Ruby to come back and she does, in time to search for a lost boy in the woods, because she’s the best dog in the team. She searches and finds the boy, and then she barks until the team finds them, and they save the boy who was the son of the lady at the animal shelter :-) This is such a wonderful story, they say it’s based on real facts, it’s doubly wonderful. 

Smiles and tears in equal measure here =^_^=

My problem with the movie: too many long moments of Dan doubting everything, no real explanation about him for a long time: the wife is the real hero of this movie because she keeps believing in him, saying that he’s smart and he can do anything he puts his mind to, that he managed to achieve a lot overcoming his dislexia and hyperactivity, thta he never gave up… I think they should have explained this at first, to make us understand him more. I don’t think they portrayed his neurodivergency the right way, they undervalued what it was while it was very important, to explain him and also Ruby, because that’s why they make it, when the wife reminds him that the school system never worked for him, that he should have been home schooled, that he learned differently from others… and this makeshim realize that he can do the same for Ruby, teach her at home in a way she can respond to… I would have liked to see a bit more of it though. The ‘Dan before really training Ruby’ was too long and so boring, and the ‘Dan really training Ruby and making her a hero’ deserved a bit more.

Really, until we get to this point - how to learn better - they had just showed Dan runninga round his car to show he can’t stay put, but there’s more to it, to him, wasn’t there? I would have liked more about that, a real explanation, not too long, but enough to understand better. 

Because neurodivergency can impact a person’s life, especially if like me you’re a female with adhd so nobody knew what you were because they never bothered to check the women side and only studied boys, and you get to adulthood without knowing that lots of people are like you, that you’re not wrong inside just different. It ruined my life and it’s too late now to change it because I’m not who I was anymore, I can barely recognize me myself.

ITA agente speciale Ruby

모럴센스 - Love and leashes - 2022

I almost can’t believe it but this is the loveliest, sweetest film I’ve seen in a while, I really liked it. Plus the two actors were really, really good, and very cute.

I like the light tone they gave to the whole thing, and how it was never crude. They showed how bdsm can be just a way of being, something someone likes, and everyone should be free to be who they are.

I agree that some things should stay private, but also that it’s nobody else’s business what people do if they all agree on it.

The making was really good too, and I loved how Ji-hoo would smile in the middle of the ‘games’, just for those people that might not understand that he does like it and is excited by it.

The story is simple: Ji-hoo starts working in PR, in the same office as Ji-woo. She’s serious, rational, so people think she’s cold and like a robot; she liked him from the start, since he backed her reservations on one of their boss’ decision. 

When a box intended for him is given to her, he freaks out. There’s a collar and a leash inside, and a bdsm magazine. He’s terrified she might tell everyone but she doesn’t. 

She thought at first the collar was for his partner, meaning for a woman, but she can’t imagine herself wearing one. When he misunderstands and thinks she’s into it too, she realizes it was for him. She still tells nobody and still likes him.

A friend tells her to give him space so not to embarrass him, but he thinks sh’s avoiding him because he’s disgusting and she finds him crying.

(Was she always friend with this woman? This was the bit I didn’t understand, was it a home or a club? Were they friend before but she didn’t know her friend was into this before?)

He confesses he only ever told one person, his ex Hana, and she dumped him because of it - and I think what’s disgusting is how she still shows up or calls him sometimes to blaem on him the fact she can’t have a relationship now without worrying the other will turn out to be a weirdo like him, or something, someone should really tell her what’s what and keep her out of his life.

He asks her to be his mistress but she says no in surprise, she knows nothing of this world but she learns, she searches the internet and talks to people on a blog or something, to understan, because she likes him.

The talk about it and then she accepts, and she’s the one to suggest signing a three-months contract, like she learned on the internet. She gives him glasses to wear at work “if” he needs her “orders”, and he always wears them - and they really suit him :-) Good choice.

And it’s him the one to say that there will be no sex.

They meet once a week, starting slow, learning together. He gifts her red shoes with high heels, that she wears to press them on his back.

Hiwoo’s boss doesn’t think much of women and I think he gives them more work.

Now Jiwoo has to tutor the new guy Han, and Jihoo gets jealous. He gets punished in the office, because he wants to, but she has never hit him before, yet, so he asks her to. She’s not ready for that so instead he suggests insults. It’s… liberating for them both, I think :lol:

I think this is the only scene with bad words.

She keeps learning and asking questions, but is also very understanding, she even hits him and takes care of him afterwards. 

It’s been almost three months since they started, and she “orders” him to go out with her, be her boyfriend, but he refuses. Hana left him traumatized…

A girl tries to take his glasses, he moves away, and they make it seem like it’s his fault if now it’s an embarrassing moment, I think it’s her fault, does she know about boundaries and stuff? Personal space, keep your hands to yourself, and all that?

For their last session, he prepared a great dinner, but Hana came to throw the dishes on the floor.

Jiwoo ties him up and when she tells him to have no regrets since this is their final game, he kisses her, passionately, but it’s too much for her, now, so it ends there and she walks out.

He stops wearing the glasses and it’d be the end, but Han has a recording of them playing and talking in the office and emails it to her in warning, only he sends it to everyone by mistake. Now everyone knows, and there’s an official enquiry and they might get fired. 

She won’t cower, though, it’s her private life. At the office hearing he feels so guilty and he yells at them for disrespecting her, and tells her that he likes her, he’s in love with her, so she settles for ‘being improper’ only in private. She asks Han if his recorder got any other ‘improper’ conversation, and of course it did, and when those get around too they’re not fired. 

Jihoo gets suspended and Jiwoo has a salary reduction for three months.

They’re a couple now, understanding and loving, and the last scene shows how they can be loving in a ds relationship, how playful it can be, and they’re so happy and in love, it’s lovely :-)

P.s. I really liked her mom.

Jiwoo is Seohyun

Jihoo is Lee Jun-young

ITA amore e guinzagli