The Matrix (1999)

April 3, 1999Posted in1990s, Action, Australia, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Martial Arts, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

***/****
starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving
written and directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski (née The Wachowski Brothers)

by Vincent Suarez There's an early moment in The Matrix when Keanu Reeves's character retrieves contraband from a hollowed-out copy of one of the canonical texts of Postmodernism, Simulacra and Simulation, in which Jean Baudrillard suggests that modern reality is little more than a series of items and experiences replicating all that has come before; that ours is a reality comprising resemblances. It's details like these which elevate The Matrix above the vast majority of recent science-fiction films. Yet, like the strain of contemporary philosophy informing it, The Matrix is full of inconsistencies and contradictions, holes you could drive a truck through… But it's a scenic drive.

Analyze This (1999)

March 8, 1999Posted in1990s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Gangster, Robert De Niro, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Robert DeNiro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Chazz Palminteri
screenplay by Peter Tolan and Harold Ramis and Ken Lonergan
directed by Harold Ramis

by Bill Chambers Robert De Niro is not a comedian. He used this to his advantage in what is arguably his best performance, as The King of Comedy's Rupert Pupkin. In that 1982 media-age satire from Martin Scorsese, a film that becomes more prophetic with each passing year, Pupkin is a struggling comedian obsessed with talk-show host Jerry Langford (a self-parodying Jerry Lewis) and the thought of appearing on his program. Pupkin's routines, however, are painfully unfunny; moreover, he is blithely unaware of their mediocrity. That his jokes don't sound like they were written to bomb (they're like warmed-over Henny Youngman one-liners) is because of De Niro's desperate delivery–the actor has awful comic timing in his bones.