Movie Talk - The Animatrix

Well, we got a couple of days until The Matrix Resurrections is released in theaters. Like most, I’ll be watching from home on HBO Max, but I know this would be a good theater experience. Now that I got that retrospective out of the way, I can finally talk about the Animatrix. This was an anthology film that was released in June 2003 at around the same time Reloaded was out. Man, WB was pushing it hard with this series since Enter The Matrix was released on the PS2 about a month earlier. I really never got around to watching the Animatrix until just recently. I think I ended up seeing a bit of it airing on TNT a few years ago though.

The Animatrix houses nine short films that are supposed to fill in the backstory of the franchise. The Wachowskis were producers and even wrote the scripts for some of the films. Each film was helmed by an anime director. This worked out pretty well since anime has influenced the Wachowskis’ work. I don’t know of them too well, but a lot of these guys worked on big things like Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Afro Samurai, and Aeon Flux. If you’re looking to compare this to anything, it would be Batman: Gotham Knight, a movie that uses the same format to tell stories about the Nolan version of Batman. A review of that is also here somewhere.

Random Thoughts On... Re-Evaulating the Matrix Trilogy

Since The Matrix is making a comeback to movie theaters, I’ve been a bit stoked. I’m actually looking more forward to this than the other movie coming out at around that time, Spider-Man: No Way Home. I think that just shows how uninterested I am in MCU’s Spider-Man. Heck, I haven’t even seen Far From Home yet. Maybe I’ll see it when Andy turns 5 or something…

Anyway, I had been revisiting the Matrix trilogy on HBO Max for a while now. While the first one still holds up well (well “Not like this” is a bit funny), the sequels are still okay at best. My son started crying when the Architect showed up, but that may have been because he was hungry. I think my term “Overblown Epicness” still applies for those last two movies. I had talked about the trilogy years ago on the blog. I was going to go ahead and talk about the Animatrix which I finally saw a couple of weeks ago, but I think it’s time for me to reevaluate what I think of the trilogy. Yeah, others have done it, so I might as well throw my two quarters in.

 

"It's a Video Game" - My Time with Mass Effect: Legendary Edition Part 1

Since I've been pretty busy doing just about everything, I haven't had much time to post here. One reason for that is because I've been knees deep in the Mass Effect universe... again. I've been pretty much on ME since Andy's been born since I've been going through all three games. My replay's gone down well overall. While kicking Collector and Reaper butt is cool, the one place I had to revisit was the first Mass Effect game since it was revamped just a bit. So, I'll just talk about it a bit and show off some pics I made with the new photo mode.

Jumping back in this first game was fun. It felt like coming home, but the home had been refurbished and looked more modern. Things in the game are pretty much the same story-wise. I did skip that one mission that was DLC (Project X57) because I mainly wanted to focus on the missions and characters. Things do change when we get to the character creation. Thankfully, someone knew I'd be playing "Black Shepard" again because I actually have a fresh haircut! I didn't play FemShep, but I heard that she's gotten the same upgrades with looks.

The graphics look beautiful. The graphics for the game initially were good for its time, but Bioware really put their work into making the first outing look good. The gameplay is much more refined. Gunplay is much better here than it was in the original. Another thing that got a giant overall was the Mako. Yes, it still handles poorly at times, but taht's the fun part of the Mako. Aiming on that thing has also been upgraded, and you can actually hit things! As for any negatives, I have none. I could nitpick about maybe something new story-wise being added, but what we got here is awesome. Check it out.

This is Halloween! - "Bela Legosi's Dead"

For this next post, I thought I’d continue down the rabbit hole of the vampire. Maybe that Batman/Dracula movie would’ve suited better here, but it is what is. When it comes to the big monsters, vampires aren’t exactly on my list of favorites… well, Blade is, but the Daywalker is one bad brother. Also, Angel’s a good vampire… when he isn’t sometimes transforming into Angelus. Unfortunately, I have no Dark Shadows episodes for today, but these definitely fit with that gothic feel… well, three of them do. So, here a couple of recent watches, one of the first movies I watched on HBO Max, and one of the worst things I’ve watched in years.

This is Halloween! - More Sci-fi Horror Goodness (?) and Batman

Well, it’s another week before Halloween, and I got a few more spooky themed things to share. While my first three pick are recent viewings, my last pick is something I saw sometime ago on HBO Max. So, let’s start out with another homage of Aliens and the Shining!

Pandorum

Pandorum was released to little fanfare in 2009. I vaguely remember seeing something about this movie around that time, but I never saw it. The movie is about how what was left of humanity took to the stars to find a new home. Since it’s a long trip, most of the crew spends their time in hypersleep. The movie starts when two officers come out of hypersleep to find the ship’s active crew missing. While Officer Payton (Dennis Quaid) stays behind on the bridge, Officer Bower (Ben Foster) searches the ship for the crew and any other signs of life. Bower finds a lot more than he expected since cannibalistic creatures have taken root. Unfortunately, that’s the least of his problems since there’s this little space disorder called Pandorum that can make most men go mad.

So, this is what happened to Faora in the Phantom Zone! Yeah, that's Faora there!

I didn’t know what to expect with this one. While the ratings say otherwise, a lotta folk like this movie, and I can see why. It’s pretty bare-bones with the plot, but a lot of things do work here. The atmosphere of this derelict ship is good. The interior is pretty creepy. The creatures, or “The Hunters” look pretty scary. You don’t learn too much about them at first, but you get the idea that something happened to some of the humans on board. The cast was fine for the most part. Ben Foster, Antje Traue, and Dennis Quaid do a good job here.