Movie Review

Another sad, pale adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story this time featuring a rather bored looking Ben Affleck (or is that an oxymoron?) as Michael Jennings, a reverse-engineer who routinely agrees to have his mind “wiped” to erase any trace of the project he’s just completed. Taking on a three year project for his old friend James Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart as stock villain #32 (the greedy businessman)) will mean wiping more of his memory than has ever been attempted. The big paycheck, a guaranteed eight figures, combined with the chance to get close to biologist Rachel Porter (Uma Thurman once again miscast) spur Jennings into signing three years of his life away.
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Sofia Coppola’s sophomore effort is a one woman show despite being produced by her famous papa (director Francis of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now fame). How interesting that her father has been so involved in her film career that this young woman would helm not one but two movies that deal with the intimate details of being completely disconnected from your life.
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All I have to say is: New Zealand is very pretty and thank god this is the last film.

And all this rot because the elves (you can never trust an elf, anyone with half a brain knows this) couldn’t do what needed to be done (destroy the ring) in the first place.

– – – – – – Spoiler Alert – – – – – –

Frodo fails, miserably. He gives in to the temptations of the ring. The only reason it gets destroyed in the end, and it does get destroyed, is because Sam wants to go home. He wants to see his beloved shire, to sit in the grass in the warm breeze with a cold mug beside him before he dies.

Aragorn gets crowned king, as we all knew he would right from the beginning, and Frodo and his Uncle end up sailing off with the elves, for we know they can’t be trusted because of the taint of having borne the ring.

When will it be time for Episode III of Star Wars and how badly is that going to suck?

Like most of his other books, Timeline read less like a novel and more like the treatment for a screenplay. Sadly, the movie Timeline is but a shadow of Crichton’s novel.
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My experience with The Matrix Revolutions got me to thinking about sequels, and, god for bid, “franchise” movies.

Most franchises go at least three movies; two movies and all you have is an original and a sequel. With most franchises the first movie, say Star Wars, was an incredible innovation or a bigger hit than the film makers expected it to be so it spawned a sequel. Some franchises, Batman, started out as something else in another medium, hence they showed up on the screen with a built in fan base and all the first movie needed to do was toe the fan party line enough not to alienate existing fans while being different enough from the original idea that spawned the movie to attract viewers that may have disregarded the same plots and characters in their original medium. No matter what, each franchise breaks down completely by the third movie, losing any originality it had in the first place, as well as, in the end, betraying the qualities which made the first film such a spectacular hit. Take The Matrix series as an example.

The Matrix was visually stunning. Special effects like movie audiences had never seen before wrapped up inside a script containing a plot about a young man accepting his destiny and a theme that pushed the boundaries on the nature of reality. The Matrix Reloaded was, in some ways, the middle act of a traditional three-act story arc and it suffered all the same problems. It got bogged down by its theme and any semblance of plot was, essentially, buried. The Matrix Revolutions, like most third-in-the-series films, was a complete digression from both the first film’s theme and from any sort of coherent development of previous plot points. The Matrix series is a fairly unique example of The Law of Threes. Most often, a series will follow another pattern altogether.
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