On Negative Movie Reviews

Speaking of New York Times reviews: when you write a negative one, you should be extra-careful and check all the accusations you impugn the movie with. A classic example is the review for "Donnie Darko":

Donnie Darko - Review - Movies - New York Times: "Correction: November 1, 2001, Thursday A film review of ''Donnie Darko'' on Friday referred incorrectly to the age of Duran Duran's song ''Notorious.'' It was released in 1986, not in the 1990's, and was therefore correctly used in the film, which is set in 1988."

Looks like the reviewer was in a particularly unreceptive mood when he wrote up that one, eh? This, for a movie I consider to be quite good---highly recommended.

That said, usually the best movie reviews, and the most fun, are the negative ones, especially when they are fair. Some favorites:

• Pauline Kael on "Dances with Wolves": "Costner has feathers in his hair and feathers in his head."
  
• Anthony Lane's New Yorker review of "Star Wars: Episode III":

  The general opinion of “Revenge of the Sith” seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, “The Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones.” True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion.

• Speaking of which: The FlickPhilosopher's review of "The Passion of the Christ":
  

  If you were an extraterrestrial who'd just landed from outer space and knew nothing about the story of Jesus, this film wouldn't teach you a thing, but it might sicken you to see audiences cheering and applauding a relentless, two-hour-long depiction of the brutal torture and murder of a human being.

And, finally, most reviews of "The Matrix III". I could barely stand part II, so I skipped the thrid one. But this did not prevent me from enjoying the reviews. Here's a sampler, gathered from the Rotten Tomatoes collection of Matrix III reviews:

1. The only feeling generated by The Matrix Revolutions is the cold, annoying notion that a large amount of your time has been wasted. Thank God (or Neo) it's over. (Philadelphia Weekly)
2. Among its casualties is the benefit of the doubt that a few deluded types (myself included) gave The Matrix Reloaded (USA Today).
3. The scariest moment in the movie was when it intimated that there might yet be another episode (Yahoo movie mom).
4. As the buffed, multi-coloured and almost uniformly self-important denizens of the besieged underworld city of Zion madly prepare themselves for the assault by the machines whose power they have threatened, you half expect bazooka packing Jar Jar Binks to run by (Toronto Star).
5. At the risk of understatement, The Matrix Revolutions sucks. (Rolling Stone)
6. Third 'Matrix' installment is revolting, dumb. (SF examiner headline)
7. The resolution of the machine/human war is preposterous, there's not a semblance of a story, and the dialogue sounds like it was written by George Lucas.
8. Great line: "Everything that has a beginning has an end." Thank goodness.
9. I'm so stunned and bewildered that I can't even manage to be angry. The first stage of grief is denial, after all: I'll just pretend that The Matrix Revolutions never happened.
10. About the only good thing about it is that it (hopefully) means this will be the last we'll see of Neo and company for a long time.
11. What happened to the Wachowskis? Can they have regressed this far?
    
    
    Their debut film, "Bound," was a deliciously twisted, intelligently adult thriller. "The Matrix" made clever use of one extraordinary science fiction idea and lots of great fight scenes. "The Matrix Reloaded" barely passed muster on the fight scenes alone, and now the childish "The Matrix Revolutions" offers ... nothing. (Combustible celluloid)
    
    
    
12. Everything that has a beginning has an end. But unfortunately, Hollywood's new money-making scheme of making two movies out of one shows no sign of slackening. What is the Matrix?, the first film asked. This film answers that. The Matrix is the marketing software that encourages movies like this to be made. And it must be disabled.
    (Newark Star Ledger)
    

My own take: the best parts of "The Matrix" were in the first movie, when "real-life" and "matrix" blended, and one was not sure what was real. It was spooky and mysterious, and the possibilities were endless for a sequel grounded in "the real world". All that mystery disappeared in the second half of movie #1.

I had a lot of fun watching The Matrix pt. 1 in the theater, though. It was a good example of a "good performance" for a movie: each showing can be different, depending on how the audience reacts. (This also made some of Stanford's flicks great fun, even when the movie was not that good.) I still remember a woman sitting in the row ahead of us, who laughed her head off every time some mumbo-jumbo about Artificial Intelligence was mentioned in the movie. She probably worked in AI.