The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

The Matrix franchise is in a weird place, historically speaking. The 1999 original is an unquestionably seismic event in pop culture writ large, and as a film it holds up. Its sequels are almost universally reviled (albeit undergoing a bit of a reexamination), while its expanded universe has been nigh forgotten. And so it was that we were all a bit surprised that original director Lana Wachowski announced she’d be returning to the franchise, without sister Lilly but with returning stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss. Did we need this, we asked, and would it be any good?

For my part, I found The Matrix Resurrections to be fantastic, almost as good as the original despite playing an entirely different game in a creative sandbox I didn’t realize had much more to say.

 

Video game designer Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) has the suspicion that his world is not real. When his boss (Jonathan Groff) insists that Mr. Anderson revisit his most famous creation, a trilogy of games called “The Matrix,” the déjà vu starts hitting pretty intensely. There’s Tiffany (Carrie-Anne Moss), the woman at the coffee shop to whom he feels inexplicably drawn; the colorful Bugs (Jessica Henwick), who insists she knows Mr. Anderson as the savior Neo; and a dapper man in sunglasses (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who looks and acts a great deal like Morpheus, one of the characters from the “Matrix” games. 

 

I’m being a little bit vague about the plot of the film because I think The Matrix Resurrections works best when you allow it to unfold itself like a puzzle box. Embrace the cognitive dissonance, ride the wave, and let the story play itself out. Put another way, no one should explain The Matrix Resurrections to you, but you should experience it for yourself. From the earliest trailers, fans were starting to piece together some of what the film might be about, but we only scratched the surface of the plot. Underneath the literal level of things that happen in the film, there is a wealth of self-aware and recursive subtext, somehow managing to reenact the original film while commenting on it and doing something different.

 

As before, the film is a kind of “awakening” story, and once again Wachowski has managed to put the audience right next to Neo as he discovers the truth about the world around him. We too are just as disoriented as Neo; we’ve seen The Matrix and its sequels, and we know that there are characters in this film who are supposed to be dead, while others are wearing new faces. Lines of dialogue, visual motifs, and even musical cues recur in unexpected ways, to say nothing of the intrusive but compelling smash cuts of archival footage from the original films. Like a two-hour mainline dose of mystery, The Matrix Resurrections keeps you engaged and guessing without losing sight of the emotional relationship that holds these characters – and this universe, this franchise – together. It’s the bond between these characters, Wachowski argues, not the sci-fi trappings or the kung fu action, that makes The Matrix what it is. It’d be overly on-the-nose if it weren’t so effective.

 

Of course, I’m a big fan of successful puzzle box movies like this one, so it really strikes a chord for me. I understand it may not land as well for someone expecting more of, say, the innovative bullet time sequences or the note-perfect freeway chase setpiece of The Matrix Reloaded. But that again is sort of the point of the film; having done those films already, Wachowski and her characters are doing something new, living a new life in something that both is and is not the Matrix we remember. From a certain vantage point, the action sequences are unfulfilling and unsuccessful, failing to push the boundaries of choreography and special effects the way the originals did. However, I don’t think Wachowski is as interested in those aspects of her story, just as her characters are equally keen to avoid them.

 

Though twenty years have passed since The Matrix Revolutions, Reeves and Moss slip into their roles with grace and precision. While they are getting back into themselves as characters, the audience never feels as though these aren’t Neo and Trinity. Keanu Reeves has been achieving a Neeson-in-Taken level of success in headlining the John Wick films, but here he truly reminds you that Neo was the role he was born to play; meanwhile Moss is so compelling that you’ll wonder why she hasn’t been a bigger star post-Matrix. I can’t say too much about the new stars without getting into spoiler territory, but I will note that Neil Patrick Harris is a real scene-stealer as Thomas Anderson’s therapist, helping him come to terms with his failing grasp on reality. Harris is a kind of update on one of the original trilogy’s most thankless roles, but with his blue glasses and air of legitimate concern, Harris’s analyst makes one of the strongest arguments for more of these films. 

 

It’s not much of a spoiler to say that the end of Matrix Resurrections seems to be a collision of the endings of the last three films; there’s an impossible feat or two, a monologue from a program about the future, and the promise of a new tomorrow. Lana Wachowski has expressed no interest in a fifth or sixth Matrix film, though one imagines Warner Bros. would like to see at least one more. (Indeed, one of the film’s best gags is when Thomas Anderson learns that his Matrix video game sequel is being commissioned by his parent company, Warner Bros. itself.) If there’s more, I am just as surprised as you are to want it. But The Matrix Resurrections is – for lack of a more colorful descriptor – really, really good. It’s better than I expected, and it turns out to have been exactly what I wanted from a legacy sequel.

 

The Matrix Resurrections is rated R for “violence and some language.” Directed by Lana Wachowski. Written by Lana Wachowski, David Mitchell, and Aleksandar Hemon. Starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, and Neil Patrick Harris. 

Jessica Jones (2015)

It took me four days to get through the Netflix-exclusive Daredevil back in April, but this weekend’s release of Jessica Jones only lasted me two days. Not that Marvel has delivered fewer than 13 episodes this time around – same Bat-time, same Bat-channel, true believers. It’s just that I found Jessica Jones more engaging, more accomplished, and more addicting than the already first-rate Daredevil. As wonderful as Marvel’s first Netflix series was, Jessica Jones is the new crown jewel in Marvel’s television stable.

Krysten Ritter stars as the eponymous private investigator, hard-talking and even harder-drinking. Using her remarkable super-strength only when she has to, Jessica picks up the case of a missing athlete (Erin Moriarty), only to discover that the case is linked to an old enemy (David Tennant), whose fixation on Jessica makes him a dangerous foe. Against her instinct to isolate herself, Jessica draws on the help of her old friend Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor) and new flame Luke Cage (Mike Colter), while her lawyer/employer Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss) wrestles with an impending divorce.

I’ll say right off the bat that I think the major reason I rank Jessica Jones more highly than Daredevil is freshness. Not that Daredevil was stale, by any measure – and I should also clarify that my praise of Jessica Jones isn’t at all to denigrate Daredevil; rather, it’s a mark of how much higher Jessica Jones sets the bar, due largely to the character’s novelty. We all had a sense of how Daredevil was going to play out, tracing the simultaneous rise of Hell’s Kitchen’s greatest hero and villain, culminating with... well, you know how these kinds of stories play out.

A few hours into Jessica Jones, I realized that I couldn’t say the same for this show. I know how I wanted it to end, certainly, but I couldn’t guarantee that we’d get the ending we wanted. Indeed, there are a number of twists and turns in the show that I honestly didn’t see coming, which makes for a comparably more enjoyable show in terms of edge-of-the-seat viewing. I don’t want to spoil anything here, but the narrative winds around story beats that are really only possible when a character isn’t caught up in 50 years of iconic stories (because let’s face it, Daredevil has had many long-running arcs to which any adaptation must pay homage).

At the center of it all, you have two extraordinarily dynamic performances from Ritter and Tennant, who get to play off each other much more than Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio, who were kept apart for much of Daredevil. Ritter gives Jessica Jones the hard edge the character needs, distinguishing her from other “strong female protagonists” by emphasizing the brokenness under the surface, a tragedy repressed by alcohol, cynicism, and casual sex. Her character crackles, especially in scenes with Tennant, who plays the sadistic sociopath Kilgrave (known to comics fans as the mind-controlling Purple Man). Tennant is getting cascades of praise for his role as the show’s villain, and rightly so – short of Kingpin and maybe Loki, Kilgrave is Marvel’s new best villain because of how intensely and immediately loathsome he is. And yet – there’s a creepy way that Tennant pitches for the audience’s sympathy, even in light of his casual and frankly terrifying violence; there’s something of Kingpin’s childish tantrums in Kilgrave, but in a way that’s more horrifying for how little he seems to care.

The supporting cast are equally strong, with only Colter’s Luke Cage managing to wrestle the show away from its two leads – in large part, that’s due to Luke being next in line for his own Marvel show, but he also has a unique chemistry with Jessica that makes me think neither standalone show will be getting a second season; rather, I’d put money on a Jones/Cage team-up (following, I’d wager, the comics couple’s quirky courtship). There are winks and nods to elsewhere in the Marvel continuity; the films are kept at arm’s length, but we have allusions to Hellcat, Nuke, Iron Fist, and maybe even Spider-Woman and Gladiator (because, to be fair, how many Melvins are running around Hell’s Kitchen?). But as a piece, Jessica Jones doesn’t feel too tied into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. I think there’s room in the MCU for these standalone stories, which can easily be woven into the larger tapestry later. With Jessica Jones, Ritter is poised to be the next big star of the MCU, and it’s easy to imagine an Avenger turning to her to track down someone, or just to lift a car over her head.

Along with feeling a step away from the MCU proper, there is the matter of tone to consider – by which I mean that Jessica Jones is the uneasiest entry in the ten years of Marvel productions, giving me the feeling of physical revulsion more often than ever. At one point, I literally had to stop and shower, and not just because I’d been in my pajamas for hours at a stretch. This show is much more uncomfortable, more unsettling, and more frank than anything else we’ve seen with a Stan Lee cameo (and yes, he’s in there). Kudos to the showrunners for sticking to a vision and a tone which must have rattled the bottom-line-conscious brass.

Jessica Jones is dark, it’s daring, it’s uncomfortable – and it’s bloody brilliant, television most foul as in the best it is. As the best binges induce, I want more.

Jessica Jones is rated TV-MA. As Marvel productions go, it’s the sexiest; although there’s no nudity, there are some pretty intense sex scenes and frank discussions of rape. Language is fairly salty in the S-words range, but the violence is substantially less graphic than in Daredevil. Psychologically, though, it’s much more troubling.

Memento (2000)

Memento was Christopher Nolan's first big picture (a smaller film called Following preceded it), but it's indicative of the caliber of filmmaker Nolan is that Memento displays none of the unpolished nascence that many "early films" possess. Instead, it's a smart film, engaging in many of the same ways that Nolan's other films are.

The protagonist of Memento is Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), a former insurance salesman who, following the murder of his wife, is no longer able to form new memories; since he has only a weak short-term memory, Leonard must write down or photograph anything he needs to remember. Leonard is aided by Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss, in her pre-Matrix days), who has also lost someone, and Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), a cop who apparently was one of Leonard's wife's attackers. Take note - that's not a spoiler. The entire film is told backwards, with Leonard killing Teddy at the beginning of the film. Consequently, the film unwinds in reverse, putting the audience in Leonard's shoes as we try to connect scenes and uncover motivations.

The hallmark of any Christopher Nolan movie is its intellect, and Memento is as sharp as anything else Nolan's done thus far - perhaps even smarter than its successors (though Inception is pretty darned brainy). What's particularly brilliant about Memento is the way that it creates and sustains audience interest by forcing us to feel the psychological plight of Leonard; just as he cannot remember where he has been, so too are we left in the dark, fumbling for answers about backstory. When Leonard asks himself (as he does repeatedly), "Where am I?" the audience is asking right along. But the added level of ingenuity comes from the fact that the film doesn't simply feel like it was written forward and then put backward; the screenplay instead makes perfect sense in its own nonlinear format, spiraling backward to answer one mystery while asking yet another. It's like Lost at its most addictive, with a plot twist every five minutes - only here, the mysteries matter, and most of them are answered at the ending.

No, Memento doesn't tie everything in a neat little bow; like a crazy straw, it forces the viewer to work hard and only then follow the path that the film has taken. If you're coming to a Christopher Nolan movie without moral noir in your bloodstream, you're in the wrong theater. Memento, like everything else Nolan has done, is marked by brutally murky shades of moral ambiguity, especially once the film reveals who's lying to whom (hint: the lies we tell ourselves, the film suggests, may be the deadliest of all). Consequently, the film hits what might be a slip-up for some; Memento appears on first glance (and even on second) to fail to explain the significance of the story of Sammy Jankis, here heartbreakingly played by the criminally underrated Cinema King-favorite Stephen Tobolowsky. Sammy Jankis suffers from the same disorder Leonard does, and Leonard tells the story of Sammy Jankis throughout the film; he even has "Remember Sammy Jankis" tattooed on his hand. But remember him why? The lies told by characters throughout the film call into question the integrity of the Sammy Jankis narrative, to the point where you'll ask the question that almost every Nolan film inevitably invites - is any of this even real? If the ambiguity weren't intentional, I'd be complaining, but I think I've got it cracked, anyway. (Hint: it's all about lying.)

But there are other things going on in the film other than cerebral interrogations of morality and the art of knowing things. There are some very good performances, chief among them Pearce's; though Pearce has been a favorite of mine since his turn as the villainous Mondego in 2002's The Count of Monte Cristo, Memento is probably his strongest role, equal parts mysterious and mystified and perfectly plausible as a man with all the answers but who has forgotten where he has put them. Moss is solid and a little shady as Natalie, making me mourn the fact that The Matrix series seems to have put an otherwise promising career on hold, and as Teddy "Joey Pants" reminds me how delightfully seedy he always is (particularly in his top role, as the scummy Ralphie on The Sopranos). And I've already praised Tobolowsky, with whom readers should know I'm cinematically in love.

Memento is certainly not for everyone. It's intelligent unlike a lot of what Hollywood's churning out, but its downer note on the human condition's tragic attraction to self-destructive moral uncertainty. But for anyone acquainting themselves with Nolan's oeuvre, Memento is a fine place to continue your sojourn. Just try to keep up.

Memento is rated R "for violence, language and some drug content." The violence gets a little on the bloody side in a few fight scenes, and the film isn't shy about F-bombs (about 75). There's some brief discussion about rape, an implied romantic interlude, and fleeting rear nudity during a fight scene that seems like a precursor to Eastern Promises.