This week, we welcome fellow blogger, film critic and rampant drunkard, Al K Hall to our pages once more, as he stumbles his way through the Matrix Trilogy and delivers his verdict. Hard to say how this is going to go, but knowing Al, you’re about to have your life enlightened. Al, man, put that glass down and get to tellin’ these fine folks what you thought of Keanu and Co in the Matrices, okay?

The Matrix Spillogy

Here’s what it is. The Matrix movies are a visual symbolization of a drinking binge. Go ahead and pretend like you don’t know this, yeah yeah yeah, but deep down you know i’m right.

The first movie, Matricks,is the buzz rush of an impromptu party you can’t believe you were lucky enough to be invited to. Matrix Loaded is after you’ve had too much and start purging. Matrix Revulsion is the post-party hangover and depression.

Don’t believe me if you don’t want to but keep it to yourself so you don’t feel stupid after you read this and realize exactly how exact i am.

Matricks

The first Matrix was a beautiful accident like a party you’re not ready for that takes you on a ride so wild it goes faster than the speed of fun so that you don’t realize how much of a blast each instant is until the instant just after it passes.

Beginning with the scene of a hot chick in tight pvc running on the walls, kicking cop ass and landing in a pose before the agents chase her on the rooftops until she jumps through a window to a phone booth hit by a dump truck she escapes from through a phone before Neo’s computer tells him to follow a white rabbit to the Rob Zombie club where he meets Trinity the night before he goes to work where he receives an express mail envelope with a phone that rings and tells him he’s being chased and how to escape but he freaks out on the ledge so gets arrested and loses his mouth (!?) then Smith drops a bug on him through his navel that gets sucked out the same way by a chick with a machine in the back seat of a car going to a house where he takes the red pill and his hand melds with a mirror that goes down his throat and chokes him awake in a pod and pulls a tube out his throat before flying insect robots attack him as he’s evacuated down a sewer and picked up by a space ship.

[Boring explanation of the Matrix which is like taking a pee at the party because nothing of note happens until the… ]

Cool sparring with Morpheus teaching him but he fails the jump scene and his scoping the girl with the red dress is interrupted by a sentinel when Cypher gives him homemade hooch then goes to eat steaks with agents while the others eat gruelling food before Morpheus takes Neo to the Oracle but gets kidnapped after a huge chase into the walls they fall down to the shootout in the basement while Morpheus gets his ass whipped by Smith when Cypher kills Tank and unplugs people who die but Tank isn’t dead and shoots Cypher and brings Neo and Trinity back so they can rescue Morpheus which is one of the top ten coolest scenes ever beginning with the shelves of guns and walking through the metal detector then opening their coats and the shootout and Carrie-Anne Moss wall running up to the roof and the famous bullet dodging scene to Trinity jumping out of the helicopter Neo is holding until it crashes into the building in slo-mo to get Morpheus and Trinity to safety so Neo can fight Smith in the subway then, while he escapes, the sentinels attack the hoovership and Smith kills Neo who comes back to life and stops bullets then jumps inside Smith to kill him before he gets back in the ship and the squiggies get zapped.

Phew. The movie is exactly that kind of nonstop drunk rush. Too bad we have to pay for it in the second movie, Matrix Loaded.

 

 

Matrix Loaded

You know how you get super drunk at some party that’s one of the top ten best parties of your life? On your way out the door all want more than another drink is for the feeling to continue so you decide to go to an after party and who can blame you? Except the problem is that kind of good time is once in a lifetime and the only thing that comes up at the after-party is all the drinks you downed at the real party but now the magic is gone and it ain’t never coming back, baby. That’s exactly the kind of let down in store with Matrix (re)Loaded.

This movie was a failure for two simple misconceptions made by the Brothers WTFuxey. The first is that they assumed Keanu Reeves could act. The second is that they thought we the viewers were more interested in the description of the Matrix concept than the kickass nonstop action of the first film. What’s next after you get super drunk at a rocking party? You got it, it makes you sick.

Matrix Loaded starts off good with Trinity exploding a building by jumping off the motorcycle she lets fly into the office while she does a flip and pops off a couple rounds but then, after a cool chase scene in a free fall, the dream ends. Literally. The disappointment hits you like a wave of nausea when we’re in bed with Neo and he’s shaking off a dream sequence. Unfortunately, he’s the lucky one because for us the nightmare is just beginning.

During the next scene people stand around talking and you can feel your tongue thicken and taste the back of your mouth. Then during the first fight scene which is a cut and paste of any fight from the first film only shorter, your throat starts throbbing and the sickness hits you hard the instant we learn Neo can fly — RAALLPPHH. Then Neo Trinity romance: RRRAAALLLPPPHHH. Zion blah blah blah blah RALPH.

And then the Rave Scene. Find a friend to hold your hair back at the Rave Scene. Tell you what, i timed the rave scene. From the end of the priest’s rave prayer to the end of the techno dancing is exactly 7 minutes 28.6 seconds of your life that you’re not ever going to get back again, babes.

Then Keanu Reeves naked–RRRAAALLLLPPPHHH. More blah blah blah RALPH. Stupid fight with Asian dude for no other reason than the Wtfuxey Brothers knew they were being too boring. RALPH. Boring blah blah explanations RALPH. Stupid fight with Smiths when he does the same fight he’s always done and flies away after 20 minutes when he coulda just done it at the very beginning. Blah blah blah blah blah Ralph ralph ralph. Monica Belucci hmmmmmm, that feels better.

Here’s the secret to avoiding the technicolor burps: begin movie at precisely 1h19m55s. Not only is the freeway chase one of the ultimate chase scenes in any movie of all time, it is the only scene worth watching in the entirety of Matrix (re)Loaded. After the truck explodes turn off the movie or prepare to Ralph again when they do yet another cut and paste battle. Then he meets the architect blah blah blah Ralph Ralph Ralph then Neo saves Trinity by sticking his hand in her chest cavity and playing with her heart like a used tied-off condom RALPH RALPH RALPH. Then it ends in the middle with a “To Be Concluded” like this is an all new very special Christmas episode of Grey’s Anatomy: RALPH add nauseum.

Matrix Revulsion

You know how you wake up with a hangover? After the initial fun flood of the night before, and the power-hurling that followed it, you pass out and then wake up with the desperate hope because you got sick all night that you won’t have a hangover the next day. It’s with this hope that we begin Matrix Revulsion, but pretty much right at the outset that dream crashes around us like a tidal wave of nausea. In the first few lines of interminable exposition dialog it’s clear that Matrix: Revulsion is going to lean more towards Matrix: Loaded than Matricks. The only option left the viewer is that proffered by hangovers: to lie there and do nothing, kind of like the movie.

To kill time and mask the pain, i decided to review Revulsion real time. What follows is the movie blow by blown.

2m48s: Like after a binge, my memories of last night are vague and I wake up lost with my blurred recollections of some guy in a white suit called The Architect babbling but i can’t remember what he said.

3m58s: The Machines are reaching Zion in 20 hours. Something solid i’ll be able to keep down. Like any hangover, this has now become a waiting game.

4m51s: Train station to the Matrix? WTF!? i blacked out more of the last one than i thought.

8m30s: The Indians are programs. Yeah, that’s not racist at all. And the wife is “interactive”. i bet she is…

14m08s: The little kid program has bags? What the hell does software pack?

16m29s: Cool fight but nothing compared to the Trinity / Neo fight in the lobby of Matrix 1.

19m28s: i bet Monica Bellucci’s boobs generate their own gravity field.

23m42s: Neo and Trinity are reunited. i can feel the sickness shudder through me.

27m04s: The Oracle explains shit to Neo and i realize this truly is a hangover: painful and boring at the same time.

46m20s: Yes, i’m still awake but just nothing has happened yet.

52m26s: The voice, the intonation, the language… How can it be that no one recognizes Bane is Smith? i freaking knew it from the second he opened his mouth and i don’t have even one iota of the mental capacity these mental peeps are s’posed to have.

56m24s: i’m starting to drift off—merciful sleep.

1h00m23s: Cool robots that people ride and use as weapons. Pro’lly why Avatar stole them.

1h05m21s: Cool battle scene.

1h18m36s: Good part is over. So much for the only 18m13s of the movie i’ll enjoy.

1h23m02: So what if Neo fails? He’ll just try again like the other Neo’s before him at the end of Loaded.

1h32m22s: Jesus christ, would Trinity just please hurry up and die?

1h33m16s: The WTFuxey brothers are cruel for trying to make Keanu act. At least they were nice to us by cutting the Sad Keanu scene to a few measly seconds.

1h36m07s: Why do the sentinels have to form the shape of a giant face for Neo when he’s blind?

1h38m41s: Why don’t the other Smiths join in the final fight with Neo? They did in Loaded and won so hard Neo had to run out of the playground.

1h49m40s: Why the f*ck did Neo and Smith have to have that huge long fight when all Neo needed Smith to do was punch him in the gut?

1h55m37s: i did it! i survived! Like a hangover or sticking my tongue in a shredder, i feel better now that it’s over.

Matrix Spillogy: Wiping Up

Fortunately, there are some key differences between the Matrix Spillogy and a wild night on, around and under the town. For example, partying all night is almost as exciting as the first Matrix but the agony and the suffering of the 2nd and 3rd Matrixes are a lot easier to avoid than the special after-effects of partying. You can watch Matrix over and over while quashing the puking of Reloaded and the hangover of Revolution by simply ignoring them. Try doing that after swallowing the red pill. And the blue pill. And a whole bunch of other colored pills with scotch. See?

Al K Hall is the bartender of The Bar None, a drinkers website devoted to all things alcamahol. Do yaself a favor and trip on over there for a look; Al will probably pour you a drink and that’ll be the last you remember for a while! Click the below link to be transported to the Bar None!

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