Film: DVD Reviews
Enter 'The Matrix' again for an effects how-to
By Omar L. GallagaApril 8, 2004
'The Matrix Revolutions'
($29.95, Warner Home Video)
(movie)
(DVD format and extras)
The release of "The Matrix Revolutions" is one of those increasingly common home-video events in which the movie doesn't stand very well on its own, but is still worth owning on DVD.
Like the second film in the "Matrix" trilogy, "Reloaded," "Revolutions" suffers from its wade through a murky metaphysical soup -- the never-smiling Neo still can't seem to figure what's reality, what's his destiny or whether he's The One -- and interminably long scenes of dialogue that break up what might otherwise have been a pretty dazzling action movie.
But even the action in "Revolutions" doesn't rekindle the excitement of the 1999 original or even the freeway chase and Agent Smith fights from "Reloaded." Instead, the battle to save Zion, the last human city, against an onslaught of squidlike Sentinels plays out like a polished videogame with a few humans thrown in to keep the sequence grounded in something like reality.
The wonder of the first film -- exploring the possibilities of a jacked-in alternate reality where the laws of human physics don't apply -- is jettisoned for the kind of last-stand drama that might work in "The Alamo," but which feels incongruous and anti-climactic in "The Matrix." And the writing? Let's just say that the filmmaking team of The Wachowski Brothers should have spent a little less time tossing in tertiary characters like The Architect, The Trainman and The Frenchman, and maybe sprung for some help from The Script Doctor.
Nevertheless, the two-disc DVD set is a boon to aspiring digital effects wizards. The entire second disc is devoted to behind-the-scenes looks at how the effects shots were created, using combinations of wire combat, computer effects, miniatures, real-world pyrotechnics and, oh yeah, human actors. A self-congratulatory making-of featurette can easily be skipped, but "Matrix" devotees will appreciate looks into the painstaking efforts crew members took to pull off shots that last only a few seconds in the film. While the Wachowskis themselves are absent from these features, or from any commentary tracks, producers, artists, visual designers and actors from the trilogy all are well represented.
And for those still confused by the entire "Matrix" story line, a clunky but effective DVD timeline gives details of what's happened in the films preceding "Revolutions." A tantalizing preview of an upcoming "Matrix Online" videogame that'll continue the trilogy's story line is served up, as well as some DVD-ROM exclusives (playable on a computer with a DVD drive) that include Web links, an extensive preview of "Matrix"-based comics and a diverting arcade game.
'The Last Temptation of Christ'
($39.95, Criterion Collection) (movie) (DVD format and extras)
During the last few weeks, many Christians have stood steadfastly by a religious film, defending the right of its director to explore his faith in the multiplex. "The Passion" was condemned long before its critics could see it, and Mel Gibson's supporters understandably had a problem with that.
Where were they in 1988 -- when another Christian, also risking his career to wring art from the Gospels, was assailed by zealots who wanted to ban a movie they hadn't seen?
Both "The Passion of the Christ" and Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" are aimed at Christians. But the latter is geared toward a subset of believers: those who enjoy thinking about their beliefs -- exploring them, confronting others' readings of this complex tale -- rather than reiterating them. Where Gibson's ultimate rave read "it is as it was," Scorsese wouldn't dream of presenting his film as fact.
Instead, as the soul-searching DVD commentary with Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader says, "Temptation" is a bold and sincere attempt to understand what it would have been like for a man to realize he is also God. The Bible has relatively little to say about this process, and the film envisions it as painful. Jesus' path from ministry to the cross isn't as punishingly bloody as "The Passion," but it is perhaps a greater trial; for here, the martyr is not blessed with unwavering certainty -- only in his final moment on the cross is he released from the doubts inherent in humanity.
Some of the ways Scorsese sought immediacy work better than others. The actors' American accents are a stumbling block for some viewers, but the customary Queen's English-via-Hollywood accents are equally false, and the filmmaker wanted the film's language to be as plain as it would have been for the shepherds and fishermen who surrounded Jesus.
But congregations of Christians weren't told to boycott the film for aesthetic reasons. They were told it was blasphemy, largely on the basis of the climactic scene in which Jesus imagines living a normal life, taking a wife and raising children. All the film suggests, though, is that Jesus was tempted to do that, which doesn't contradict a thing in the Bible. Far from blaspheming, the director is searching his soul to make sense of beliefs that are difficult to hold in the modern world. Surely that deserves support as much as Gibson's film, which is simply a proficient re-creation of the best-known story in the Western world.
-- John DeFore
Also out on DVD this week: "A Room With a View," "Cheaper by the Dozen (2003)," "In Living Color -- Season One," "Meet Me in St. Louis," "Freaks and Geeks -- The Complete Series," "The Grapes of Wrath," "Equilibrium," "The Maldonado Miracle," "Police Academy (20th Anniversary Special Edition)."
