Rewatching The Matrix films, I've come to the conclusion...

And not getting much out of them like I did when they initially came out. Actually, strike that, I only got most of the good joy out of the first film, with the second film being a huge disappointment when I had seen it in theaters with my girlfriend. So much so that we didn't see the third film in theaters when it came out a few months later, instead waiting for the DVD release. Which I remembered liking more than the second.

But that's mainly because Neo dies.

It had me thinking, why didn't I love these flicks? What is keeping me from that feeling I had once? Did I become a bigger snob since they came out? No, it c couldn't be. I still love films like Crank and Bad Boys II and any other action film that can get me to still let out a proverbial 'ooooh', such as some parts of the Transporter films. That probably has to do with the oozing 70's era charisma of Jason Statham. But I'm vying away from the topic at hand, the Wachowski Bros. (well, now the Wachowskis, ever since that surgery occured) film series.

I realized that it all boils down to the wooden portrayal of Neo by Mr. Keanu Reeves. Don't get me wrong, I like Keanu. No matter how much my brain makes me want to hate him, I tend to like most of his films. Even being a comic book nerd and hating that they cast him as John Constantine, I still went in with a clear mind and actually enjoyed the film somehow. But that could also be because of the supporting cast, who are all spot on, especially Peter Stormare, but he tends to steal any show he's in. Just look at the Volkswagen ads he's been in.

Same goes for Carrie Anne Moss. I liked her in Memento and Fido, so it couldn't be only her. But then it hit me like a pick up truck. Their romance is non-existent, yet they center the whole universe, the whole being of Neo around their love throughout the films. The reason the first film works better than the rest is because it ends before their love can be truly shown. It's hinted at, we see a kiss, but that's it. Nothing more. The sequels try too hard to be philosophical, too hard with the action scenes (and I love the stunt work within each film, but when mixed with dated cgi in some parts, it fails to impress today).

That sex scene in Reloaded? Ugh, talk about no sexuality. No chemical attraction there. My girlfriend, when initially watching the film and walking her to her train, said something along the lines of, "They're supposed to be in love? Then why don't I believe it?"

And film dictates to us what we should believe in when seen on the screen. But only when it's believable. I believed that there were dwarves, hobbits and elves fighting side by side in the Lord of the Ring films. Why is that? Because the world of Tolkien was somehow breathed to life by Peter Jackson, a worthy director who has a sense of reality, even when something fantastic is show on screen. Same goes for Guillermo Del Toro, a favorite of CHUD and many other like minded fans of film. He can somehow take a faun and mix it with the spanish civil war and bring both worlds to reality, a mixture of fairy tale and nightmare. There really is no equal in that department and if there is, maybe I've missed out big time. Cronenberg also molds a scene, a film on screen and even when a man is slowly turning into a human fly or an apartment complex has gone completely crazy and murderous, we believe.

And the Wachowskis fail in that department. They wrote a fine first film. A stand alone film that even when they came out, I felt like they had tacked on backstory and other characters to flesh out a story that really only needed 2 hours to tell. We didn't need to see Zion. Or the other ships in the human armada. Or the battles underground. Or the architect and the key maker. I'll even say we didn't have to see Monica Belucci (but I won't say that, any film that features her must be seen).

We just needed to believe in a hacker who was the chosen one by Morpheus, who made the moviegoing public believe that he could stop bullets and actually destroy the unstoppable agents. I'm not sure if it was intended, but from the overall trilogy, I still look at it as Agent Smith's story. His triumphant rise and fall, rise again to complete god like power and ultimately his fall from grace by a higher power he didn't know could take him down. But only by a martyr was his power taken away. Looking at the films in that light makes me enjoy them a bit more. And that's because Hugo Weaving could be doing pantomime while tap dancing and I'd still think it was brilliant.

The Matrix sequels just feel like they were made to make money. And I agree, Hollywood is in the business of making money. Why make movies then? For only the artistic value? Then movies wouldn't be made at all. I just feel that the Wachowskis could have instead taken their vision and put it toward something so much better.*

*And I actually liked Speed Racer.

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Hard Case Crime's Songs of Innocence

Once in awhile a company comes along that impresses me with their whole catalog of products. It's usually a DVD company. To be honest, I'm a film fanatic so I tend to watch as many films as possible, different genres from different eras and I look for the large companies and the up and coming to get my fair share from. One of my favorite genres of film are film noir. Old or new, I love it when someone can give me a private eye who punches first and asks questions later. So it is in this regard that the company I'm speaking about isn't a DVD company. It's Hard Case Crime, who deal with crime novels that people like Dashiell Hammet, Richard Stark and Mickey Spillane would write for... actually, one of which does have books published with them (it's the second under his real name Donald E. Westlake).

Why bring this fine company up? Well, they had sent me three books to review awhile ago and I read through one in a matter of 2 days. The second book I read through in about 3 days. The third I haven't had the time to read due to work overwhelming my life, battling a rat the size of my Irish head and trying to still move in my apartment 10 months after I signed the lease. I will be reviewing two of their books here in the next two days, the first being Songs of Innocence written by Richard Aleas (pen name of Hard Case Crime founder Charles Ardai) with cover art by Glen Orbik and The MAX written by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr with cover art by Glen Orbik again.

In Songs of Innocence (released last July), it is the second book starring Aleas' character John Blake. Not having read the first novel starring him (2004's Little Girl Lost), it didn't take long to learn about this deeply scarred former PI. You already see the pieces in his life that are shattered; a lover who was killed by his last assignment and a good friend almost lost as well. He's now taken a low key position as an administrative assistant at Columbia University. He's also using this position to take a creative writing class to better hone his skills. This is where he meets Dorothy Burke, a beautiful younger dame (sorry, getting in the mindset of some pulp fiction), who he has a connection with. The only problem is that the story starts off with the police finding her dead in her bathtub, with the book Final Exit sitting right beside her, a plastic bag over her head and of course ruling it a suicide. Her mother thinks otherwise and wants to acquire John's detective persona to take the case and find out who killed her daughter. He tells her he isn't in that business anymore and tells the friend who almost died to take the case instead. But the problem is that he's mounting his own investigation to find out who killed Dorothy.

What Charles Ardai has done is take a simple premise of the lover/friend being found in a messy situation, and instead of taking the easy way out and calling it the way it looks, takes the character and the reader into an adventure around the sights and sounds not commonly seen in New York City. It's the violent NYC underworld we as the reader wants to hear about. We can't help it, it's something about stories, be it in print or on the screen that intrigues us. That tickles are fancy into wondering what happens next, no matter what time of day it is. I have to admit that while reading this story, I sometimes couldn't put the book down. I was like an addict, and sadly a book in the fiction section hasn't done that to me in quite some time.

Dorothy has confided in John her life as a prostitute named Cassandra, a call girl in the world of secret bath houses and happy endings that accompany them. So of course he tries to track down a list of johns, maybe one of which was a bit too 'hands on' and snuffed out the life of his friend. It leads him into many fights, call girls with hearts of gold but ice water running through their veins, the Hungarian mob being provoked by Blake and then being retaliated against by pinning a dead body on him, twist and turns, jumps between 60 foot crevices on the rooftops of buildings, cops getting closer to him, a manhunt for Blake, a estranged father Dorothy rarely talked about, a friend who betrays him and so much more. I don't want to ruin the story, which is why I'm being very aloof in what I speak about. But what Ardai is doing here is taking a old pulp story, one that would be written for the fans, and taking it to the new century, infusing new life in a genre that most people don't give too much credit to.

I'd like to point out that Ardai has said that his first Hard Case Crime novel, Little Girl Lost, took him only 2 or so months to write. It then took him roughly 3 years to finish Songs of Innocence, which doest surprise me. The character of John Blake is a difficult one to write about. A wounded man, one that doesn't look at himself the way he used to, slumming around and wishing he was somebody else. It's a hard book to write and to make the character likable, especially when he's being a real dick to people he loves is even harder, but Ardai does it here. A quick read that you just want to go back and read a few more times to find the little hints at the stunning conclusion that you have to read to believe. Plus the book is less than 7 bucks, so it won't hurt your pocket much. Give it a chance, especially since the book has been optioned for a film, so as soon as I hear more about it, I'll keep you posted.

Part two comes tomorrow night.

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