Resurrections of the Matrix (15, 148mins)
Verdict: Astonishing, but not confusing
Rating: 
The King’s Man (13 mins).
Verdict: It’s nuts but it’s great fun
Rating: 
The Wachowski siblings, who were behind 1999’s sci-fi hit The Matrix, are now known as the Wachowski sister after both have undergone gender reassignment.
Yet it’s not the most striking thing about them. This would include the groundbreaking trilogy of movies that they created, and of which The Matrix Resurrections represents the fourth installment.
Lana Wachowski, formerly Larry Wachowski, directed and wrote the film with Aleksandar and David Mitchell. It is both stunningly impressive and nearly impossible to understand.
Theses for doctoral studies have not been about topics more complicated than the plot. No wonder the engagingly wooden Keanu Reeves wears the same mildly perplexed frown for the nearly two and a half hour duration, as if he doesn’t know where he is, or why. The same thing happened to me.
Although the first three films were released in four years, the computer-generated effects continued to improve over the time.
The Wachowski brothers, the sci-fi movie blockbuster The Matrix (1999), are now The Wachowski sisters. Both have undergone gender reassignment.
Yet it’s not the most striking thing about them. This would include the groundbreaking films they created, of which The Matrix Resurrections represents the fourth.
They are some of the most stunning in the movie. Neo (Reeves), once more, is caught between parallel universes and is unsure of which one of them it real.
As before, he is offered the choice made famous by The Matrix — the blue pill or the red pill — to help him decide.
After The Matrix Revolutions events, Anderson has assumed his old identity of Thomas Anderson. He is now a genius but unhappy video-game designer in San Francisco with Neil Patrick Harris as his therapist to help him get over his senseless existence.
He meets Tiffany, a married mom-of-two, in Simulatte.
This is an incredibly touching story of mid-life romance, after all the confusing metaphysics have been removed.
But those metaphysics aren’t easily stripped, especially not by Neo, who at times gives the impression that he couldn’t strip paint.
While the films were originally released in just four years, they have been rereleased in three additional years. However, in the long lag between 2003 and now, computer-generated effects continue to develop rapidly.
As before, he is offered the choice made famous by The Matrix — the blue pill or the red pill — to help him decide
Reeves, on the other hand, keeps his cool while everyone around him is having a good time. Yet, Reeves, just like in John Wick, manages to get away with his act. His laconic charisma, which is similar to the John Wick films keeps us rooting even as he recites his lines in an inexplicable whisper, almost as though he were a charming automaton.
In some ways he’s a throwback to the Golden Age of Hollywood, when acting skills frequently mattered less than looks and muscles.
Like Reeves, Moss is a beautifully-preserved relic of the first film, a thunderous hit which is often said to have redefined both the action and the sci-fi genres, not least with a whole new emphasis on hand-to-hand combat.
There’s plenty more of that this time and a slew of familiar characters, although in several cases the actors have been changed.
Bugs is the newcomer to welcome, played brilliantly by Jessica Henwick of British Game Of Thrones.
She teams up with dissident government agent Morpheus (previously played by Laurence Fishburne, now Yahya Abdul-Mateen) in an attempt to find Neo, whose most dangerous enemy within his alternative reality seems to be his ‘real-life’ boss Smith (formerly Hugo Weaving, now Jonathan Groff).
‘Stories never really end, do they,’ says Smith, just as the worrying realisation begins to ripple around the cinema that Wachowski — who has recently suggested that the Matrix films are a powerful allegory for gender identity — might already have the next sequel in mind.
The film has enough visual surprises to keep you glued to your seats, and even a thrilling scene at the end that will send chills down your spine as it zooms through San Francisco.
And I suppose it’s also possible that some people might be able to follow every minute of the narrative. If you know your ‘ectomorphic particle codex’ from your ‘para-magnetic oscillation’, you’ve got a chance.
Christmas is a time for generosity of spirit, but very little of it seems to have been ladled in the direction of The King’s Man, the third outing in Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman series.
Early U.S. reviews of his latest spy spoof, which opens in cinemas on Boxing Day, called it ‘dull’ and ‘dopey’. It’s neither. There are some moments of uproarious laughter.
We are taken back to the very beginnings of Kingsman’s spy agency in the first half of the 20th Century.
Of course, so-called origin stories are very often the recourse of directors and writers who, after a couple of movies, can’t think of a way of moving the narrative forward, so perforce move it back.
But this one, a revisionist account of World War I, is done with such nutty exuberance, such irreverent brio, that the smile hardly ever left my face — except when I was laughing out loud.
Our heroes Orlando, Duke and Duchess of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes), with their strapping son Conrad Harris Dickinson, travel to St Petersburg in order to meet Rasputin, a dementedly insane Rhys Ifans, on a mission that aims to poison him using a Bakewell tart laced cyanide.
Christmas is a time for generosity of spirit, but very little of it seems to have been ladled in the direction of The King’s Man, the third outing in Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman series
We are taken back in time to see the birth of Kingsman’s spy agency.
The Mad Monk has been ordered by the mysterious, shaven-headed Scotsman to free the Russian Empire from the conflict so Germany can concentrate on the English.
With a piece of cake from Polly (Gemma Arterton), the Oxfords plan to stop him. She has secretly created a network of global domestic security ser- vices.
Because cyanide has a vague almond-like smell, it is obvious that a Bakewell would be the best cover.
But the ruse misfires, the unhinged Rasputin lives, and a fight ensues to the strains of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture that is one of the craziest, funniest sequences I’ve seen on screen all year.
Like a history lesson delivered by an escaped lunatic posing as a sober professor, the film benefits from Vaughn’s decision to present much of it straight, making its flights of fancy all the more cherishable and giving Fiennes the perfect showcase for the po-faced comedy at which he excels.
Of course, so-called origin stories are very often the recourse of directors and writers who, after a couple of movies, can’t think of a way of moving the narrative forward, so perforce move it back
But this one, a revisionist account of World War I, is done with such nutty exuberance, such irreverent brio, that the smile hardly ever left my face — except when I was laughing out loud
Tom Hollander also had a blast playing the three royal cousins George V, Tsar Nicholas, and Kaiser Wilhelm.
With Charles Dance as a pompous Lord Kitchener, Matthew Goode as his stuffy aide-de-camp, and Djimon Hounsou as the Oxfords’ loyal manservant Shola, it’s a top-notch supporting cast, which also includes Stanley Tucci and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
The best thing about this time of the year, particularly since it is an occasion for excess, are the extravagant use of dramatic license.
I’m pretty sure that nowhere in the O-Level textbooks I dimly recall studying was there anything about U.S. President Woodrow Wilson being blackmailed into bringing America into the war, purely to avert a sex scandal.
At times, Vaughn and his co-writer Karl Gajdusek try to have their Bakewell and eat it, wildly lampooning the politics of the Great War while gravely lionising those who gave their lives, but that’s nothing Blackadder didn’t do.
If you’re looking for festive fun, The King’s Man will reward a Boxing Day trip to the cinema . . . assuming we’re still allowed to go. We wish you a Merry Christmas
Tomorrow, tomorrow, Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth (105 minutes)
Rating:
Orson Welles and Roman Polanski both put Shakespeare’s story of Macbeth on screen, and as recently as six years ago, so did Australian director Justin Kurzel.
Marion Cotillard was also in the version that Coen created. It was visually stunning and rich with colour. Joel Coen is now all monochrome, which makes the final result even more stunning.
The Tragedy Of Macbeth — the American director’s debut solo feature, without his brother Ethan — is an adaptation for the ages, one that I fancy will be used in A-Level syllabuses for decades.
The Tragedy Of Macbeth — the American director’s debut solo feature, without his brother Ethan — is an adaptation for the ages, one that I fancy will be used in A-Level syllabuses for decades
But whether you follow everything they’re saying or not, the ‘vaulting ambition’ of Denzel Washington as the thane, and the scheming of Frances McDormand, the director’s wife, as Lady Macbeth, couldn’t be clearer
Coen has cut some lines, but basically the dialogue is true to Shakespeare’s original. That can be hard work if you never studied Macbeth at school, with a set of Brodie’s Notes to hand.
But whether you follow everything they’re saying or not, the ‘vaulting ambition’ of Denzel Washington as the thane, and the scheming of Frances McDormand, the director’s wife, as Lady Macbeth, couldn’t be clearer.
There is no ambiguity at all in Macbeth’s murder of King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson). Knowing what’s coming makes it no less shocking.
The uniform excellence of the acting is matched by the exquisite set and costume design, and above all by Bruno Delbonnel’s black-and-white cinematography, which at times gives the spooky impression that you’re watching a 1940s film noir, with Peter Lorre about to creep out of the shadows.
It’s a really impressive film. So, on paper, is the French-language Titane (★★, 18, 108 mins), which won the prestigious Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Newcomer Agathe Rousselle certainly makes an unforgettable debut in Julia Ducournau’s at times almost unwatchably gory horror-thriller, playing a disturbed young serial killer who disguises herself as a boy in an attempt to pass herself off as the long-missing son of a firefighter (Vincent Lindon).
It’s downright sweet in parts, with plenty to say about the nature of grief, but repeatedly turns the stomach in a transparent attempt to shock, and should never, in my view, have won the top prize at Cannes.