REVIEWS OF MOVIES I HAVEN'T SEEN: THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS

With The Matrix Resurrections, writer-director Lana Wachowski has done what many thought impossible: create a coherent filmed version of the classic Laurence Sterne novel Tristram Shandy. After such a long wait for the followup to the original Matrix trilogy (The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, and Elf), few thought a satisfying continuation of the saga could be achieved. And yet Wachowski, by being faithful to the source material but still freely exercising her own creative idiosyncrasies, has brought forth something that, whatever its critics might say, is almost certainly a movie.

Keanu Reeves plays Tristram - or as his friends call him, “Neo” - a hotshot young bass fisherman who undergoes an existential crisis after his wife leaves him for his own servant, Trim. A chance meeting with his own father (Carrie-Ann Moss) leads Tristram into “the Matrix”, the shadowy strip club from the first movie, run by the sinister Mr Matrix (Steve Guttenberg), who offers his patrons all the pleasures of the Earth if only they can successfully snatch a live wren from his hand.

As can be expected from a Matrix film, the narrative poses interesting questions about the nature of existence and whether computers are magic. The first half hour of the film is almost entirely taken up by a single slow-motion shot of Neo trying on some novelty vampire teeth in a costume shop, and the last half hour by a dizzying montage of the greatest moments of the history of Liverpool Football Club. Only by watching closely through the middle four hours will these two seemingly disparate sequences make sense, but it is well worth the watch.

Wachowski brings her usual flair for action sequences to the film: Reeves punches everyone he meets, including his infant children, and in one thrilling scene, drives a forklift off the roof of the White House. Such wonderfully-choreographed scenes make it almost easy not to notice the entire movie is in un-subtitled Hebrew.

Cameos from the likes of Whoopi Goldberg, Hillary Clinton, Joseph Kony, Henry Kissinger, Jonathan Lipnicki, Wayne Gretzky, BTS, the United Nations Security Council and, somewhat gratuitously, Jodie Sweetin, add little to the plot but provide some tension-relieving nudity at regular junctures.

In the end this is not a movie you simply watch. It is a movie you FEEL, deep in your bones. Most of my fellow cinemagoers walked out of the theatre loudly declaring their intention to sell their house and start a band, and it’s almost certain you will too.