The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

 Year:  2022

Director:  Tom Gormican

Screenplay:  Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten

Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Sharon Horgan, Tiffany Haddish, Ike Barinholtz, Alessandra Mastronardi, Jacob Scipio, Neil Patrick Harris

Running Time:  107 minutes

Genre:  Action, comedy

Hollywood actor Nicolas Cage is struggling with his career, and is becoming increasingly estranged from his ex-wife (Horgan) and teenage daughter (Lily Sheen).  Reluctantly he accepts a lucrative assignment to travel to an island off Mallorca and appear at the birthday party of a billionaire super-fan, Javi (Pascal).  Shortly after he arrives, however, Cage is contacted by CIA agents Vivian (Haddish) and Martin Etten (Barinholtz) who inform him that Javi is an international arms dealer, who is behind the kidnapping of the teenage daughter of a prominent politician.  The CIA want Cage to act as a spy for them.

Nicolas Cage has had a strange and eclectic career.  Making his name with such films as the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona (1987), Moonstruck (1987) opposite Cher, and David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990), to action hero turns in The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997) and Face/Off (1997), and an Oscar-nominated performances in Leaving Las Vegas (1995) and Adaptation. (2002), and after a series of small, straight-to-video films, he has had something of career resurgence in recent years with cult horror films such as Mandy (2018) and Color Out of Space (2019), and finding critical success with Pig (2021).  Cage has also had a strange form of cult celebrity appearing in numerous internet memes and his face appearing on things such as mugs, clothes and even cushions, due to his eclectic career choices, his often flamboyant style of acting (which Cage himself described as "nouveau shamanistic") and his distinctive look and drawling voice.  In this film Cage doesn't just play a version of himself but also an imaginary version of his younger self, digitally de-aged and credited under his birth name of "Nicolas Kim Coppola", who crops up to give the older Cage advice or insults. Here he reminds us once again that he can still deliver a great performance and has a real gift for comedy.  Here he pokes fun, not only at his own career, but at his public image and even his financial troubles.  Pedro Pascal is funny and charismatic as the possible arms-dealer and Nicolas Cage super-fan, with whom the actor bonds.  Great comedy actors such as Sharon Horgan and Tiffany Haddish are a little underused in the supporting cast, but it is really the Nicolas Cage show.  Neil Patrick Harris also appears in a small role as Cage's agent.  The story turns into a fairly average buddy action film and it runs out of steam a little by the end, but the action scenes are well staged and there are consistent laughs throughout.  The performances elevate the film, and the concept of Nicolas Cage playing himself gives the film an extra dimension of fun.  

Pedro Pascal and Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

The Matrix Resurrections

Year:  2021

Director:  Lana Wachowski

Screenplay:  Lana Wachowski, David Mitchell, Aleksander Hemon, based on characters created by The Wachowskis

Starring:  Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jones, Jada Pinkett Smith

Running Time:  148 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction

San Francisco: Thomas Anderson (Reeves) is a successful video game developer who became famous for the hugely successful Matrix trilogy of games.  However he is experiencing strange hallucinations, memories from his previous life as Neo, which he puts down to stress from developing the games and the resulting fame.  In a coffee shop, Anderson happens upon Trinity (Moss), who is living a quiet life as mother of three Tiffany.  When he is approached by a new group of rebels, lead by hacker Bugs (Henwick)  and Morpheus (Abdul-Mateen II), Anderson discovers that the hallucinations are real memories of his past, and he needs to embrace his identity as Neo to save himself and Trinity from the Matrix and help the human rebels fight the machines that have enslaved humanity.  The problem is that he is not the man he was.

The concept behind The Matrix series of films is that what we see and experience as reality is in fact a vast, complex computer simulation known as The Matrix, and that the real world is a ravaged, bleak place controlled by malevolent machines, and humans are trapped in pods, brains plugged into The Matrix, bodies being harvested for energy to power the machines.  However, a small group of humans have escaped The Matrix and are fighting to defeat the machines.  The Matrix was released in the summer of 1999 and, despite being released mere weeks before Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, it was a huge hit, with an imaginative plot, lots of style, and groundbreaking visual effects.  Two sequels followed, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, which were both released in 2003.  The Matrix Resurrections is the fourth film in the series and its easy to be cynical about sequels that come out such a long time after their predecessor, but this is a very solid entry in the franchise, and possibly the best of the series since the first one.  Like the other films in the series, it suffers from a confused plot, with a lot of philosophical discussions and technobabble, and the characters often seem more like video game characters, ironically enough, so it's hard to really feel any sense of danger in the action scenes.  Also, it doesn't give any concessions to newcomers to The Matrix franchise, or those who may have forgotten the previous films, in the nearly twenty years since the previous one was released.  However, this is an enjoyable, intelligent science-fiction action film, and there is a lot more humour in this one.  The performances are good, and the new characters are engaging.  In this films, The Matrix film exist as games, and the story is kicked off when Anderson is asked to make a fourth game in the series, which gives the filmmakers an opportunity to poke fun at sequels and franchises.  In the scene where Anderson is in his bosses office being given the pitch for Matrix 4 it's easy to imagine director Lana Wachowski, who co-wrote and co-directed the first three films with her sister Lily Wachowski, sitting in an office being given the same pitch.  Interestingly enough, the boss turns out to be a hostile computer program.  Of course the special effects and action are as spectacular as ever and, while it is far from perfect, at least it feels like a big, special effects driven action film with brains and some heart as well.  

By the way, there is a brief additional scene after the end credits, which is funny, but it's certainly not unmissable and not worth missing the bus for.

  Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in The Matrix Resurrections