Tag: Keanu Reeves

When Fealty and John Wick 4 Are Like Best Buddies… not!

What we see in John Wick 4 is more than a revenge story when the lead has to meet old acquaintances, look for new allies, and challenge the High Table just to achieve freedom. The world is looking very sinister.

John Wick 4 Movie PosterLionsgate Pictures
Spoiler Alert

Just now many lives does Jardani Jovonovich (Keanu Reeves) have? By my count, he expended enough to say John Wick 4 is the tally on the times he should’ve died. But this man is tough. He can withstand punishment that would send a common man into a coma, and he must have the supernatural abilities of a spider to dodge getting hit.

Before embarking on this review and fan commentary, I wanted to revisit the previous films to remind myself about the world Wick was once part of. He was a hit-man. Throughout the films, we find out he wants to be free from The High Table. Past chapters reveal that they are a global criminal cabal who employs a special league of assassins for their in-fighting and assaults on humanity. Fans of the Batman comics can forget about the Court of Owls and Ra’s al Ghul’s empire; this version is worse and dates back to the time of antiquity. With ominous titles like The Harbinger (nicely played by Clancy Brown), Charon (Lance Reddick) and even Caine (Donnie Yen) making up a huge supporting cast, I wondered who can be added since the third film?

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The Matrix Resurrections Missed Opportunity

This fourth film feels more like a cowboy western than anything else.

The Matrix Resurrections.jpg

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Spoiler Alert

To bring back The Matrix nearly 20 years later with Matrix Resurrections has fans wondering what happened in the meantime? There were two video games (one considered canon) and a spinoff animated anthology. The leads Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss said they’d love to revisit this franchise, and they’ve aged a lot. As for whether that’s important to the Architect (the enemy), it’s hard to say. That leader is gone.

Their feelings for each other is eternal, and is hard to comprehend by a hive mind. There’s no way to describe in code or an algorithm the concept of love. Their synergy is very different from others as apparently, it can help power the simulation.

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Bill & Ted Face the Music and Their Franchise Future

There’s some story to like in Bill and Ted Face the Music, but ultimately, it’s about the next generation and what they can do to help their dads.

Bill & Ted Face the Music Movie PosterAvailable on VOD
SPOILER ALERT

Bill and Ted still have an insurmountable task to accomplish in Face the Music. They still have to make that song to bring harmony to the universe. The pseudoscience and sociology behind being able to achieve that is hard to grasp as not even the Oa who created the Green Lantern Corps can promise universal peace. As cinema’s most lovable doofuses would say, being happy means being excellent to each other.

The story by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon is not too perplexing. Time travel stories often struggle with its own internal logic, and this film is no different.

The film is brilliant at realizing this mantra because the future shelves of Bill and Ted simply forget their own credo and need reminders. They are cruel to their past shelves. It’s sort of funny, but I can’t help but wonder when each future iteration decided to be nasty. Part of it has to do with how they failed as musicians. Sadly, the film doesn’t spend any time about them as family men. Their wives are concerned for their wellbeing and suggested couples therapy to “separate” them. Just why their kids adore their fathers is mind-boggling.

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Otaku Film Review: John Wick

JohnWickDirectors: David Leitch and Chad Stahelski

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Willem Dafoe, Adrianne Palicki

E: John Wick is one of those films where Keanu Reeves lays down the law heavy, if he was an enforcement officer. Instead, he’s a former hitman that everyone in New York respected. But he found a life outside of the seedy underground that operates. There’s a lady he loved, but when she passed away due to cancer and left him an adorable puppy, life seemed good. However, after meeting one spoiled brat of a Russian kingpin, Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen), that quickly changes. Much of the film speeds along like Terminator 2 meets The Raid 2.

J: And speed along it does with lots of gunplay involving fluid fight scenes. You can tell the action sequences were choreographed and it looks good in the finished film. And Reeves as John Wicks wasn’t just respected, he was also feared even by the criminal underworld.

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