Everyone’s talking about this film
By Ervell E. Menezes

EVERYONE’S talking about The Matrix. It’s a big grosser in the United States and has opened well in India where the American films are not doing so well these days. Of course the usual American product is pretty weak but even good films have failed in the recent past. If The Matrix is any indication, it could herald an upward trend.

What is The Matrix? That’s the big question, which of course, I will not answer.But let’s give you a few lines of the script to show the web of fear and suspense it weaves around the viewer. "The Matrix is looking for you" and "As long as the Matrix exists the human race will never be free." There is a what’s-next suspense and it calls for a saviour. No prizes for guessing.

Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is a regular guy working in a respected software firm. He is a normal Johnny-by-day and a computer hacker known as Neo by night. One night he receives a strange message from his computer telling him to "follow the white rabbit." He does, and meets famous computer hacker Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) who tells him he can either take the blue pill and go back to dreamland or take the red pill and see how far the deception goes.

So he enters that strange, enigmatic, even weird world which takes the viewer into a labyrinth of suspense and fear. How weird can weird be is what the directors the Wachowski Brothers manage to put across. They translate this cerebral feeling into visuals. May be the second half with all the razzle-dazzle special effects tends to detract from the overall effect but the basic concept is never buried.

Keanu Reeves does a good job by not overdoing things. All he has to do is look confused in the first half and optimistic in the second. Laurence Fishburne (remember him as the dad in John Singleton’s masterpiece Boys N the Hood?) as Morpheus, the protagonist, acts as a good foil. Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity is cute but essentially ornamental and there are a couple of good cameos. There are also references to films like Alice in Wonderland, Men in Black and Total Recall which come off well and despite it somewhat prolonged second half The Matrix should not be ignored.

Never Been Kissed seems to be a trite title. But what begins like a run-of-the-mill campus film has a good message. It does its best to banish those very American beliefs in winners and losers. It also helps those awkward, nerdish, shyish high school kids to sort of believe in themselves. Producer-actress Drew Barrymore (first seen as a child in E.T. — the Extra-Terrestrial) calls it a labour of love. "I wanted to make the movie because it taps into an emotion everyone can identify with: the awkward moments of our high school years," says Barrymore. "For Josie, high school was a horrible, humiliating experience. She completely lacks in social skills, and now, when she has to relive those years by going back, she again misses the mark by a mile," she goes on.

Josie Geller (Drew Barrymore) is a bright 25-year-old copy editor at the Chicago Sun-Times who yearns to be a reporter. Being a geek (awkward one) to the core has affected her personal relationship with the opposite sex, openly admitting that she had never been really kissed. But when she is asked by her editor to go undercover at a local school to report on today’s teens she gets a second chance of being a "teenager".

But she is haunted by the past. And as the newspaper folks look anxiously on, poor Josie goes through all kinds of problems. When she sees Cupid’s arrow in the form of her Shakespeare professor Sam Coulson (Michael Vartan) she gets into a mental block. Enter brother Rob (David Arquette) for both moral and physical support. He’s a baseball fanatic and there to make the openings for Josie.

For director Raja Gosnell Home Alone 3, Never Been Kissed is quite a challenge as he has to get those cameos of smart alecs, cool girls, heroes and dumbos, right. The screenplay by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein is replete with some hilarious one-liners but the overuse of the flashback is somewhat annoying. It may have its flaws but it is an honest, worthy effort and a feel-good film which shows that todays winners may be tomorrows losers and vice-versa.

The other day, almost accidentally I came across Indian Summer on Star TV and quite an interesting film it proved to be. For one thing I was happy to see yesteryear hero Alan Arkin in the lead role. Can hardly remember when last I saw him in a film. I met him in Cannes in 1989, not in Cannes actually but off Cannes in one of those Cunard liners. In this film he is Uncle Lou a camp master. The story has exciting possibilities because it is about a group of campers who come back to the camp after a lapse of 20 years.

It’s great to see how things change, ideas, beliefs and even feelings. As they come in pairs there is bound to be "changing partners" but that is not the best part of the film.

It is growth and being able to admit things one wouldn’t at that time.There are some very talented performers like Diane Lane (remember her in Little Romance?), Elizabeth Perkins, Bill Paxton and Matt Craven. It certainly had something to say and said it well. May be it promoted camp life but that was not the best reason for seeing it.