Actually, from what I understand, this is a pretty new thing. I respect the fact that they included it.

Anyway, off-topic, but really on-topic, you guys should totally do Zodiac. It's such a great film.

I know. My point is that the Joker was as necessary to the plot of The Dark Knight as Lecter was to Silence of the Lambs. It's perfectly possible for a film to have more than one leading male performer.

Don't get me wrong, I like this movie, but it never really scared me. Yes, the infamous "basement scene" is well-made and tense, but I never doubted that she would get out of there alive. I dunno, it never had any emotional hold over me for some reason.

That said, the movie is still great. Great performances all around, and some killer writing to boot.

P.S.

Anyone else think it's a little strange that Anthony Hopkins can win Best Actor for, what, 20 minutes of screentime, and Heath Ledger, who was easily on-screen as much as anyone else in The Dark Knight, won Best Supporting Actor? Hopkins is great, but he's far from the male lead.

That and "I like it".

My local movie theater has a bunch of 'classic' movie posters hanging all over the place. (I say 'classic' because it includes everything from "Jurassic Park" to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles".) Anyway, I walked past the poster for "Silence of the Lambs" for YEARS before I noticed, "Holy shit there's a skull on the butterfly!". It was a few more years before, "HOLY SHIT THE SKULL IS MADE OF DEAD BODIES!".

Alright, I was daydreaming today, and I happened to come up with an idea of what this movie should have been.

You can keep Reloaded, I have no problem with it...aside from the last sixty seconds. The "twist ending" is anticlimactic and it makes no sense. Have Neo be knocked out after (yes) disabling the Sentinels. Instead of the ending being the reveal of Bane as a bad guy, Neo wakes up on a steel bed in an enormous warehouse. Disoriented, he staggers around, and sees on the bed next to him...AGENT SMITH.

OH SHIT, THEY'RE IN A SECOND MATRIX.

You see, the machines created two Matrixes (Matrices?). They knew that the program was flawed, and that people would eventually break out. So they made the "real world" one of constant conflict, so that people would be too distracted to consider the obvious possibility that the "real world" wasn't real at all. The Agents were actually real people, programmed to play the part of the villain in the game that the machines had set up. Now, I know that the phrase "Neo and Smith work together to stop the bad guy" sounds terrible, and that's where someone else might take it, so I won't. Smith wakes up too, and he feels totally betrayed. He worked hard to attain his goals. He trusted his reality. Now, he's a pathetic human, no better than the ones he mocked and tortured for years. While Neo goes to find the true creator of The Matrices seeking answers, Smith goes to find him seeking revenge. It becomes a cat-and-mouse game between the two of them, and eventually they become less concerned with the true Architect than each other. Throughout, Neo explores the desolate, horrifying world that humanity has left behind. At the end, Neo reaches the true Architect, only to find him dead, with Smith waiting. Neo defeats him (somehow, still haven't worked out a battle scene in the real world). Neo comes to realize that there is nothing for humanity in reality. We lost. He uses his computer skills (you know, the ones that they set up in the first film that had no impact later on?) to personally reprogram the Matrices, making escape from either of them impossible. He assumes the role of the Architect, doomed to watch over his creation for eternity.

Whoa, don't know where that came from. I was just hoping to explain the orange code, and Neo's powers outside the Matrix, but then...THAT.

You know, that's a great point. At that point in the timeline, Connor is still just a grunt who has no real power or influence in the military. He isn't the Commander in Chief, he's just a soldier who talks on the radio a lot. Unless Skynet views all of time and space as one, they shouldn't have any interest in him, let alone Kyle. I like the idea of Connor early on, as just a soldier, but you can't have that AND a conventional Terminator plot. AND the Marcus stuff. All of those things could work, but you need to give them each room to breathe.

In my opinion, Connor shouldn't have even been in this film. It should have been strictly about Marcus and Kyle. Oh, sure, we can hear him talk on the radio once, and allude to his presence a couple of times, but he has no character arc in this movie, and therefore no reason to be in it at all.

Oh, I wasn't being funny either. It is extremely dense. Years from now, high schools nationwide will be teaching AP "A Topiary".

Director: Akira Kurosawa

1.) The "moving forest" scene near the end of "Throne of Blood". Totally chilling, and one of the most powerful disbelief-suspending scenes in history.

2.) The entire "Bandit's Story" section of "Rashoman". This may be partly for Toshiro Mifune's performance, but the whole scene is also shot tremendously. This was one of the first times that I noticed how important cinematography is to a film.

3.) "Seven Samurai": Kyuzo steals a gun. If there is one thing that Kurosawa does better than anyone else, it's crafting characters. Truthfully, we didn't really need this scene. Most other directors would have left it on the cutting room floor, considering it a waste of time. However, Kurosawa considered the character to be important, even if the plot didn't. Everyone in that film is a real person, with a real life, and real problems. That tiny characterization just proves to exemplify that.

4.) "Ikiru": The "swing scene". If you haven't seen this film, then I refuse to tell you why this moment is so beautiful. Go watch this movie immediately.

5.) "Dreams": "The Tunnel". This sequence is, frankly, one of the most terrifying things ever put to film. Plenty of films have tried to give us a realistic, psychological profile of a soldier, but none have gone as deep. By literally delving into the nightmare of a soldier who has returned from war, we get a great understanding of why those people often become so disturbed. What we see is scary, and Kurosawa knows it.

Sorry for invading the thread with my nerdiness.

NEXT TIME: Top 5 Morgan Freeman characters you'd like to have a drink with.

Good one. I have all five books in one. Does that count?