The Matrix @25: Queering the Canon

by Cláudio Alves

Happy Easter! Happy Trans Day of Visibility!! Happy 25th anniversary to The Matrix!!! As luck would have it, these three occasions coincided this year, making for a lovely little cinematic celebration. After all, The Matrix is probably the most famous work by trans filmmakers – the Wachowski sisters – and Neo's journey can be seen as an allegory of gender identity. It was somewhat devised as such by its closeted auteurs who've reclaimed their work's intrinsic queerness after it became a powerful reference for the MRA movement and the alt-right. Like many misappropriated movies, The Matrix doesn't deserve its fans. Or, perhaps more accurately, a good portion of its fandom doesn't deserve The Matrix in all its glory.

But Neo isn't just a queer icon. He's also something of a Jesus figure, a Messiah for our cyber-noir future, bedecked in fetish fashions, armed with kung fu moves and impossible firepower. And like Christ, he is risen…

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Erotic Thrillers: Part 4 – Naughty Nineties

by Cláudio Alves

THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS (1990) Paul Schrader

The last time we checked on the Criterion Channel's Erotic Thrillers collection, it was to consider the voyeuristic properties of late-80s cinema. Moving on to the next decade, let's get over the nineties in one go. During this era, the erotic thriller reached its apotheosis of influence and trashiness, gradually fading into obsolescence as the millennium approached. It was an epoch of Fatal Attraction copycats and prestige-infused sensuality, a final resurgence of neo-noir aspirations, the rise and fall of Joe Eszterhas, Sharon Stone's stardom, and direct-to-video sleaze. Criterion traces these arcs through eleven titles, spotlighting great cinema and irredeemable garbage with the same gusto…

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The Surprise MVP of Matrix Resurrections

by Tony Ruggio

Response to The Matrix Resurrections over the past few weeks has not been unlike response to The Last Jedi. A legion of fans loathe it for reasons of defied expectations. That's a typical response when fandom has a set idea of how a long-running tale should continue to unfold, often years later. Others love it, though, enraptured by its discursive saga and meta commentary. I fall somewhere in between, just as I did on The Last Jedi, admired and tickled by Lana Wachowski’s daring narrative excursions. She attempts to unravel and re-frame the myths and myriad cliches, but she could and should have gone even further.

The Last Jedi, for all of the belly-aching by fans, was still very much a Star Wars film beholden to black-and-white notions of good and evil, wherein the Jedi are heroes and the Sith are villains. Rian Johnson had an opportunity to dispense with such binaries and have Rey join forces with Ren to defeat both sides of the aisle. The picture waxes frequently about leaving old habits in the past, and then proceeds to follow old habits to the very end. To her credit, Lana at least one-ups that polarizing sequel by dispensing with one of the binaries central to her creation...

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The shortest review you will read of "The Matrix Resurrections"

by Nathaniel R

Cons: I didnt understand a lick of The Matrix Resurrection (did you have to memorized the first three?), especially the last act "rescue" involving brain switching which played like a techno-babble illogic exposition in order to give us a botched Sense8 body-switching visual. On the other hand, writer/director Lana Wachowski claiming such ownership from behind the camera felt satisfying despite playing at times like meta snark. Definitely did not enjoy the suggestion that therapists are evil even though the cat with the bell was damn cute. 

Pros: Absolutely loved Jonathan Groff as the new "Mr Smith". Witnessing Keanu & Carrie-Anne fall back in love was a good time; they've always looked sensational together and age-appropriate, too, so that was a rare doublesexy 50something thrill. This has been my review. 

Yours?