Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Hit Me with Your Best Shot: The Matrix

Over at filmexperience there is a wonderful series going on called 'Hit me with your best shot' where you get to choose your single favorite shot from the assigned movie and write the reason why you chose it. Today, it's all about The Matrix. I'm gonna go ahead and post 3 but the main one I'm choosing is this:
1. It's so hard to choose a best shot out of the movie with dozens of iconic shots. But the one with the cat was always one of my favorites - I love the whole universe of The Matrix where the things out of our ordinary world are given strange significance. Phones are your exits, pills snap you out of delusion and cause you to wake up in the real world and cats? Well, enjoy the deja vu.
2. This is perhaps the movie's bravest shot - showing the machine treating people like batteries, from the very moment a new human is born. While the idea was very similar to Terminator with the machine defeating the humans and so on, I don't remember an image depicting the tragedy of mankind after losing the war, captured as well in a single shot in any other movie.

2. There are a lot of splendid shots in The Matrix but for me there is one that immediately comes to my mind when I think of this movie - the shot of Trinity from the beginning of the film, right before the car is about to hit her. I'm not sure what it is about this shot. Perhaps it's because we see the concept of answering the phone and disappearing in the Matrix for the first time, perhaps it's the great way in which the scene is executed or perhaps it's the literal close call for Trinity who barely escapes and thrillingly opens the movie.

15 comments:

  1. You're dead right, there are tonnes of fantastic shots in The Matrix. Like your picks, especially the baby one.

    Think one of my most memorable ones from it was from the opening scene with Trinity, where you see bullet time for the first time, with Trinity seemingly floating in mid-air.

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    1. Thanks! Oh yes that is one memorable shot! Unfortunately the homage to it in the third movie was kinda lame.

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  2. I think the shot with Trinity resonates because Carrie-Anne Moss has a GREAT face. I loved her so much in this film. Great shot selections!

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    1. She was so wonderful in these movies, even in the sequels. Thank you!

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  3. Love your choice of film and these shots! I remember being so horrified when I saw that shot of the baby for the first time (at a pretty young age). The Matrix was so innovative for its time, have meant to revisit it for ages.

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    1. Thank you! I wish we had sci-fi movie like this right now, I think the closest to innovative sci-fi recently was Looper.

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  4. Nice choice of shots! Especially the one with the baby. Recently there are quite often movies that I don't love but I also don't dislike and there's always 1 scene/shot in it that stops me from deleting it. Is it just me?

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    1. Thanks! I'm not sure, I saw Godzilla last night and it was so bad but the cinematography was quite good. Often times the look of the film is the single redeeming thing about it, unfortunately.

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  5. Love these! I'm glad you went with more obscure shots and not just bullet-time redux (even though those shots are also glorious). This movie is so much better than time wants us to think it is. I hate those sequels for tarnishing its image.

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    1. Thank you! I actually quite enjoyed Reloaded, but Revolutions was such a fucking mess :/

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  6. Fantastic choices! I had forgotten about the significance of the cat. I need to watch this again one of these days. It's one that I always enjoy, and I make a point of watching it with my teens because there is so much fodder for discussion.

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    1. It's such a great movie. I think it's one of the last truly legendary pictures there were - I don't get the appeal of Inception so Matrix remains one of the very few genuinely fantastic sci-fi movies of the last 20 years

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  7. love all three of your choices. i love the color palette of this movie which shows up so well in these shots, particularly the cat

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    1. Thanks so much! Awesome that you chose this one to end the season!

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  8. Oh, great picks! I think the shot of Trinity might be my favorite, though I haven't seen the film in years. I should probably revisit it.

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