Two movies about manipulating those around you and looking for thrills — it's Ratatouille vs Basic Instinct 2.
Power Trip: Casino vs Molly's Game
Two movies about the desire to feel powerful and the unpredictability of humans — it's Casino vs Molly's Game.
Getaway: Total Recall vs The Net
Two people decide to take a little vacation that kicks off a fight for their lives as their identities are called into question — it’s Total Recall vs The Net.
Read The Episode
Every episode of Tasteless, I take a critically acclaimed film and compare it to one that shares the same themes but didn't get the attention it deserves — and explain why that second movie is my pick. This week: two people who decide to take a little vacation, but that vacation kicks off a fight for their lives as their identities are called into question. It's Total Recall versus The Net.
Total Recall
When a man goes in to have virtual vacation memories of the planet Mars implanted in his mind, an unexpected and harrowing series of events forces him to go to the planet for real - or is he?
This movie came out in 1990, has an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes, won the Oscar for Visual Effects. It was also nominated for Best Sound and Best Sound Effects Editing. Total Recall is based on the Philip K. Dick short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale."
This movie is cool. The plot is cool. It's interesting. I personally would not go to Mars if given the chance. I would say no thank you. And if they said, do you want some free memories of Mars? I would say no, I'm good. But Arnold Schwarzenegger goes on this virtual vacation — they implant memories so you feel like you've gone somewhere, indistinguishable from real vacation memories. And while he's under having these memories implanted, he starts flipping out. The vacation people at Rekall are like, his brain is already very full of false memories we didn't put there. Someone else put these in. It turns out he's not who he thought he was. His memories, his mind — they've been tampered with.
Paul Verhoeven directed this film and I have a real love-hate relationship with Paul. I love his films — Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Starship Troopers. He has a really interesting point of view and he picks stars like Sharon Stone that are just so perfect. But I'm always brought back to the Basic Instinct controversy with the leg-uncrossing scene and that he lied to Sharon about what could actually be seen on the film. That is such an uncool move. Even though he's made movies I love, that doesn't excuse cruddy creep behavior.
This movie did lead to Sharon Stone being in Basic Instinct because she played Lori in this, worked with Paul. He saw her being able to change from this timid, charming sweetheart — Arnold's wife Lori — to a diabolical person and back again at a moment's notice. That is what's so brilliant about her.
But we have to talk about Arnold. Arnold Schwarzenegger in this movie is named Doug Quaid. That's insane. Imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger in a t-shirt, guns out, arms out, tight t-shirt, short sleeves, just like: hi, I'm Doug. I'm Doug. My name is Doug.
I can't get a good read on Arnold. I think he might be a really wonderful guy, other than the cheating. But he's a little old school in the way he talks about people, especially women. If there was a Mount Rushmore of action stars, Arnold Schwarzenegger would be on it. He was the original Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson. Where is the Schwarzenegger tequila? I would buy that.
I went on Wikipedia to see if he owns any alcohol brands and no, he has various investments. Had a restaurant that I'm devastated I did not visit. Wrote an autobiography and called it “Total Recall,” which is genius. But the best part of his Wikipedia is that there is an entire section dedicated to a battle over what height Arnold Schwarzenegger is. It says his official height of 6’2” has been brought into question by several articles. In his bodybuilding days he was measured at 6’1.5”. In 1988 both the Daily Mail and Time Out mentioned he appeared noticeably shorter. Prior to running for governor, his height was questioned in the Chicago Reader. As governor, he engaged in a lighthearted exchange with assemblyman Herb Wesson over their heights. Wesson made an unsuccessful attempt to settle this once and for all with a tailor's tape measure. Schwarzenegger retaliated by placing a pillow stitched with the words "need a lift" on the five-foot-five-inch Wesson's chair. In 1999, Men's Health stated his height was five foot ten. And that's the end of the section. I don't know where we fall. Next person that sees Arnold Schwarzenegger, let me know how tall he is.
Arnold is great at what he is great at. And luckily Paul Verhoeven knew that. There was a falling out between writer Dan O'Bannon and Verhoeven when Verhoeven replaced the satirical humor with extreme violence. In the original screenplay, dark humor was much more prevalent. But when Arnold came aboard, Verhoeven recognized the necessity to tailor the script to Schwarzenegger's talents. This is not a knock on Arnold at all. He is great at certain things. You're not going to also give him dark humor. He does incredulous, he does angry, he does surprise. That's what he does and he does it well.
Now someone who can do everything is of course Sharon Stone as Lori — a breakout role that led to Basic Instinct. She plays Arnold's wife Lori, who as it turns out was never his wife and is actually just an agent there to keep an eye on him after his memories were replaced. Arnold believes they've been married for eight years. When he realizes she isn't who she says she is, she's like, yeah, okay, I'm not your wife, but do you want to bone for old time's sake? And he's like, oh, good try, clever girl — because obviously she was just stalling so the bad guys could come get him.
Sharon Stone can take all my memories if she wants to and live in my house with me. Go for it. I don't care. I would love a remake of this movie from Lori's point of view, where she has to go live with this guy undercover — this weird giant man who thinks he's a construction worker. And you're just keeping an eye on him and acting like everything's normal. There's something very creepy Truman Show fascinating about it that I love.
The tennis outfit she wears with the swoop bangs rivals Michelle Pfeiffer in Grease 2 for level of cool outfit that I desperately want to pull off. I was really mad that when she's shooting at Arnold and he doesn't know yet that she's against him, she misses him so many times. I was offended that they would make Sharon Stone such a bad shot.
I'm currently reading her new memoir, “The Beauty of Living Twice.” I'm trying to space it out and savor it and not just finish it all in one weekend, because this is a woman who has lived and she is so smart and interesting and funny. In her memoir, Sharon talks about the work she put into being believable as someone who could beat up Arnold Schwarzenegger. And it paid off. She physically fights him. She kicks him in his head — whether he's five-ten or six-two, that is insane. And I buy it fully. You buy her physicality. She was pumping iron. She put so much prep into this movie and it works. You see their fight and you don't think he could just flick her away like a fly. No — there is weight to her actions.
The big bad guy is Cohaagen, played by Ronnie Cox of RoboCop and Beverly Hills Cop. He's best friends with the Schwarzenegger from the past, Hauser. Hauser was an agent who worked for him, and Hauser came up with the plan to have his own memories wiped, have himself replaced with this mild-mannered construction worker Douglas Quaid, to enact their evil plans.
Cohaagen has an employee named Richter, played by Michael Ironside — and Sharon Stone is his girlfriend. He's so mad that Arnold is fake-married to her. He has such a vendetta. His boss is like, stop, I don't want Arnold Schwarzenegger dead. And Michael Ironside is basically just constantly saying, are you sure? Because I could kill him any moment if you want.
Michael Ironside did a Reddit AMA and said one of his favorite memories of Arnold at the studios in Mexico City was that while shooting, his sister back in Canada had a cancerous growth in her abdomen. She was in intensive care. He'd been calling her on a daily basis. Arnold noticed him calling every day at lunch. He said, who is it you're calling? And Michael told him about his sister. Arnold said, come on, let's go to my trailer. He had one of those conference phones set up and called Michael's sister and they talked for an hour. Arnold went through a whole diet thing with her, told her the healthiest diet for surgery recovery. He called her two or three more times to check on her. Michael said Arnold changed the course of his sister's recovery. She seemed lighter, had more sense of humor, felt less isolated. And she recovered. Isn't that so sweet?
We also have Benny — Mel Johnson Jr. — this lovable taxi driver who drives Arnold around on Mars. Then we discover he's a mutant and his arm is foldable and also bones. I felt so betrayed. Rachel Ticotin plays Melina, Arnold's ex-partner and girlfriend who has been wiped from his memory, but he has these dreams about her as Doug. In real life, Rachel was in Con Air. More importantly, most importantly, she was Carmen's mom in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. The power of Melina is that you see her and you're just like, of course, she's the perfect match for Arnold. They work so well together. I love their chemistry.
But Arnold is very rude to her because when he reunites with her and doesn't have his memories, he says, Melina, Melina, I don't remember you. I don't remember us. I don't even remember me. Start with the last one, buddy. Don't start with "I don't remember you" because she doesn't know you've had your memories wiped. She just thinks you're mean. Start with like, hey, my memory has been wiped, I'm so sorry.
But the cool thing about Rachel and Lori is they have this fight scene. I wrote the following note verbatim while watching: Women fighting women with skill. This is not a cat fight. This is two people with abilities grappling. In the IMDB trivia, it says Paul Verhoeven asked second unit director Vic Armstrong to choreograph the fight not as a cat fight but more like a martial arts fight, to give the feel of two warriors fighting each other and not simply two women. Verhoeven remarks in the DVD commentary that this is probably the first time in a feature film where we see two women fighting each other normally. This fight scene is fantastic.
Spoilers — this movie is from 1990, it's older than me, not to brag. Arnold and Sharon are fighting, and Sharon has this great delivery. She's looking at Arnold: sweetheart, be reasonable. After all, we're married, as she's slowly reaching for the gun she thinks he doesn't know about. And then he shoots her in her forehead. She drops over dead and he goes, consider that a divorce. It's so cold-blooded. It's so rude.
The Net
When Angela Bennett, a computer programmer, stumbles upon government secrets, she finds herself on the run from an unknown enemy hell-bent on destroying her completely.
Came out in 1995, has a 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. Offensive. Rotten Tomatoes has done Sandy B so dirty. It's rude. It's unacceptable.
I own The Net on DVD. I popped it in. There's a great DVD menu recreating her computer. God, it's so fun to pop in a movie and it has a clever menu or a cute montage or a great song over the DVD menu. We lose that with streaming services.
Sandra Bullock — very clearly an all-time favorite actress of mine. I love her movies. Yes, I love The Net. Rewatching it, I bumped it up a few slots on my ranked list of Sandra Bullock movies, because this is a good one. I love a dumb computer movie, even if all the computer stuff could be totally wrong. Who cares? Stop asking questions. It's computers and they do things. What does it matter to you? Are you the computer police? No. I didn't think so. So shut up. That's not how a virus works. I'm sorry, I didn't know you were Steve Wozniak.
One Mr. Roger Ebert in his review of The Net said: this stuff is so concocted. I had no business caring about it, but I did because of Bullock. How does she do that? She's very low key. She's so natural. She seems to be remembering a scene rather than playing it. She has a warm smile. She never overacts. She creates a sensation that although a scene may seem absurd to us, it seems perfectly real to her and we buy it. I think me and Roger would have had a good time. We could have hung out.
So she is a computer person. We see her at a computer, wearing flannel, ordering an online pizza, talking to some guy named CyberBob. It's my dream life. She is a homebody to the extreme. She fixes computer viruses — well, she isolates them and figures out what's wrong. At one point in this movie she has poofed bangs to rival While You Were Sleeping. And she's just so good.
She goes on vacation to Mexico and can't help but bring her laptop and her work with her, including this virus she's been working on, this floppy disk. While there she is attacked. Her things are stolen, thrown on the ground. Her identity is taken. She has no ID, no wallet. Her social security number is associated with a woman named Ruth Marx who has her exact picture. She is given the identity of Ruth Marx against her will. She's at the embassy trying to figure out how to get back home from Mexico, and the woman working there is just screaming her social security number out to her, which is so inappropriate.
To get back into America she has to agree that she's Ruth Marx and not Angela Bennett. Angela Bennett is now on the run. She goes back home, goes to her apartment — all her stuff has been sold. They're like, yeah, Angela Bennett sold this place, she moved out a week ago. And Sandra Bullock's like, what are you talking about? I'm Angela Bennett. And everyone's like, well, no one can vouch for you because you're always in here ordering online pizzas, so none of us know what you look like. You could be a crazy lady.
So much of this movie is Sandra Bullock running up to a computer, doing something on it, then running away. It's perfect. It's fantastic. She runs somewhere, whoever she runs with dies. She runs off again, puts a floppy disk into a thing. It is fantastic.
Here's how it happens to her. She's on the beach and a nice good-looking man starts talking to her — Jack Devlin, played by Jeremy Northam from Gosford Park, Emma, The Crown, being British. He's a real jerk who works for the Praetorians, the entities in charge of the Gatekeeper conspiracy. Basically, cyber terrorists enacted attacks on various facets of infrastructure and government and then sold the people who got attacked protective software called the Gatekeeper program. The secretary of defense is like, no, we shouldn't use this weird software. So these bad guys give him a fake HIV diagnosis via computer hacking and he's very homophobic and kills himself. Then they're like, okay, so do you guys want to buy our Gatekeeper program?
Sandra uncovers this by mistake. She's been sent a floppy disk from a friend who's like, check out this weird virus. It's a backdoor into what the Praetorians are doing. And they trick her in the meanest way. She's in her little chat room eating her pizza. CyberBob is like, so what do you want in a man? And Sandy says, butch, beautiful, brilliant. Captain America meets Albert Schweitzer. And CyberBob says, settle for a guy who puts the seat down.
Jack Devlin pretends to be all those things. And he is so cruel — he turns those words on her when she realizes something's wrong. She's like, why do you have a gun on this boat? It's very weird. And he's like, oh, I use it for shooting sharks. And she's like, why do you have a silencer on it, you freak? And he's like, oh, you — I got you. You wanted someone butch, beautiful, brilliant, Captain America meets Albert Schweitzer, dummy. And she's like, oh my God, you're so mean.
Dennis Miller is Sandra's ex-boyfriend who she turns to when trying to regain her identity. Dennis Miller was in a very weird array of movies. This and Disclosure are such a one-two punch of my favorite things that don't need Dennis Miller in them. He is not one of her better movie companions. The honors for best of course go to Keanu and Hugh Grant, or even Benjamin Bratt joining the two-time Sandra Bullock co-star club alongside Keanu — Speed and The Lake House — with Miss Congeniality and Demolition Man.
Should I just do a separate podcast about Sandra Bullock's co-stars?
Dennis Miller is clearly still very indecisive. She just needs someone who knows who she is so she doesn't go fully crazy. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's get into the vodka in the mini fridge at this hotel, huh? She's like, I am kind of on the run, I don't know if that's a great idea.
Her mother is played by Diane Baker, aka Senator Ruth Martin from The Silence of the Lambs. The relationship between Sandra Bullock and her mom who has Alzheimer's is such a core of this film and it's so heartbreaking. When no one knows who she is, when documents, computers, the government all say she is someone else, she calls her mother and it's like, it's Angela, Mom. And her mom doesn't know who that is. And she's like, I just need you to tell these people at the police station that I'm me. And her mom can't do it because her mom doesn't know who she is.
It is so upsetting. I cried a lot while I watched this. I cried like I was watching an episode of This Is Us, the government-created television show meant to suck the tears from our bodies.
Her mother doesn't know her. Sandra is going through it and she needs to keep her mom safe and she needs to keep herself safe. And that's hard to do when her mom doesn't even know what's going on. The Net is something you just have to watch because it unfolds. It's fun action, it's thriller-y, it's cool. She's funny. She's charming. There is some real heart to it.
Shared Themes
Both movies share the distinction of being non-Jurassic Park films where someone says "clever girl." More importantly in Total Recall and The Net, our heroes book a little holiday getaway to escape their humdrum lives, to relax. But in a turn of events, each discovers they have had a new identity created for them against their will, and they must make the best of it.
In Total Recall, Arnold finds out the life he thinks he has built was created only in his mind. His memories of an eight-year marriage to Sharon Stone, a boring life as a construction worker with giant, giant arms — these things are a lie. His beloved wife only came into his life six weeks ago and in fact is in love with a different man. Arnold discovers the dreams he has of a brunette woman on Mars may be the most real thing in his brain, pulled from his past life. When he meets that woman, Melina, he starts to realize what has been missing.
It's like if someone told me my cat Gracie was in my head and my life wasn't real — I don't know that I'd dive into a new life. I think I'd just go to sleep for a few days. Instead, Arnold follows the path laid out for him by his past self because he wants answers. He wants to see where this thing leads. Once he's in it, he's not going to take the easy way out. He wants to regain what he had — his relationship with Melina and some sort of control over his life and his choices.
Sandra Bullock has her identity brutally ripped away from her in The Net. On the internet, scrubbed from existence and replaced with a woman she doesn't know. We exist legally in computers, in the cloud. Imagine right now that you lost your driver's license, your passport, your credit cards. And when you go to the DMV to tell them your name, they say, no, that's not who you are. Here you are, here's a picture of you with a different name.
Think about how tough it is to prove who you are even when you do have all the pieces you need. Logging into your bank needs a password and a code sent to your phone. You better have access to both. To check your email, you need to get onto your computer or your phone with face ID. When the power goes out or a computer crashes, you're lost, bereft.
Sandra has no access to her past and no way to build a future. But she refuses to accept the life of Ruth Marx, the identity assigned to her when Angela Bennett is ripped away. She sets out to figure out what has happened and why, knowing it has something to do with the disk Devlin tried to take from her. The friend who sent the disk dies, by the way. I feel like sending someone a floppy disk in the mail is never going to turn out great. If I were to get a floppy disk in the mail, I'd know my days were numbered, like the Ring tape.
The core of these two films is finding out what you're capable of. Arnold discovers he is capable of goodness and Sandra of making tough decisions and of intrigue.
I love Douglas Quaid. I love the man Arnold becomes after having his mind wiped. They implant memories of this ordinary life with a cool wife, and past mean Arnold — Hauser — scoffs at Doug. Cohaagen is so mad to lose Hauser, his friend and confidant. Doug is an embarrassment to these men. But Arnold embraces being Doug. He likes who he is — that he's trusted by Melina, that he's helping the mutants. Doug cares about people. He cares about the greater good. He thinks air should be free. And although it turns out he was set up to go on the journey he did, even when he knows the truth, he still works to beat Cohaagen. He doesn't embrace the man he was before.
He's very cool with killing his ex-wife, but otherwise Doug is a kinder man. You see this version of Arnold that could have existed without the greed. Knowing that he has that capacity — he doesn't have to be who he was. He doesn't have to go back to being Cohaagen's lapdog. He makes the choice to be a good man and to work for others.
In The Net, Sandra has been a homebody. She's asked to meet up with people and she's like, nah, I have a standing Friday night arrangement — which we discover is ordering pizza online and joining a chat room with weird dudes. She brushes off going out into the real world with people. She's been incredibly stuck in her routines. The craziest thing she's decided to do is go on this vacation, and even then she brings her computer. She only lets Devlin hijack her plans after a lot of hesitation and him knowing exactly what to say.
Once she gets back home and realizes her home is no longer hers and nobody knows who Angela Bennett is, she focuses on regaining her life. She has always been a problem solver, but of other people's problems, in a way that is removed from herself. This time it affects her and it affects the rest of the world. She steps up in a way that the FBI couldn't. She's commended at the end of the day by the news for what she does.
She also has been in this weird spot with her mom where she doesn't know how to interact with her. You see that change over the course of this movie. You see how she becomes more confident with her mother, accepting what her mother knows and doesn't know, while also making herself part of her mother's life. Instead of sitting around feeling upset about what has happened to her mother, she realizes she needs to take advantage of any time they have left.
Arnold and Sandra both don't know who to trust, but they find companionship and help in the form of rediscovering a loved one.
Arnold had been dreaming about the brunette that we learn is Melina. When he sees her for the first time as Doug, he finally feels like things are falling into place. He doesn't remember her, but there's a connection. When she realizes he isn't out to get her, she's excited to see him. I can only imagine how maddening it must have been as Melina to have this history with Arnold that he doesn't remember. But it also means they can start fresh somewhat, without the lies and deceit that Arnold as Hauser was enacting. They're a team and treated as such. They finish the movie with a kiss, glad to be together in any reality, unconcerned with the truth of the situation so much as they are just happy to be reunited.
In tough times, Sandra calls up the one person she's been close to besides her mother — her ex-boyfriend Dennis Miller. While he doesn't necessarily believe or understand what's happening to her, he wants to be there for her. But more importantly, after what has clearly been a long experience with her mother's Alzheimer's, feeling abandoned by her, unable to connect with her, Sandra is imbued with a new vigor for their relationship and works to escape her predicament to reunite with her mom, who has been hidden in a sanitarium by the now-dead Dennis Miller.
It's her mother that keeps her going. Her mother is her tether to reality, to who she is and who she wants to be, even if her mother doesn't know that.
What The Net Does Better
Total Recall is an incredible sci-fi movie with innovative visual effects, fantastic action sequences, a cool plot. But there isn't humanity — not in the way The Net explores the true impact of finding out your life is disposable.
In Total Recall, Arnold is never really emotionally distressed. Imagine discovering your wife isn't your wife. You're not who you think you are. What a spiral that would send you into. But instead Arnold is just like, okay cool, well, I'm Doug, what's up? Even the shooting of Sharon is like — consider that a divorce. In your mind you were together eight years. That has no weight? He's not at all conflicted by her death.
I think the best sci-fi makes us consider humanity as much as it makes us marvel at what could be possible in our future or in an alternate world. It also makes us take a deeper look at ourselves. Doug could have really had a crisis over the fact that he used to be a man like Hauser — the man we see via computer screens wearing his face. But instead the two are painted as completely different people with no relation to one another. Arnold is angry with other Arnold instead of horrified that he has this capacity for evil within himself.
In The Net, the relationship Sandra tries to maintain with her mother is such an important and heartbreaking thread. Her only living relative, a mother she adores, doesn't know who she is. Sandra visits her bringing her favorite candy, playing the piano, and her mother has no concept of their relationship. Her mother looks her in the eye and sees a stranger. So it's all the more frightening when the rest of the world stops seeing her as well. Her mother can't even vouch for her, can't support her, can't tell the police that Sandra is her daughter.
To have this access to her mother, to be so close yet so far, because her mother doesn't understand the world in the same way — it really is upsetting. It gives weight to Sandra's quest to regain her identity. She was easily targeted to be wiped off the face of the earth because she had no other living family and existed in relative isolation. The Praetorians believed her to be disposable. To overcome that, to prove she matters to people, that her mother has a connection with her — it's incredibly important for Sandra's development and for herself.
When she's with her mother at the end, there's an easiness in their relationship that wasn't there before. Sandra has embraced that her mother may not know her exactly, but does know who she is in some sense — that she's someone who can be trusted, someone she wants to spend time with. They are planting flowers together at the end.
My big problem with these movies and sci-fi movies where things that couldn't happen happen: I don't pick a movie apart unless I hate it. I told you to ignore any computer inaccuracies in The Net and I stand by that. But man, does it make me frustrated when a movie's like, this shouldn't have worked, it was such a tenuous plan. That's what they do in Total Recall. Among all the craziness, instead of leaning into it, they have the characters question it while also brushing it under the rug.
In the world of The Net, we see Sandra as Angela Bennett doing her computer things and she's confident in them. So the viewer is confident as well. It's not called into question in the world we're existing in. She speaks with such confidence on the subject that I don't question it. I'm along for the ride. She's the expert. She clicks the little pie symbol in the corner. She knows — that's a nasty one. I buy it because the movie is trusting me to buy it. The movie's like, here, you're here for 90 minutes to enjoy this with us? Enjoy.
As opposed to Total Recall being like, we know all this was crazy, so our characters are going to say it was crazy. That makes me mad. It's a cop-out. If you go into The Net knowing what you're doing, you're going to have a great time.
Please watch The Net. I love Sandra Bullock. I love Total Recall. Watch both. Total Recall is on Netflix. The Net is rentable, very cheap.
Hit me up at @tastelesspod on social media. We can talk about Sandra Bullock on the beach with a little portable computer in 1995. We can talk about Sharon Stone as Lori and her tennis outfit that honestly everyone should be wearing now in modern day. And why Quato is such a gross little freak.
Moment of Truth: The Matrix vs Catwoman
Two movies about becoming powerful, becoming a symbol, and fighting against the reality of our world — it's The Matrix vs Catwoman.
Read The Episode
Every episode of Tasteless, I take a critically acclaimed film and compare it to one that shares the same themes but didn't get the attention it deserves, then explain why that second movie is my pick. This week: two movies about becoming powerful, becoming a symbol, and fighting against the reality of our world. It's The Matrix versus Catwoman.
The Matrix
When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth — the life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.
The Matrix came out in 1999, has an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it's number 16 on the IMDB Top 250. It won four Oscars — all four it was nominated for: Best Film Editing, Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Visual Effects. This is the largest clean sweep of nominated categories for a film that was also not nominated for Best Picture. Got all these technical recognitions, but the acting and the directing did not.
This movie was revolutionary in a lot of ways, and I think that's why it was cemented as an important film. Yes, it's also a fun movie, it has interesting philosophical aspects, but it really was the spectacular action and the groundbreaking special effects that rocketed it to the forefront of pop culture.
I had a demo version of The Matrix video game that I played a million times on my Xbox without ever seeing the movie. The demo had probably one level. I got it free from Xbox Magazine and I just kept playing that one level over and over doing bullet time stuff as Neo. That was what I knew about The Matrix. Then I finally watched it and I liked it. And when I rewatched it, I was still impressed. The technology is cool. The special effects hold up because they really created their own genre with this bullet time thing — it holds up because no one's doing it better. They invented this cool thing.
Keanu Reeves is Neo — a role he could have lost to Will Smith, who decided not to do it. But it's a perfect Keanu Reeves role and he's part of the reason it succeeded. He threw himself into this movie completely, doing all of the reading the Wachowskis told him to do. The actors in the movie were required to be able to understand and explain the Matrix. They had to read Simulacra and Simulation. Keanu also read Out of Control and Evolutionary Psychology before he even opened the script, so he was able to explain the philosophical nuances in the movie. They wanted the actors to have that understanding.
There is something I love about Keanu. Is he always the best actor? I just watched Johnny Mnemonic and I enjoyed it, but his delivery is a little wooden — I finally saw what people say about him. But I find him so charming. I think of him saving Sandra Bullock from a speeding bus, exchanging letters with Sandra Bullock through a magic mailbox. He's also just a good guy. Over the course of the Matrix trilogy, he gave crew members millions of dollars. He gave the stunt team Harley-Davidsons. He constantly acknowledges the hard work that the people do who aren't on screen. He's well known for his kindness, and that's the kind of star I want.
I like that he's found the right niche in the John Wick movies. No one can deny his action prowess and he can be intimidating. You don't need to give him a bunch of monologues to deliver. He's like Arnold Schwarzenegger — if you play to his strengths, write the role for him, you could have an incredible project that will live on forever. Because he is good.
But let's forget Keanu for a second. Let's talk about the person who kicks this movie off: Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity. The first main character we see as she escapes bad guys and does a bullet time kick thing — that I knew best from the film Shrek when it parodied it. She is super cool. There's a scene where they're on this spaceship and you just see her in the background with a welding mask, and she pulls the welding mask off, and I was just immediately hit by that feeling of — that's a star. She has it. She's just cool.
I'm sure it's so annoying for her, but I find it a little bit funny that she's found it impossible to go out into the world while wearing sunglasses because she gets instantly recognized. If she's not wearing them, so many fewer people come up to her, but when she wears sunglasses, everyone's like, oh my God. She can play so tough that it's all the more powerful when she's vulnerable. Even though I felt Trinity and Neo were a little forced as a couple — why is she in love with him? I guess from the stalking — her admission that she's in love with him was an important moment in the film and an emotional anchor in a world where nothing feels real.
Their intrepid leader is Morpheus, played by Laurence Fishburne — a man I know and love as Cowboy Curtis in Pee-wee's Playhouse. Cowboy Curtis was a hunk. The strength in Morpheus is that he is a leader who doesn't need power. He wants to help free people. He looks over the crew on his ship, the Nebuchadnezzar, but he's seeking out Neo, the person prophesied to end things with the machines. He has no ego about that person not being him.
Agent Smith is our bad guy, played by Hugo Weaving. He's a code in the machine, a security program in the Matrix to wipe them out. He emulated a 1950s news reader and developed a neutral accent — he wanted Smith to sound neither robotic nor human. But I don't like his voice. I think his delivery is so weird. It was just the wrong side of neutral to where there was something off about it. Maybe it was supposed to be off. I think I wanted more of a Robert Patrick in Terminator 2 kind of mean machine rather than whatever this was. Obviously Agent Smith is an iconic villain. I just — when he actually talked, it took me out of it.
Cypher, played by Joe Pantoliano, betrays the crew — partially because Carrie-Anne Moss won't have sex with him. The ultimate red pill guy: he wants things given to him. And it's not this movie's fault that the red pill has become an awful thing on the internet. In the movie, taking the red pill is revealing the truth of the world. Morpheus says, you take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Keanu takes the red pill and he swallows it all cool. It's not possible to swallow a pill cool, but he tries. On the internet, the red pill has become part of a men's rights movement where men say they've uncovered the truth of the world — that women are running things and men are being taken advantage of. It's this gross, harmful group. And it's not this movie's fault, because in its quest for truth, it doesn't set up the unhealthy examples that Fight Club did. But we do see in Cypher this guy who didn't get the woman he wants and so kills everyone.
Another supporting character who's interesting is Switch, played by Belinda McClory. When she auditioned, she was only auditioning for half the role, because the character was originally planned to be played by androgynous actors — in the real world played by a male actor, and in the Matrix represented by a female actor, hence the name Switch. Warner Brothers refined the idea and McClory ended up getting a single female role in both environments.
It's interesting because the Wachowskis have shared that they are transgender. When this movie was made and written, they were living life as men, and now they are living life as women. So it's interesting that there was this character that Warner Brothers just shuffled to the side. It's unfortunate.
Obviously this movie is layered with a lot of thinking. The Wachowskis put their hearts and souls into it with research across philosophies, practices, religion. It's a really well-crafted movie. I didn't watch it at quite the right time for it to become a pillar in my love of film. But I do appreciate it for what it brought us — all the imitators, all the references. If you haven't seen it, I mean, I don't know what you're doing. But now we're going to talk about another movie that makes you think.
Catwoman
A shy woman, endowed with the speed, reflexes, and senses of a cat, walks a thin line between criminal and hero, even as a detective doggedly pursues her, fascinated by both of her personas.
This movie came out in 2004. It has a 9% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's in the bottom-rated movies, number 42. I was shocked to realize that I haven't done any of the bottom 50, although I've done several from the top 100. This is my first bottom 50. Guess what? Critics don't know what they're talking about.
After all of the cheetah criticism from Wonder Woman 1984, I thought we should visit another CGI cat woman. And Cats, by the way, is number 25 on the worst movies. People do not like digital cats. I don't know why. I do. I like all kinds of cats.
Halle Berry plays Patience Phillips, the woman who becomes Catwoman, and she's a delight. I love her. I love The Call, Perfect Stranger, Kidnap, the live-action Flintstones. I love her as Storm in the X-Men movies. I love that she accepted her Razzie in person for this film when she won for Worst Actress.
Halle Berry became one of only six actors in history — only five at the time — to possess both an Oscar and a Razzie after her win for her infamous performance in this movie. She also became the first to accept their Razzie in person, walking out on stage proudly, holding both Oscar and Razzie aloft. First of all, I want to thank Warner Brothers. Thank you for putting me in a piece of shit, god-awful movie. Of course, Sandra Bullock later went on to also accept her Razzie for All About Steve. And both of these women hold special places in my heart.
Have I seen Monster's Ball, which Halle won her Oscar for? No. But I love her. She was in a great movie called Race the Sun where her and Jim Belushi help kids including Eliza Dushku make a solar-powered car to race around Hawaii. Great movie.
I think this Catwoman has a different energy than prior Catwomen, and that's okay. Just like we have fun Batman and dark Batman. There's a vulnerability in Halle Berry's Catwoman, in her playful nature, because it's a persona she's just trying on. She fights it. She wonders, why did I say those things to my boss? It's like I didn't have control over myself. She doesn't lean into it the way that Michelle Pfeiffer does. I love that.
She works for this beauty company, Hedare Beauty, and she overhears that one of the new products is dangerous. So bad guys want to kill her — they basically shove her down a pipe and she dies. She is brought back to life by a cat screaming in her face, breathing in her face. And the only way my cat is going to wake me up is if she screams by mistake. A cat breathing life into me is my dream. I would love for this to happen to me.
Then she is part cat, and there are nice touches — like that she sleeps better as a cat. She's finally rested. But there are tough touches, like when she rubs the catnip all on herself. Look, that's embarrassing. That's tough. She goes to a bar and orders a White Russian — no ice, hold the vodka, hold the Kahlua. The bartender's like, okay, here's a cup of cream. And she's like, mmm. She's trying to figure out what's wrong with her. She's on Google, Googling "cats, period, women, cats in history."
Forty-three cats were trained for the film. Halle Berry adopted one of them afterwards — an orange and white youngster named Plato. Apparently Halle was not a cat person when she was initially cast; she had two dogs. But she grew attached. That's what happens. That's how you get a cat. You meet one and then it's your cat.
Alex Borstein plays her friend and is the comedic relief. She's a joy. I love Alex Borstein. She wants Patience to get out and bone hot cop Benjamin Bratt. Alex is of course Lois on Family Guy, she's on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, she was on Mad TV. She's just very funny and this is a great comedic best friend role.
I'm going to spoil Catwoman right now to talk about my favorite part. There's a villain guy, the owner of the beauty company — this guy George — but he's not important. The true villain, the person we should have our eye on, is Sharon Stone.
Yes, from all my favorite things: Basic Instinct, Sliver, Scissors, Ratched, Law and Order: SVU, an amazing episode of Will and Grace. A true renaissance woman.
I could fully understand her deal in this. Her character Laurel is the face of her husband's beauty company. She's a model, she's gorgeous, but she's been deemed too old and shoved to the side for the new young thing. And yeah, okay, she's going to put this product out that's going to melt people's faces off, sure. But it also does — if you don't get your face melted off — make your skin really nice. That's the product Halle hears them talking about: this Beau-Line cream, beauty cream. If you stop using it, your face will disintegrate. If you keep using it — as Sharon says at one point — skin like living marble. I can't even do it. She does the best villain deliveries. It's so good.
At one point Sharon gives Catwoman a burner phone, and she sets a video so that when Sharon calls, this little gif of herself plays on this old Nokia phone. It's such a great, amazing, villainous, self-absorbed touch. I want big, larger-than-life villains. I want puns.
Sharon is such a strong villain that it does take focus from our hero a little bit, but in the same way that Heath Ledger's Joker was the standout of The Dark Knight. At one point Benjamin Bratt comes to her and he's like, I think you actually have done these killings. She stands up, walks right over to him, holds her wrists up and kind of wiggles them and snaps — it's this brilliant small moment. She says, if you have evidence, then how come I'm not in cuffs? And does this little gesture that was just so good.
When Michelle Pfeiffer played Catwoman in Batman Returns, she was iconic. She was the breakout star because she was so in touch with the role. Sharon Stone did the same for me in Catwoman. She got the tone that I wanted the movie to be and she played into it fully. And the fight between her character Laurel and Catwoman is so good because it never treads into catfight territory. It feels strong and it's calculated.
Sharon Stone's stunt double was Zoe Bell, who of course came on my show, came on Strong Female Leads, and is such a delight. She mentioned that falling onto marble in this movie was one of the more painful stunts she's done. She actually received an award for performing the 20-foot fall where Laurel Hedare falls to her death. So watching the fight scene and knowing that it's her is just an extra added level of fun because she is so beyond talented.
Benjamin Bratt plays the love interest — he was also of course Sandra Bullock's love interest in Miss Congeniality. In this movie he's a cop. Yes, okay. He is part of the infamous basketball scene. He and Halle Berry play basketball. There are about 2,000 cuts in 20 seconds. It's a lot to take in. But I get what they were going for. They were going for fun. They were going for goofiness. I get it. But okay, look, it's a lot of cuts.
Ophelia Powers is played by Frances Conroy. She owns the cat Midnight, who is the one that actually comes and breathes life back into Halle — because Midnight had been out on a ledge and Halle had tried to save him. It's possible Midnight was just testing Halle to see if she was worthy of the Catwoman powers. Halle goes to Frances Conroy and is like, something is wrong with me, I'm rubbing my face in catnip. And Frances Conroy is like: Catwomen aren't held back by the rules of society. Follow your desires. This is a blessing and a curse. You'll experience a freedom other women will never know. She tells her, you are Patience and you are also Catwoman. But you spent a lifetime caged and you need to accept all of who you are. Catwoman is this part of herself that has never come out.
Frances Conroy keeps all of these books and pieces of info on previous Catwomen, and we actually see Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman — indicating that we're in the same universe. But of course we have Patience Phillips and not Selina Kyle. It is a totally new myth.
A few more interesting bits. I liked that the opening had a bunch of articles about cats over the opening credits, and one of them said "CAT CULTS" in all caps. I immediately thought about how quickly I would join a cat cult. Missy Peregrym, the star of Stick It, has her first movie role in this — as the model they show the issues with the Beau-Line cream on. You see photos of her but not her in the flesh. And Halle Berry played a character named Miss Sharon Stone in the live-action Flintstones movie. I hope her and Sharon talked about that on set.
Shared Themes
Thomas Anderson, aka Neo — his internet hacker name is Neo, but his real name is Thomas Anderson. Thomas and Patience are relatively powerless in their everyday lives, but they suddenly happen onto abilities that make them more — more confident, more powerful, more everything. They come into their own. But are they even themselves anymore? They represent something to the people around them. They're no longer an individual, but a symbol. Neo and Catwoman.
Tom is a computer programmer by day with an uneventful life. Online he's Neo — that's the space where he gets to be who he wants and where he can explore the aspects of the world that confuse him. He feels like something is wrong. He keeps seeing the term "the Matrix." He just knows that there's more to life. It's like that weird deja vu feeling. He gets into some cyber crimes under his hacker alias, but generally seems pretty disengaged from the world around him. Then suddenly, instead of being Thomas, Neo is the one given full control. He becomes that which he wanted to be, that which he is fated to be — this elusive One, this person meant to bring about revolution.
When Keanu is in the Matrix at the beginning of the film as just Thomas Anderson, his costumes were deliberately shabby and ill-fitting, to suggest his feeling of not quite fitting into the world. He's looking for more, and he gets it.
Patience Phillips is a talented artist working for a boss that doesn't appreciate her. She stays under the radar. Her boisterous friend Alex Borstein tries to get her to experience life, but she stays at home while wishing for more. Then, after she dies and is brought back to life by cat breath, she loses some of her fear. She stands up to her boss. She confronts the people across from her having a loud party. Basically, she lives my dream. If I could turn into a cat lady and go knock down everything in my neighbor's apartment, I would be so pumped.
So now, instead of Tom and Patience, we have Neo and Catwoman — two figures who represent hope to those around them. They represent something. They fight for freedom, freedom of knowledge, for people to know the truth about the world that they live in, the truth about what is controlling them.
Neo finds out he's the fated One that those aware of the Matrix have hoped for — the one who was supposed to lead humans in a war against the machines and gain humanity its freedom. Everyone who has escaped the Matrix has taken on a certain amount of baggage. They understand that the world is fake, that everything is being fed to them as their bodies are used for fuel. The only thing bringing them hope is that the One is out there somewhere. That is all they have. Neo is their Jesus. One guy even calls him that when he shows up.
Catwoman is not a perfect figure by any means. She's not a true hero, but also not a villain. She does want to make sure the world knows the truth about Buhleen. And when her cat side takes over, she stands up to her boss at work — all of her coworkers cheer. She becomes this figure of hope. No one has been waiting for her the way they wait for Neo, but in small ways she works to make people's lives better. They see the news articles about the woman fighting the big corporations, and it shows that the little guy can win against the big guy. She becomes part of the tapestry of Catwoman, part of a legacy.
Both characters want to live authentically, but they're overtaken by the prophecies that have been set for them. Neo is tasked with being the savior of humanity, and Patience as Catwoman finds herself doing things she wouldn't have done before — fighting her neighbors, yelling at her boss. Her behavior becomes riskier. Neo and Catwoman must accept the expectations that come with who they are in order to embrace their powers and use them for the greater good. And so they do. Neo gives up Thomas, just as Catwoman gives up Patience, to roll up their sleeves and do the work that must be done.
Reality is shaped by those in power. Whether it's the robots in The Matrix or the slightly more realistic world of Catwoman, this is true. Reality is shaped by those in power, by an unseen network, for their own gain.
In The Matrix, we see how humans are being used as batteries, placed into a virtual world to keep them complacent. In Catwoman, we see the way corporations and beauty ideals form the world around us.
The Matrix is an entire system built on complacency. It's the world we think we're in. Your dumb job, going to McDonald's, your dog — all part of the Matrix. Your real body is in a goo pod, emaciated, having life sucked out of it. It's all illusion. The world around you has been built specifically to keep you occupied, to make you think nothing is wrong. And if you make the choice to learn the truth — to take the red pill — you will never be able to sink back into the fantasy.
Anyone who isn't ready to learn about the world won't. People can bury their heads in the sand and ignore the glitches, the deja vu. But once you commit, once you know, you can't unknow. When Cypher betrays his team, it's because he misses the freedom of ignorance. He misses not knowing the exact way that the world around him was shaped. He misses not knowing he's a puppet, a battery, a source of life for something other than himself. He wants the illusion of choice back. He wants to be controlled unknowingly, happily. Rather than see exactly what goes into his boring life, he doesn't want to know how the sausage is made.
Even when you know what the world is made up of, when you know the objective truth, what you are told about the world can shape what happens. The Oracle at one point says to Keanu, don't worry about breaking that vase. And he goes, what? What vase? And turns and breaks the vase because he turns to find out what vase he would break. And the Oracle's like, what's really going to bake your noodle — which is a phrase we should talk about more — is would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything? The Oracle both saw and created this event.
In the same way, I don't think it really mattered whether Neo was the One — just that he tried to tap into a greater power to save his friend, that he was willing to sacrifice himself for Morpheus. What you believe is an important part of how you perceive the world.
In Catwoman, Hedare Beauty is one arm of the beauty machine. It's a company that says women need to look a certain way and they will sell them the product to do it. Now, if that's not nefarious enough, Hedare is making a product that will kill its users if they stop buying it — slash even if they keep using it, in Alex Borstein's case, but maybe she got a bad batch.
What we think is attractive changes based on the parameters the media and the world around us set. Just as how things are perceived in the Matrix are controlled by the robots that built the virtual world. Both are equally meaningless whims of those in power.
Different cultures have different beauty standards. Different decades, different centuries have different standards, because there's no objective true beauty. We're conditioned to find certain things beautiful based on what society tells us represents beauty.
When George tears down Halle — he's the owner of the company — he leads with the clothes, with the nails, with the looks, and the work is an afterthought. This is the world they're inhabiting. The world that we are all inhabiting.
When Ben and Halle are in the bowels of the building, you see discarded Sharon Stone posters because she has been replaced. And Catwoman doesn't even defeat Sharon. Sharon sees herself after Catwoman screws up her face and lets herself fall to her death. She thinks her life is no longer worth living because of what she's been told, because of the importance society has placed on beauty.
You get a better idea of the harmfulness of this industry, of the way women are treated, when Benjamin Bratt confronts Sharon Stone. He says, don't be stupid, you don't want to kill a cop. And she says, I'm a woman. I'm used to doing all kinds of things I don't want to do. And when Halle comes in to save Benjamin Bratt, Sharon says, you wanted to save him, honey — save yourself.
Ophelia Powers talks to Patience about how being a Catwoman allows her certain freedoms to work outside the bounds of society. Sharon and Halle cannot be free within the confines of this industry. They're forced to act in a certain way to be accepted. They're seen in a certain way. That's why Catwoman can't be a pure hero. She can't be a good guy like Superman. She has to have some edge. She has to do some things that are inappropriate, because she is working within the confines of a system that doesn't respect her.
What Catwoman Does Better
Here are a few things I really think Catwoman did right that I was a little disappointed with The Matrix for.
The Matrix, for all its questions about the world, felt awfully black and white in who is good and who is bad. The good guys are those trying to break down the system, the bad guys are those trying to keep the system in place. But I think there's a cruelty in exposing our characters to the horrors of this world. I would rather live in the machine, like Cypher.
In Catwoman, yeah, there's a selfishness to her actions and we see that, but we also see the good she does. She's not painted as an unflinching hero, but instead as someone who is conflicted. After doing her first crime, she leaves cupcakes. She returns the jewels. She steals jewels, she returns them, she leaves cupcakes saying sorry — because she feels bad.
In The Matrix, we have good guys and bad guys. The movie roots for those who take the red pill, those who question the world around them and want the truth. The one person who wishes he didn't know what he knows, Cypher, is the bad guy. Yeah, okay, he kills his teammates — that's horrific. But I felt the movie didn't have a lot of sympathy for him prior to that, despite the fact that in an interview when the film was first released, the Wachowskis revealed that they would both take the blue pill when given Neo's choice. That's what Cypher wishes he did. But he's relegated to bad guy, and then there's the whole wanting-to-have-sex-with-Trinity-and-being-rejected thing just to make him worse.
Cypher's basic motivation — to go back to not knowing what he knows — was what I aligned with while watching. And of course Agent Smith is wholly evil. The robots are wholly evil. But we're not given any context for the war that happened, other than the fact that humans cut off solar energy so the robots decided to use human energy instead. That's why I always say thank you to my Alexa. We're out here trying to make smarter and smarter robots but we're treating them like garbage. It's a recipe for disaster. I just don't think humans are fully innocent in this.
In Catwoman, Halle's no saint. And Sharon Stone isn't fully wrong in her motives. The only true bad guy is the CEO of the company. He's a jerk. We see the war being waged within Halle as her Catwoman side comes out and says things she would never dream, and then Patience has to contend with the fallout. She's so conflicted. Her handwriting is shown to be that of two different people — one when she's Patience, one when she's Catwoman — and she tries to bring the two sides together to stop Buhleen from releasing a face-melting serum.
Catwoman takes what she wants when she wants it, but she will also save Benjamin Bratt, the cop that wants to capture her. And she tried to save Sharon from plummeting to her death. Sharon's been shut down, mistreated, shoved aside. She has a product that works — that she herself uses. Yeah, okay, she didn't know about the side effects when she started, but she was willing to try it out. She does believe in the company in a way. It's the system that made her. As the model, as the face of it, she's become a part of it.
The Matrix is so innovative in so many areas, in ways that have rippled through film in the decades since, encouraging so many imitators — and yet when it comes to the typical movie formula, the Wachowskis were incredibly just basic in an area that Catwoman made a strong choice with. The love story.
The Matrix shoehorns in a love story, which is surprising. In a movie that questions so much, the Wachowskis went with the standard — of course the main guy and the main girl are in love. Especially when I really did not feel a spark between Neo and Trinity. Yeah, she's been watching him, keeping an eye on him, but I felt in more of a mentor-guardian way. He's trained by Morpheus. He does stuff like talk to the Oracle alone. There really wasn't much bonding time between him and Trinity.
She just chalks their love up to fate at the end, when she whispers to him as he's dying: The Oracle told me that I would fall in love, and that that man — the man that I loved — would be the One. So you see, you can't be dead. You can't be, because I love you. Why? I don't get it. The Oracle told you that. You've spent this entire time thinking you two were in love, but I've seen you guys interact only a handful of times. Maybe the next two movies explore their relationship better, but within the confines of the original Matrix, I don't see it.
In Catwoman, she knows the best thing she can do for her love is to leave him. Not to entangle him in her life of crime. Not to conflict his police officer values. Benjamin Bratt is willing to do whatever it takes to keep her safe. He has separated Catwoman and Patience in his mind — he loves Patience and is intrigued by Catwoman — but Halle knows that isn't good for him. She needs to be free to do what she needs to do to keep people safe without endangering his moral code or putting him in a difficult position.
So she leaves, and she writes him a letter, and we see him reading it and he's bummed, of course, but there's also an understanding. He respects her and her choice. More superheroes should make the hard choice to ditch their loved ones so that those loved ones can't be used as bait. Superman, Spider-Man — get it together.
I hope you'll give Catwoman another chance if you've already watched it, or if you haven't watched it yet, maybe pop it on. It is a fun movie. It has a great villain. It's a good time. And of course The Matrix is great — I'm going to have to go watch two and three because I did really enjoy the first one.
Opposites Attract: When Harry Met Sally vs Basic Instinct
We’ve gotten through Valentine’s Day so it’s time to talk about relationships. This week, I’m featuring 2 movies where a pair of people tell themselves they shouldn’t be together yet something keeps bringing them back together, 2 movies that explore our society’s stereotypical beliefs about the relationships between men and women — it’s When Harry Met Sally vs Basic Instinct.