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Okay, that was difficult to watch. I hate this movie and most of what it did, and it goes right into the list of my favorites. Masterfully done.

Plot. I didn't know a movie could build up such good empathy for the characters and manipulate you to form a belief that you know and understand the characters, even despite heavy foreshadowing and me being aware of the fact that Lars von Trier is not exactly known for slice-of-life no-thoughts-head-empty easy-watching things, and then completely shatter that belief. Make all the characters do terrible, grotesquely realistic things while giving off the "hmm yeah, it's not like these characters are very unusual" feeling (contrarily, that's what a person in a situation like that, having figured out an opportunity like that, would likely do), aggravating the situation for an hour straight without making it seem like a trying-too-hard heap of tragedies and suffering for the sake of edginess and tear-jerking, and then ending it on a self-contradictory note, with a paradoxical decision by the protagonist and just shrugging off any questions by saying "lol stupid questions, we will not answer".

Characters. This movie really nails the descriptions of different archetypes of people, being quite light at first when the main character attempts to explore and play around with the people's psyches, and then getting darker after various little missteps the heroine makes result (or do they really?) in the other side of the characters around her being revealed. The relationships between various personalities are also very well-written.

Visuals and storytelling. The storytelling was quite unusual, akin to an audiobook or a theater play, with characters' thoughts and actions being narrated rather than shown; to give more weight to the theater similarity, there were also no walls, with only lines on the ground that signify any walls or doors (the actors do convincingly pretend to open and close the imaginary doors, though).

Soundtrack. Was there even any, aside from a song in one scene performed by the characters and the ending credits song by Bowie? I don't think I really noticed much of it, and honestly, that's good, the movie did not need any soundtrack, the silence fit it well enough.

To conclude, I found the movie to be "an experience", and an experience worth going through. It is somewhat hard to recommend a movie like that because of the emotional impact it makes on you, not allowing you to disconnect and not emphasize with the characters, though.

This review contains some spoilers, but I am sure that you're better off reading my review than even trying to watch this.

TL;DR: Style over substance... Wait, really? The style was nothing special as well.

I am honestly puzzled at how this anime has a rating of 8.1 on MAL and multiple awards for being a "Mystery or Psychological Anime of the Year." Seriously? It had almost zero Mystery, and I'm inclined to rate the level of inclusion of the "Psychological" element in negative integers.

The premise, and maybe even part of the first episode, was interesting enough to make me watch the second episode. From there on, I continued with it only to marvel at its shortcomings.

The plot somehow manages to incite feelings of both "this might've been better if it was longer" and "this should've been shorter" (at just 11 episodes!). It appears painfully, unreasonably dragged out, but also confusingly rushed, though mostly not really in a way of "I want more of this".

First, the anime shows us two teenage boys stealing something from some important facility, enrolling in a school (that just incidentally introduces the other main character), and planting explosives in a governmental building (where the other main character just incidentally happens to be).

After that, they force the police to solve riddles on the topic of the more obscure parts of Greek mythology to stop the bombs in other buildings from exploding. To communicate with the police, they post videos (with their faces barely hidden under masks, with their voices unchanged, in clothing they later wear outside) which the main detective just incidentally finds, with help of his sidekick. The riddles aren't fun and are impossible to solve without in-depth knowledge of an unrelated topic - a cheap trick to make the main characters look intelligent.

Their vandalism is also not exactly "terrorism", so disregard the title: the characters don't exactly make any demands, nor do they reveal their motives to the public; it is just destruction for the sake of destruction, although some screen-time is paid, for some reason, to reassure the viewers that the main characters care about not hurting any civilians.

Later, the show introduces another party that wants the main characters dead, for their own mysterious reasons. New horribly-written characters appear.

In the end, some parts of the characters' backstory and some of their motives get briefly revealed, with a weak attempt to tackle themes of post-war nationalism and transhumanism. The "grand" explanation doesn't account for around half of the main characters' lives. Furthermore, most of the revelation is possible to guess after following the opening and the flashbacks, which are sporadically pushed into the viewers' faces.

Now, the characters. Nine and Twelve are the stereotypical nerdy, reclusive h4x0r boy and the cheerful sidekick. Both are supposed to be very unusual and unique, but only in the first episode is Twelve shown to be slightly not well-adjusted to life in a normal society. In the subsequent episodes, we learn absolutely nothing about them, nor do they develop - quite the opposite, actually: characters' complexity and development are treated almost like an existential threat to the anime.

Another character that could be called "main" (and whom I despised for ten episodes), Lisa, Nine's and Twelve's classmate, is a good-for-nothing, depressed, bullied (for unknown reasons) high school girl that runs away from her possessive mom. She constantly jeopardizes every plan Nine and Twelve attempt to execute and serves no purpose, aside from being a screen-time hog nobody wanted. As if to highlight how mind-numbingly stupid she is, during one of her numerous emotional breakdowns, she asks Twelve to immediately leave her and let her die while they are trapped on a Ferris wheel, high in the air.

The main detective, Shibazaki, is not as lifeless as the above three, but he's not that well-written either and doesn't exactly leave a lasting impression.

The antagonist, Five, is an exaggerated, cringeworthy, cartoonish villain that does no good for the already failing show, and raises a serious question about if this anime is just making fun of itself at this point.

The visuals and the soundtrack were ok. Not something I especially liked, there were good moments here and there, but overall it was hard to enjoy these when the events are getting increasingly more ridiculous by the minute. The overall atmosphere or some supposed "tension" did nothing for me, either, mostly because I kept laughing at the plotholes, the supposedly "smart" characters acting braindead, and the plot's attempts at portraying drama and struggles.

Overall, the more I think about it, the worse impression I get of this anime. Not worth watching under any circumstances.

Rating: 2/10.

Overall, I liked this movie. I loved the eerie atmosphere, the suspense, both in the visual (the colors, the cinematography) and audio elements (the soundtrack or the absence of soundtrack was very on-point and superb for every scene).

Plotwise it was good as well, but intense: I had to hit pause a couple of times, just to calm down, especially in the latter half of the movie. As some IMDB review puts it, the movie was "hard to watch; hard to look away".

In short, the plot's something like this: a misanthropic unemployed thief with some deep knowledge of self-help/business seminar vocabulary decides to get a real job, and finds himself in the world of independent news photography, taking footage of various urban crimes. As the story progresses, his methods of seeking out the needed crimes (and angles for shooting) get grittier and darker, while the news networks' staff praises and values him for it more and more.

The satire of the news industry was stunning (further highlighted by the main character citing a study where people have said that they watch the news "to be informed"). I don't follow the news much and don't intentionally watch TV at all, but the bits I've seen or heard, upon reflection, are jarringly similar to what happens in the movie, and I can imagine it's even worse in the Western world.

Also, it really stood out for me how realistically the news anchors acted out the concerned expressions that were calculated and passed to them from behind the scenes. I've heard that superficially disturbed tone of voice many times, but never really seriously thought about how creepy and weird it is. I wonder how the news anchors don't go nuts like this. I would, "American Psycho"-style ("I simply am not there").

I wish there was more to some of the storylines, though; the one with the news director, I felt, was underdeveloped: we didn't get a glance at what was the end result of her and main character's "relationship" that he manipulated and pressured her into (although it's hinted at in one of the ending scenes where she withholds the important footage from the police, thereby helping him).

In conclusion, the movie might not be a must-watch (it just doesn't leave a "this is essential watch" feeling, while still doing everything really well), but I sure had a lot of fun seeing it. Recommend.

Essentially, The Matrix Resurrections has a few awesome spots here and there, but ultimately, from the midpoint on, it feels like a movie that is conflicted about its theme, with a jumbled, uneven narrative and muddled main message, which I nevertheless will try to analyse in this review.
To give a basic overview of the plot, the movie starts with Neo being in a reality where he's just a game programmer and a tired aging geek who is, a few minutes later, forced to begin work on a new part of his famous game, named "The Matrix". People around him seem very keen on making a sequel, but Neo appears to be uneager and hesitant. Some minutes later after an annoying work meeting, in a cafe Neo - or Thomas Anderson - meets Trinity - or, in this reality, Tiffany - who is now a middle-aged mother burdened with a nagging family. After that, plotwise, the movie ultimately resorts to repeating what happened in the first part of the franchise: Neo has to be rescued from the matrix, he's presented with a choice again, he ruminates on it, eventually leaving the matrix, only to return to save Trinity. In the end, it turns out that Neo and Trinity are the One together; the movie doesn't explain how and why that works.
In my opinion, the movie begins quite well: it wittily makes fun of film studios churning out new and new sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots, and so on, mocks the specific kind of people who find a confirmation of their ideology in every single work, ridicules the game designers who push for pandering to the lowest common denominator ("Matrix is for everyone!"). It shoots down the skin-deep, superficial interpretations of the first movie. All of it was quite exciting and funny to watch, and I also loved the brooding uncertainty the main character begins to fall into, confused between what is real and what isn't. At that stage, The Matrix Resurrections does look promising. Some interesting questions are posed, for instance, if it's possible to differentiate really wanting something and being deeply programmed - by the "architect" of the world or by society itself - to desire it. This section of the movie does try to say something.
But then all the ideas just fade away, and the film gets progressively worse after Thomas Anderson becomes sure that this reality is a simulation and gets rescued from the simulation by a cliché blue-haired rebellious punk girl. Questions of romance between Neo and Trinity are given an absurd amount of screen time, with all the characters taking ridiculous risks for Neo and Trinity to reunite. Even the action scenes are unremarkable and dull, and the comic relief characters don't work that well. Everything is somewhat predictable with the modern film fads the director just poked fun at repeated, effectively making everything as incoherent as possible.
The movie leaves an abundance of questions, and most of them are not a "good" kind. The narrative seems to be unintentionally confusing, with the segments just not coming together. It feels like a dragged-out meta-ironic joke, executed so well that most of the audience will miss the humor right until the ending scene with the villain being the voice of reason, and the main characters' duo just shrugging it off and behaving in silly ways. Nevertheless, I'm somewhat inclined to consider that the director did mean everything expressed in the second part of the movie: it's all acted out a bit too seriously to be a gag. It would also be quite easy to dismiss the movie as the mediocrity it is, and forget about any analysis, considering the possibility that even the director didn't know what the message of the movie was supposed to be.
First, I would like to underline that the first movie in the tetralogy is essentially about accepting the "cold, hard truth" and reality, breaking out of some system (and the system depends on a particular interpretation), and helping others to break out of it. Here, although helping "prisoners" of the matrix is still a theme, the narrative is not about truth but about feelings and romance: extra attention is given to the characters' feelings and intuitions, and especially to love: the central point is getting Neo and Trinity together. Now, the first movie did pay attention to the feeling Neo had too, but to me "a splinter in your mind, driving you mad" wasn't an inability to cope with the hardships of reality, or a desire to escape into a fantasy world, or to reform reality to be a fantasy world, but an unrelenting desire to search for the truth.
In this film, the matrix isn't seen as something inherently evil because it's all fake, and the heroic duo isn't aiming to destroy the machines' fantasy that is this reality. They just want to reshape it into something that would supposedly be "better". "Helping" "prisoners" of the matrix here means reforming the prison to have a rainbow ceiling.
In some cases, the matrix may even be seen as a potential environment for further self-expression; this is hinted at in the case of one of the main characters, the blue-haired rebel, who doesn't have her disheveled blue hairstyle in the real world, instead sporting a basic black undercut, with all the hair slicked back, making her look much more ordinary.
So, considering all that, what's the system to be reformed? The first movie left it as an unanswered question, making the audience ponder it endlessly. But here there are numerous clues toward what is the supposed "system" that is to be escaped or reformed.
All the interpretations are made fun of in the beginning, making the characters spouting them look, at best, parroting others, and at worst idiotic and self-contradictory, like the guy who annoys Neo with questions about the deep philosophical foundations of the franchise and his opinions on the answers, but later reveals that what he thinks is most important in the upcoming game is the "bullet time" visual effect. All interpretations - but one, that became more apparent in recent years.
That interpretation is the transgenderism theme. Now, I think it was quite hard to push that interpretation for the first movie because all there was to work with that somehow tied into the needed message were the red pills (similar to the estrogen pills transgenders take), partly the "feeling that something isn't right" (supposedly experienced by people who want to change their gender, but it could equally be applied to any other insecurity or complex, and the gender dysphoria interpretation feels like a giant stretch), and the transgendered-ness of both directors (even though they came out years later after the movie). It's all so far-fetched and not fitting with the rest of the story in Matrix 1: many more themes and undertones that aren't simply explained by some character being transgender.
But here it's almost like everything has been done to reinforce that interpretation: there is a focus on the "feeling", with the therapist supposedly playing "conversion therapy" and convincing Neo that it's all his imagination and trauma, the apparent ability to "reshape reality" (and encouragement to do so, even though the goals are very blurry and unprecise, and so are the means to do so; when the main villain confronts them about it, nothing of meaning is replied), or rather to reshape the collective fantasy (the gender system) of reality instead of breaking from it (which is a big point in the transgenderism's "philosophy": if you could break away from the gender stereotypes that are forced on you, you wouldn't need to artificially change your body to fit the imagined version that is forced on you by society due to perceived non-conforming to some other rule of it). The somewhat traditional family Trinity has is also portrayed as something unwanted, a part of some erroneous fantasy: Trinity even abandons her kids and husband because of some abstract "feeling".
Basically, the whole movie constantly beats you over the head with the "progressive" ideology, as much as it can with such an aimless storyline. Funnily enough, the directors used to deny that the series had a transgender agenda in mind, but decided that it did around a year before this movie came out.
To conclude, regarding the storyline, there weren't many innovations. I would even go so far as to say there were none at all, except for the first 20 minutes. Nevertheless, there was a new agenda introduced and some emphasis made on the fact that if you feel that something is wrong, you have to embrace the feeling and throw away as much of your life as needed. The main characters also choose to remain in the matrix, therefore still choosing to be somewhat "blue-pilled", instead of gaining access to reality.
The movie definitely isn't forgettable if you think about it deeply, and it does provide things to think about (although as for me, I don't agree with the main messages), but it still largely sticks to the tried and true, pandering to the current trends in terms of majority's opinions. The weak ending is expected, but is still quite a disappointment. If I was asked to rate it, I would give it a 4 out of 10.

Fun. Kinda. Stream-of-consciousness style of writing, random ramblings, poetry inbetween haphazardly written autobiography bits, inner dialogue, and thoughts on gestalt therapy. Not structured, not planned, just text that follows author's train of thought as he writes the book. It's almost like a diary or a journal. By the way, never quite understood people who do public (as in "it's voluntarily posted on the internet") journals, or rather, I can see how that might be somewhat helpful but can't do it anyway. Maybe because most people I periodically write about in my non-public diary check my website quite often, and honestly I do not think they all need to know every random thing that comes to my mind related to them. Censoring anything related to the social side of my life sounds very insincere. Besides, would I have to maintain two diaries for when I have something private to say? Also, nothing much is happening in my life to write about aside from my feelings, thoughts or ideas, I go out max. once in a week or two and those ventures are also not something public (and I also doubt they'd be any interesting to anyone aside from a couple of stalkers, maybe, anyway). And all the other time is spent studying or thinking. Or consuming, and then trying to form an opinion about what I've consumed, which is this page is all about. I think I might benefit more from a stream-of-consciousness writing page (with some quality control of course), in comparison to a entry-for-each-day style blog. Am I going to do either? Nah, probably not. Ah well, I just digressed in the same way the author constantly does in the book I'm trying to review. Anyway, the book was hard to read, I've spent around a month on it, but in general do not regret it. Really hard to form a definite, short opinion about this one, though.

Awesome, I might've liked this one even more than The Woman in the Dunes by the same author.

The writing style strikes me as vaguely similar to Camus's (it's possible that the translation made it so), and the general atmosphere is somewhere between The Stranger, The Plague, and something else (can't quite catch it, maybe Kafka? I've never read many of his works, though, and what I've read I've forgotten), but with a Japanese edge (not like I know much about it, am yet to read the less obscure Japanese stuff). Kōbō Abe, being wickedly good at first-person narration, portrays an extremely intelligent and dedicated, but self-centered and needlessly, uselessly over-analytical main character, mixing complex philosophical ideas into the protag's thoughts/monologue/letters. The ending is even more impressive, and, curiously, with it being another character's perspective on what happened (and what happened was almost nothing, compared to what could have happened and how the protag described the events), it reveals way more of the character's "real" self than all of his own monologues, showing the whole novel in a distinctly different light. It might not have had such influence on me, though, hadn't I related so much to the protagonist in the way of thinking, suspending most of the criticism towards his personality and actions (with the book itself somewhat encouraging it, in my opinion).

It's one of those things about which you think "wow, it was nice!" right after watching, but as you ponder more and more it feels more and more unfinished and poorly, carelessly done.

The lore just wasn't described and explained well enough (I've heard it was done a bit better in the manga, but I'm dealing with the anime now). I still have a load of questions left, about Lucy, about the love triangle (the protag is a dick!), about the virus, about the evil scientist governmental organization... The whole anime feels like a sketch of something bigger than what it turns out to be. Also, the opening is far too fancy for the story, I imagined that Lucy would turn out to be some enigmatic immortal creature, but nope, she's just traumatized and infected with a virus that nobody seems to care that much about.

I wouldn't say I dislike any character much, but none of them are especially likable or appealing to me. I thought I could get into liking Lucy-san/Nyuu-chan, but the split personality wasn't done too well either, and it was never explained why does Nyuu-chan regress to such intellectual state (aside from the fact that she was trying to repress her past, but acting like an animal is a bit extreme even for that). That might also be me disliking "stupid" characters.

The visuals and the soundtrack were awesome, though, and it was a delight to watch even despite all the shortcomings.

Unexpectedly good. I'm very much at odds with any books which argue that coercion or restriction of freedoms might, in any way, be beneficial to the person restricted (that whole idea is unacceptable and greatly disgusting from my point of view), but here I'm compelled to agree with the author's point (or what I perceive as one of his points): such "violent", sudden, apparently meaningless and unfair change of lifestyle the protagonist goes through is, in the end, for the best. It gives him first a conflict, a puzzle to solve, and then the "healthy", useful confines to define himself and to act within. What might've helped me swallow this pill is the fact that Niki Jumpei does find an interesting and fulfilling "hobby" in the end... I kind of expected a "The Myth of Sisyphus"-style ending (which I probably wouldn't be satisfied with).

The first part of the book is eye-opening and outlook-changing, but the second one feels somewhat like a reiteration and restatement of everything written in the first part.

Anyhow, this book influenced my own thought tremendously. I might write a more involved and thought-out review later.