This should be the "I can't believe this movie got an Academy award for X, when this other movie should have gotten it" thread.
Awful philosophy compared to what in popular cinema? IMO, the 2nd one (while not a great movie overall) was at least an intelligent film. As for your claim about the camera technique--you're almost assuredly mistaken. The swooping technique was developed in the few years before the Matrix came out. A couple commercials had used it, but still in rough form. So I'm seriously doubting that "many wildlife programs" could have afforded it, or even been made in the 2-3 year window between when the effect was created and the Matrix came out. Probably, you saw some digitized special effect which resembled the camera work, but was not in fact the same thing. (My brother was on one of the teams developing the technology in the mid 90s)
I have to disagree with Vanilla Sky, not because I think it's great, but because no one with any sort of credibility considers it a great film. It was an entertaining mindfuck of a film with Tom Cruise playing a wonderful caricature of himself. I enjoyed it. It's like every Cameron Crowe flick - good, not great. Mulholland Drive, I might have declared it a great film had I not fallen asleep in the first 10 minutes and woke up 5 hours later as the credits were rolling.
Vanilla Sky was a very poorly done remake of an absolutely brilliant film (Alejandro Amenabar's Abre los Ojos).
I still think it's one of the most over rated groups of films I've seen. Sure, they're quite entertaining, but for me they're not much better than any other action film with, say Jackie Chan, or even Steven Segal. All that's different for me is that Keanu and co. wear cooler clothes, and have a bigger budget for special effects. It did take me a long time to see The Matrix, and when I did, I found it was nowhere near as good. All style and no substance in my view. And there seemed to be a slight sort of 'Buddhist' vibe with the 1st one, which was annoying. But that's probably just me. As for the techniques used, I may be wrong, but there were some of the effects that were similar to the big budget BBC wildlife shows (e.g. The Blue Planet), which take years to make, thus putting them roughly in the same time frame as the Matrix. Whilst the way that the effects are made may be different (the whales are not CGI constructions), they both look similar. I'm not pretending to know the details, but both have the same 'look' about them.
I know many of you will object to this pick based on the idea that it can't possibly considered a great movie. Independence Day You have no idea how many fcuking people told me how awsome this movie was. "Great!" was all I heard. I watched that damn movie THREE!!! times because I thought I wasn't in the right frame of mind. Well...I wasn't. I can't believe I wasted over six hours of my life on that worthless piece of sh1t. I agree with many of the picks posted on here. However, I can't bring myself to agree on Gladiator, Saving Private Ryan, American Beauty, or The Matrix. I'm not the artsy type and I don't demand that much from my movies. Some of you make me feel like an intellectual invalid.
About Matrix, the effect "bullet time" was use for the first time in a short by Emmanuel Carlier called "Temps Mort" of the early 90's, we see Caro and Jeunet(the directors) under a funtain, the camera seem to turn around them and the water seem freezed, I saw the (very)short on the bonus DVD of la cité des enfants perdus Z2.
A friend of mine has the expression "Emperor's New Clothes Movie." In the narrow sense, it refers to movies that people are a little afraid to criticize because they make such a noble social point, but if you look beyond that, they aren't very good cinema. Great examples of this would be Gentleman's Agreement and Glory.
American Beauty Good Will Hunting LA Confidential There's Something About Mary (The most overrated "comedy" ever, imo) Star Wars Jaws E.T. The Exorcist Any Quentin Tarantino Film West Side Story Spartacus Natural Born Killers Slacker To Kill A Mockingbird (I thought it was OK, not great) Gladiator Fargo
An extarordinary right-on list, except for Slacker, which did more to save cinema than any non-industry types will ever realize.
Hallelujah! You are dead on. Independence Day was the biggest waste of space in the history of film. I've been telling people for years that I'd rather get a paper cut in my eyeball than watch Independence Day again.
"There's Something About Mary" was just OK, I never thought it was rip-roaringly funny like 95% of the population seems to (shows the effect of dogsh!t like Friends on people's brains). Take any 10 minutes from a film like "Animal House" and it will be funnier than that entire movie. IMO "Clerks" is 100X funnier than TSAM. "Did he just say 'making fvck'"?