Simon's Movie Reviews

  The Matrix (1999) was the equivalent of a small earthquake in for Hollywood movies. Nobody saw it coming and yet despite a mind-bending plot it became a massive hit that influenced pop culture for years to come. Following its release it became the standard for special effects, with every new action movie boasting “it has the best special effects since The Matrix ”. Culturally it became a sort of expression to be used whenever something so bizarre has happened that it must mean we are living inside a computer simulation. In the early 2000s that was the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the governor of California, because surely that is too weird to be true. We were all pretty naïve back then. Since the movie came out in a pre-Twitter world, I first became aware of its existence in the summer of 1999 when its posters were plastered everywhere. Given that all it shows are the main characters wearing leather trench coats and sunglasses, it looked like just any other action movie...

  Vertigo (1958) checks off all the boxes for an Alfred Hitchcock movie: there is an elaborate murder scheme, a man in way over his head, and a blonde woman who is more than what she seems. The film also highlights Hitchcock’s ability to utilize the tools of his trade as it was the first movie to use a dolly zoom, which helped give audiences a glimpse of what it must feel like to experience the titular feeling of vertigo. Not being too keen on heights myself, I have to say the zoom has the desired effect. I crossed this movie off the list after my mom gave me an Alfred Hitchcock DVD box set filled with five of his greatest hits. From Rear Window to Psycho , these are the movies that if you have not seen them, you have seen other movies that either reference them or parody them. Vertigo is a bit less ingrained in pop culture, so I watched it not quite knowing what to expect. That is the best way to go in, as this is one of Hitchcock’s most cerebral thrillers with quite a few twis...