Matrix III

James Lileks has surprisingly positive review of Matrix III. Long story short, it's not as awful as you think.

Update: I went to see Matrix III at the local Edward's Multiplex. It cannot be a good sign for the movie that on the first Saturday after its Wednesday opening Edward's had moved the movie from the large theaters to the smaller - but still crowded - theaters further from the front doors. [The simile that comes to mind is Fritz Lieber's Street of the Gods, where religious cults gradually get pushed down the street until they are ejected from Lankhmar as the number of devotees dwindles.]

Lileks is absolutely dead-on about the movie. The fight scenes were a treat to this life-long Science Fiction reader, but the movie as a whole howled like a dachshund whose tail has been stepped on. One could throw the said dachshund threw the holes that are visibly apparent at the end of the movie. I don't want to give away the story line - so I won't - but I am reminded by one review of Frank Herbert's Children of Dune which went something like: "After thousands of years of a carefully planned and exactly executed breeding program designed to bring about the Uberman, we end up with a midget covered in silly putty?" Ok, you have to know something about the Dune trilogy - long before it ended up as an interminable series - to understand the reference. But even so with the Matrix: after all the prophecies and pretentious philosophizing, we end up with a Clinton-negotiated Bosnian armistice?

Go to watch the shoot 'em up.