James Lileks reviews the latest Matrix movie in today's bleat. I wish I could just rip off bits of writing as good as this, in among doing a real job. At present I'm seldom managing much of either and if that doesn't change on both fronts at some point between now and my death I will not die very happy, I can tell you.

JL didn't care for Matrix 2:

I thought it was a ponderous, boring mess. Sure, it had a certain buzz, but so does a beached flyblown whale carcass. The metaphysics were sophomoric, the acting stiff and pained, the action without consequence or drama. The FX, while amazing, were just a demo reel for new CGI programs. Nothing meant anything. Why should I root for Zion? The machines had built this enormous civilization for themselves, and the guys down in the Rave Hole hadn’t even figured out how to make decent shoes. …

I’m kidding, but not by much. …

And he follows that with a fine description of why I didn't even bother with Matrix 2 and probably won't bother with Matrix 3 despite all the good things he goes on to say about it:

That’s how I felt before I saw the film. Zero investment. So I paid my five dollars and prepared for that unique sensation you get in modern movies: being bored while battered repeatedly in the head.

Exactly. Matrix 3, and for that matter Kill Bill (bored while having your head chopped off by the sound of it), is why television was invented. You can start watching it, but if you don't like it you can stop and immediately do something else sensible, without surrender the money or the evening you paid to own it or rent it or whatever, because you paid nothing.

Nevertheless, JL loved M3:

I loved this one. Yes. Yes, I did. Chalk it up to the same reasons I enjoyed SW: Episode 2 – low, low, low expectations, matinee time frame, need for diversion, juvenile love of spectacle, guilty indulgence in sci-fi nonsense. But it’s a better movie. It looks and feels more like the first than the second. There’s 62% less pontificating. Smith is Smithier than ever. Yes, some of the death soliloquies take a day and a half; yes, every war cliché is on parade with its pants down; yes, yes, yes. Yes there’s the council of Sonorous Robed People discussing the imminent extinction of humanity with all the passion of some suburban selectmen debating a sewer extension; yes the future of the species depending on someone manually piloting a blimp through a drinking straw at 2394 MPH instead of turning it over to the computer; yes yes yes. Yes the final scenes don’t exactly make sense - how did Neo do that? What exactly did he do? What happens now?

Doesn’t matter. …

… because the final fight was very good, apparently.

Also, Alice Bachini approves of Kill Bill. See here, here and here.

Key Alice line for me:

But if you can't handle ultra-violence, don't even bother. You'll throw up.

So I'll be sticking with my chick flicks. Plus, I've been listening to Mendelssohn's Italian symphony on the digital radio, conducted by someone they're calling "Marine" Alsop. Digital radio continues to be wonderful.