November 12, 2003
Matrix notes
The West, a theatre downtown, is closing tomorrow night (a new 8-plex just got built on north Henderson), and I wanted to go see something there before it closed; so I went to see Matrix III tonight. The theatre was nice, if a bit old-fashioned (i.e. not stadium); it'd be nice if someone bought the place and kept at least one of the screens as an art house/second-run theatre, but we'll see.
As for the movie. Bleah. I guess I'm glad I saw it, because it closed off the trilogy, but good grief. Where the first two played off classic archetypes, this one dredged up tired clichés. I lost track of just how many lines I predicted in advance. My eyeballs hurt from rolling them so much. Having made excellent use of new(ish) fight scene techniques in the first one, and then outdone themselves in the second, they were placed in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between "less impressive" and "ridiculous" for this one---they clearly chose the latter. Overall, I wouldn't say it sucked, but it was sort of lame, and worth waiting and renting it. The advantage of this plan is that you can watch it with a bunch of friends and MST3K the heck out of it, which would be fun (if easy). I do have to say, though, they did a great job recasting the Oracle and just handling that whole situation in general, and the guy that played Bane got the Agent Smith impersonation down cold.
"Even the Costa Ricans have health insurance for their people, and we should too." --Howard Dean
Posted by blahedo at 9:32pm on 12 Nov 2003