At The Movies

Silly stuff on the silver screen.

I liked it. I'll see it again. I also understand the negative reviews -- they are suffering from something similar to the Star Wars Episode I effect.

I'll write more about it as time permits, and to give people a fair chance to see it before I inadvertently spoil it (although to be fair the reviews I have read act as spoilers -- merely to discuss the nature of the ending tends to spoil it).

I totally dig what The Architect is saying. Pure brilliance, that -- instead of trying to prevent the distortional error of the construction, contrive a structure which forces the error back on itself, amplifying itself and giving you a meter by which you can accurately measure the safe time to terminate the process and restart it. But The Architect is a construct himself. Who constructed him? And do the Agents realize that they themselves are in league with the process which creates The One? And how will Agent Smith be the (ahem) Agent of Transition?

(More to the point -- this movie is clearly part one of two, and we will have to wait for the third movie to pass judgment on both of these two. Some of the fight scenes go on too long, and the transition to the lengthy necessary exposition can be jarring. The producers had too much money to spend, and it shows. All that aside, I went to see it twice the first weekend it was out and I'll probably go back again before it leaves the theaters.)

One of the latest attempt at a computer generated movie is Shrek. It has some interesting elements.

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This is such a mind blowing achievement that to find fault seems almost sacreligious. The story is a rather typical anime tale with an incomprehensible ending, but manages to avoid getting in the way of the technical result. This is clearly today's state-of-the-art.

Incidentally, I have never played any of the Final Fantasy games, so that is not a prerequisite for enjoying the movie. However, I am a computer graphics nut and have a fondness (if not a passion) for anime, so am more tolerant of the ending.

Update, 31 July 2001: Added some pictures from the web, plus this link to an interview with some of the relevant people from SquareSoft.

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I'm not a hard-core X-men fan. I never watched the Saturday morning cartoon, I never did the comic book thing, and never played the "Heros Unlimited" game. However, my impression of the movie from the TV teasers was hmm, this just might not suck (high praise from me -- Mystery Men looked stupid in the promos, I hated the first Austin Powers movie, and I described The Avengers from the promo as a terminally stupid movie that not even Sean Connery could save -- my fiance went to see it and admitted later that I had it pegged). So last night, as a celebration for -- well, we'll avoid going into that -- we went to the opening night.

My review in a word: Wow.

Originally published to NerdPerfect.

Read More:I don't think a boat sinks in this movie