So a group of friends and I -- "a group" being Aurelia, Brian, Becca, Katherine, Nick Ferraro, and K.C. -- went to go see a preview screening last night of The Matrix ][. "Reloaded" is about right. All of the slowed-down bullet-time tricks felt like, well, more of the same. There were some scenes that were truly spectacular, like one of the best car chase scenes I've ever seen, but others... I'm no prude, but this one had what felt like some over-the-top sex scenes in it. Here's a crazy question: do porn stars in the Matrix have those little black ports on their arms, backs, legs and torsos? Watching Keanu and Carrie-Anne going at it with those little black circles everywhere was some new sci-fi kink. Which just goes to show, making a blockbuster Hollywood flick can make two comic-book geeks millionaires and give them carte blanche to make more movies, but it cannot get them laid. Yeesh.

One thing I did appreciate in this new one, though, was the way the Wachowskis didn't abandon philosophy. In the first one, it was all about epistemology, the study of knowledge and how we know things. (In actuality, the entire Matrix schtick is just an elaborate extension of the whole "brain in a jar" argument.) In the second, the brothers tackle causality. Which has me wondering what the philosophy du jour will be in the third one: metaphysics? Logic problems? The ontological argument for the existence of God? The mind boggles.