More light posting, but I would like to point out that Lileks is somewhere between dead on and off-target when he writes:

Short version of the review [of The Matrix Reloaded] - Attention, Wachowski Brothers: put down the bong and step away from the script.

He also confirms what I thought I'd seen -- George H.W. Bush as an apparition of evil. Um, yeah. Squishy Republicans are right up there with Hitler, guys.

I liked the movie. It confirmed wild hunches I'd been carrying around since 1999. I wasn't as disappointed in the action scenes as I thought I'd be. The coital scene didn't bug me as much as the silly rave. There was a nice, if mildly predictable, twist. The visuals were still stunning. The mild philosophical lapses were pardonable. The philosophy almost managed to get deep again. And Laurence Fishburne deserves an Oscar.

And I'm gonna give it room I rarely give: It's Part Two. Part Two movies usually suck (Empire Strikes Back being the all-time great exception, Godfather II wasn't really a Part Two so much as it was a second story, the ideas of otherwise extremely bright people notwithstanding). Attack of the Clones looked so bad that I couldn't bring myself to watch it on rental.

But the Matrix series has a consistent plotline, and made no secret that this movie is just a prelude to the finale. So I'm giving slack.

Like that bright guy, I'm gonna say: Good, but not great movie. Let's hold out hope for the last one.

The Old Oligarch has a much more involved take.

Spoilers are below on his link, along with some damned good questions.

O.O.: If you're reading this, the answers to the questions about the Emanation are digging at me, too. I'm not sure if there are puzzles within what he said; was he just setting Neo up to effect the course of events he desired, or is there a deeper gnosis at work? Did he ever confirm that she -- she, in particular -- was, so to speak, another Emanation? Remember what he said, in response to Neo's question? "Please." With quite the condescending tone, too. Might he have been referring to someone else? Might he have been lying?

And the bit at the end has me mildly worried that there's a deeper solipsism (to misuse the word), so to speak, at work. Think of the end of MIB, and you'll see what I'm getting at. It would explain how Neo's evolution is working.

UPDATE: The Old Oligarch makes clear that he wasn't reviewing before, and he is now, with some more thought-out questions (and a nice philosophy recap for those of us who stopped reading Kleimann, Kant, and Russell some time around 1997) in this spoiler-heavy writing. READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL, even though it's quite good.