Do I hate The Matrix Resurrections as much as J.K. Rowling hates it?

Yesterday I devoted a post to my best film of the year, though that was really a way in to discussing a larger phenomenon.

Today it's the worst, and it also gets into a larger phenomenon. 

When I reviewed The Matrix Resurrections, giving it tied for the lowest rating I gave any film in 2021, I was not thinking of it as a film with trans themes directed by a trans person. This was a precursor to rating it my worst film of 2021 earlier this week. 

Before I had a chance to do that officially, about a week after my review went up, a friend told me he didn't like it either and said "It was just a film entirely about transitioning."

Uh oh, I thought.

His argument was that the shift of power from Neo to Trinity was a mirroring of the director's own decision to transition from man to woman. 

I don't think this friend is a transphobe. He didn't really elaborate on why that specific thing was a detriment to his enjoyment of the film, but if I had to read between the lines, I'd say he thought it was a film about transitioning at the expense of all the other things a Matrix film should be about. In his view, it could have been about transitioning as long as that didn't prevent its director from devoting the energies and resources that make a good Matrix movie a good Matrix movie. 

Which is worse, that he saw and was somehow bothered by a trans theme, or that I didn't see the trans theme at all?

Did my sisgender privilege give me the "luxury" of not seeing a trans theme in The Matrix Resurrections?

There's a sentence I wouldn't have written ten years ago. I wouldn't have even known what "sisgender" meant. But I'm glad I do now because trans rights are human rights, and I'm wiser than I was then.

Still, it's possible someone doesn't see a trans theme in a movie because they are not trained to see -- or because they are trained not to see -- such a theme. They passively dismiss the possibility that something is trans because it's too foreign to them. The possibility of a trans theme never even enters their consciousness in the first place. 

More to the point: Would I have judged the movie less harshly if I did perceive the trans theme?

Either because it would have contributed in some useful way to what the film was doing, or just to come off looking better myself as a critic and human being?

And that gets into this tricky gray area in film criticism where you have to try to control the way you're perceived by your readers. If you're like me, you live in fear of being thought of as racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic. You know you aren't, but the fear that some careless wording might cause you to be perceived that way is strong -- even as you are taking great pains to avoid such carelessness. It's another situation where a line I love in Glengarry Glen Ross feels really pertinent. Ed Harris' character tells Alan Arkin's character "You know who doesn't get nervous around the police? Criminals." It's the people who are least guilty of something who are the most worried that they might be found guilty -- might actually be guilty.

I'm probably not the least guilty person out there in any sphere, but I sure do worry about this sort of thing. "If I don't rate this movie directed by this person of this race or gender high enough, what will my readers think about me?"

The thing is, The Matrix Resurrections really is shit. Lana Wachowski made a movie in which she takes pleasure in trolling her fans, though I suspect she thinks the object of her trolling is really Warner Brothers. I say, we're all trolled. Equal opportunity trolling.

But first there was my friend who agreed with me about the film, and whose comment was possible to interpret as transphobia, and then, making it worse, I heard the movie discussed on The Slate Spoiler Special, where host Dana Stevens had a trans critic on to discuss it with her. I'm not going to find that critic's name right now, because it's not relevant and I probably don't want to add to the list of terms someone could search to find this post -- if there's any chance they might misinterpret what I'm writing here. (See, there I go again.)

But it was a trans woman, which I could tell from the pairing of the name with a voice she had not made any specific attempt to modify, if her goal had been to better align it with our preconceived notions of her gender identity. Plus she revealed that identity near the end of the podcast, in what she jokingly characterized as a completely unsurprising disclosure of information. 

Anyway, this woman admitted the movie was flawed, but loved it. 

It's that more than anything that makes me wonder if I was too poorly equipped to see the themes in The Matrix Resurrections that she saw.

I think Dana was caught in between a rock and a hard place too. She clearly didn't like the movie very much, but I could tell she was selecting her language in such a way that she made it sound like a "her problem," and tried to over-praise the things she could legitimately say she liked about it.

What I don't know is, does this trans critic love the movie because it's about transitioning, because she thinks it's important to support trans artists in anything they do, or just because she thought it was a good movie?

To her credit, I could not tell from her analysis. She didn't go on excessively about issues of transitioning, and in fact, they might have only gotten a quick mention in passing. So there was no way, from the text of her words, to ascribe to her the same motivations in liking the film that my friend ascribed to Lana Wachowski in making it.

But it might be worse if just being a trans person allows you to appreciate certain trans dog whistles, if you will, that I didn't see/hear, because I was not capable of seeing/hearing them.

Why is this worse? Well I'll try to articulate that.

For starters, there is the goal I try -- fruitlessly, I'm sure -- to achieve in my criticism, which is to suppress the self as much as I can. That is to say, I try to remove my particular subjectivity as a white, heterosexual, 48-year-old American man living in Australia, so I can try, if at all possible, to view the art before me objectively.

Well a) that's the luxury of some white sis hetero privilege right there, but b) it's probably impossible anyway, so I shouldn't blame myself. Trying to pretend that I can see a movie made by Black people through Black eyes is a self-delusion meant to make me feel more comfortable about my place in the sociopolitical landscape. (Bo Burnham is well aware of this essential truth.) I can no more see a Black movie through Black eyes than I can see a trans movie through trans eyes.

The problem, then, is how much do I allow my constitutional deficiency to adjust how I either praise or scorn a movie for a reading audience of indeterminate demographic makeup? If I hate a movie, as I did The Matrix Resurrections, is it my duty to hate it ten percent less because [fill in the blank] person made it, as some kind of offset to compensate for my constitutional deficiency? Does some part of me have to write the review keeping in mind the comparatively small percentage of my reading audience -- and even smaller in the case of potential trans readers -- who might get things from the film that I don't?

The philosophical purists would tell me not to do that, and would applaud me for going with my gut and naming The Matrix Resurrections the worst film of the year despite my reservations about how it could make me look. But then you have neurotics like me who continue to wonder.

Because part of choosing any film as your worst of the year is a statement, right? The movie you say you hated most may not actually be the worst, but something about the manner it disappoints you makes it "worse" than a piece of technical garbage that was made poorly. If we were going for the actual worst film that I saw in 2021 -- like most poorly made -- I might have to choose the low budget film Royal Jelly, a body horror movie in which a woman starts taking on the traits of a bee. 

And yet there are always mitigating factors. Things like this can never be absolute. I actually ranked 16 films lower than Royal Jelly because I was considering those mitigating factors, like the low budget, like a cast with limited professional experience, like the fact that there were some cool ideas, some of which were executed interestingly, even as the vast majority of the film was executed poorly.

Naming a film your worst of the year is really a measure of how much it disappointed you based on your expectations. And I was super disappointed by The Matrix Resurrections. When you add in a sort of bad faith by Wachowski in the cheeky manner in which she skewered The Matrix and the whole idea of reboots -- in addition to how ugly the film looked, how poorly the fight scenes were executed, how uneven the performances were, and how totally lacking it was in mind-blowing concepts -- you've got what was a fairly slam dunk choice for worst of the year. I was never even tempted to drop #169, Sweet Girl, below it.

But the fact remains that someone, somewhere, would/will read my rankings, without reading this post that provides context for them, and will assume my hatred of the movie is a result of my retrograde ignorance about gender identity -- my desire to downvote trans themes or trans artists the way people downvote movies on IMDB whose subject matter and/or creator offends them. 

To make matters worse, I've cheekily chosen a specifically provocative title for this post. J.K. Rowling is perhaps the world's most famous transphobe -- at least among people from whom we would expect better -- but I hope even in her weakened moral state she would not judge The Matrix Resurrections on the grounds of it being trans wish fulfillment. 

In particular because I don't think it is. To say that those themes aren't present on some level would be incorrect, but to say that Lana Wachowski only cares about issues of transitioning is to do her a massive disservice. The best artists are the ones who care about a lot of different elements to and perspectives on the human condition, and stuff all of them into their films. And Wachowski has been a great artist for a long time, dating not only back to The Matrix and the several smaller successes she's had since then, but to Bound, which is currently ranked as my 20th favorite movie all time on Flickchart.

She just needs to make a better movie next time.

Let's talk about the Wachowskis

I'm about to tiptoe into a minefield of political correctness, and I'm not sure I'm ready for it.

Whoops! Here I go.

A couple months ago it occurred to me that it must be highly unusual for there to be more than one gay child in any given family. If we are to accept the notion that homosexuals constitute ten percent of the population, which is pretty much agreed upon at this point, and that homosexuality is a biologically determined rather than socially determined predisposition, which is pretty much agreed upon at this point, then every family with ten children would have one gay child. That also means that there would only be one gay child out of every five families with two children. As usual you have to pick "the right five families" to get those results, since it would be easy to inadvertently select two families with gay children and feel like your statistics weren't bearing out the conventional wisdom. Of course, that's not how statistics work and I am now belaboring a point for no reason.

The point is, most families do not have ten children. In fact, few even have five. So if you're looking at the typical family that has no more than three children, having two of them come out of the closet as gay would seem to be highly unlikely. In fact, depending on their political leanings and personal prejudices, those parents might have long, dark nights of the soul trying to figure out what they "did wrong" or how they contributed to an environment in which their kids might "become gay."

So it would seem even stranger, wouldn't it, for two children in the same family to extend gender and sexual identity norms outward to an even further degree and declare themselves both to be transgender.

Yet that's what we have gotten this week from the former Larry and Andy Wachowski, who now go by the names Lana and Lilly. They're film directors, which is why we're talking about this subject at all on a blog devoted to movies. (And it's now officially time to change the name of the label I apply to posts when I discuss these two, which had been "the wachowski brothers.")

Lana Wachowski has been with us for some years now. Various rumors seeped out at various different times, but by 2008 she had transitioned, and by 2010, the former Larry had started to become widely acknowledged and credited as Lana.

This past week we were introduced to Lilly, who, unlike her sister, decided to ditch the first initial of her birth name and make a full transition of moniker as well as gender. Well, "decided" may be an inaccurate term for what the former Andy Wachowski did. If you read her angry confirmation of being transgender, Lilly was forced to come out to the world by prying journalists, trying to grab hold of the last vestiges of it being on her own terms.

Through one rather startling piece of news, the Wachowskis have managed to throw all our notions of nature vs. nurture completely out of whack.

I call the news "startling" because I can count the number of famous transgender people on basically one hand. In fact, if I want to go beyond Lana and Caitlin Jenner, I have to really think about it. And no, the stars of Tangerine don't count as "famous."

So to get both former brothers, now sisters, of a famous directing pair saying they prefer to be referred to with pronouns that are different from the ones they were born with, is unusual indeed.

Here's where it gets really thorny from the standpoint of political correctness.

Is it really possible for this to be a biologically defined rather than a socially defined choice?

They say that no one decides to be gay, and of course that's true. But it's a bit of a grayer area when it comes to gender. Surely transgender people say, and I believe them, that they always felt like they should have been the other gender, and their transition to the other gender is only a means of correcting biology's mistake.

But could biology really have made the same mistake with both brothers in the same family? Is there no nurture factor at play whatsoever?

I have to wonder.

I don't know how may quizzical opinion pieces like the one I am writing now have been published, simply because this is a very "dangerous" issue -- it's one where if you say the wrong thing, you will be shouted down on the internet and both your sensitivity and your basic humanity will be questioned.

So don't get me wrong. I don't care that the Wachowskis are now sisters instead of brothers. I just wonder how it happened.

The way to approach talking about this is of course from the perspective I have chosen -- the matter of biological likelihood. Whereas extensive research tells us that one in ten are gay, research about people self-identifying as transgender tends to relate more to responses to surveys. And Google tells me that only .3 % of the population identifies themselves as transgender.

So that would mean that in a family that had 300 children, one would be transgender. Or at least, that would be the one that was willing to admit it.

And maybe it's the second part that has more to do with it. Lana was willing to admit it. Lilly wasn't. Or not yet, anyway. Or not to us, anyway. Maybe the number of transgender people who are unwilling to acknowledge their true nature to themselves -- or more to the point, to a society ready to judge them -- is a lot higher.

But still ... two in one family? At least they have two natural-born sisters, Julie and Laura, meaning that "only" 50% of the children of Lynne and Ron Wachowski are transgender. Though 100% of them are now women.

Lilly addressed the apparent unlikelihood of it all in an acidic joke that gets at the larger tone of the letter in which she came out as transgender. She wrote that "my father ... injected praying mantis blood into his paternal ball-sac before conceiving each of his children to produce a brood of super women, hellbent on female domination." I sure hope the aforementioned Ron Wachowski is not one of those aforementioned parents with their aforementioned long, dark nights of the souls.

I don't really know what to conclude. But I also find it laughable to suggest that the former Andy saw what his former brother, now sister, had decided to do with her life and thought that it "seemed like a fun thing to do." I mean, there's loving and admiring a person, and then there's undertaking a radical life change that will put you at odds with a large percentage of the people you meet, and make some of them actually want to kill you.

So the conclusion is: Biology is sometimes a funny thing.

But it also makes you wonder: If we are saying that people have no choice about being transgender, and that means that there is a biological component to it, doesn't that also mean that it's something that could be in a person's genes, and therefore inherited by one generation from the previous one?

It's certainly a question the Wachowskis and their unusual circumstances prompt us to ask. But I also think it's one scientists have looked into and rejected, at least when it comes to homosexuality. Or at least that if it's a gene, it's massively recessive, which is why it doesn't often manifest in the actual sexuality of offspring. (Or the fact that gay people often don't procreate, so they can't pass it on.) If there is an inherited biological aspect to a person's sexuality, I haven't heard about it -- though that could also be because it would just cause too much hysteria among people who blame themselves for "making their child gay."

Okay, I think I better quit before my carefully chosen words start to betray me and I say something that someone interprets as insensitive. Because believe me, I've got nothing but love on the topic of changing genders. I have a good friend whose child is transgender and Tangerine was one of my favorite movies of last year, which I've already seen twice. (And yes, I know this sounds like the "I'm not racist, I have a black friend" argument. But really, I'm not.)

What I do wonder is whether this will have any impact on the Wachowskis' future as directors -- or whether we will be able to distinguish the impact on their careers from the impact of continuing to make expensive movies that don't perform well. Although we really like Sense8, one could argue that the Wachowskis have been failing, at least on the big screen, ever since the first Matrix. While the two Matrix sequels made their money, they were critically lambasted. Some of their releases since then have received slightly warmer reviews (Cloud Atlas), but some of them have been both critical and commercial failures (Speed Racer and Jupiter Ascending). By Andy Wachowski coming out as transgender at the same time as Hollywood having good financial reasons for withdrawing creative control from the siblings, a perfect storm has been created where it will be impossible to distinguish people's moral judgments about them from people's financial judgments.

Well, here's hoping they get to make more seasons of Sense8 (it's been renewed) and that their next movie marries their undeniable vision with something that sort of makes sense and has a lot more box office appeal. Then Hollywood will have every reason to keep betting on them and we can all be happy.

I also hope Lilly Wachowski can be personally happy, given the way she was thrust out into the cold light of day, against her will, into a world that suddenly became much harder for her.

Disregarding alphabetization

I'm anal retentive to a fault.

I love lists, and I love alphabetizing those lists. And I've developed very clear ideas of how to alphabetize, when an instance of ambiguous alphabetization arises. Little is left to randomness and none to chance.

However, there's one thing that comes along to throw the whole thing off:

How two names sound when credited next to each other.

If am going to list two directors, the rule I follow is that the one whose name comes closest to the beginning of the alphabet -- last name if they have different ones, first name if they don't -- goes first.

Except, of course, when I don't follow it.

Take the most prominent example, and the one that gave me the idea for this post when I was making up another one of my big movie lists recently: the Coen brothers. The correct way to list their names should be as Ethan and Joel Coen. That's often how you see their names in print nowadays. But I can't do it. These guys are, and have always been, Joel and Ethan Coen.

The brothers Farrelly have the same problem. They have never been Bobby and Peter Farrelly. They are, and should be, Peter and Bobby Farrelly, for a simple reason that's impossible to support with any type of objective evidence: the names just sound better that way.

Could it ever be Caro et Jeunet? No. It could only be Jeunet et Caro.

I do find it problematic, though. It offends my sense of order on some level. Yet I can't go inviting chaos by referring to them as "Ethan and Joel Coen." That's not who they are. They are Joel and Ethan, and that's who they have always been.

Joel must have won a coin toss back in the day, which led them originally to spurn the alphabet and ask for their names to be credited in this precise order. The rest is history, and I'm not going to overturn that history just because I'm anal retentive.

It's interesting, however, how often alphabetical order has been disregarded by these teams of director partners. The Wachowskis are Larry (now Lana) and Andy. The Hughes are Allen and Albert. (Aren't they? I think they are.) Those who go in the correct order (Jay and Mark Duplass, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) seem comparatively fewer.

Then there are of course those where the comparative prominence of the directors dictates the order. Evan Goldberg is never going to jump ahead of Seth Rogen, even though both of Evan's names comes earlier in the alphabet than either of Seth's. And are you more likely to be interested to know that Nick Park directed Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, or Steve Box?

Was this something worth writing about? Who knows.

If Neo and Lola had a baby

Three directors.

Two men and one former man who now identifies as female.

Two siblings (once brothers) and one who isn't related to them.

Two Americans and one German.

The directors of two of the best films of 1999 (The Matrix and Run Lola Run).

Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski, as they are credited. Always in that order. (Ladies first I guess.)

However you slice it, Cloud Atlas is going to be interesting.

But will it be good?

Cloud Atlas looks like the classic example of a love-it-or-hate-it movie, and so far, the hate-its seem to be winning. You could say that its 52 Metascore means that those two opposing sentiments are averaging out almost perfectly, but if you were translating that score into a letter grade, it would be an F, not the C you would expect for a love-it-or-hate-it movie. (Then again, a straight translation doesn't work -- whereas a score of 59 or lower is an F in school, you're really probably looking at a Metascore of 25 or lower for the equivalent of an F. So I guess 52 probably really is a C, since it is described as "Mixed or Average Reviews.")

Yeah, I probably could have reconfigured that last paragraph to remove my faulty initial assumption altogether.

In any case, Cloud Atlas looks very much like the next installment in my series of movies that are "Too Shebulba," as described in this post. To refresh your memory, the term was inspired by Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, in which the characters appear in several different time periods and the futuristic version of Hugh Jackman is left whispering the word "Shebulba!" at a tree floating through outer space. One of my commenters corrected my spelling of the term, explaining that the character is referring to the Mayan underworld Xibalba. However, the term was born as "Shebulba," and that's how it will stay for my purposes.

In fact, if Cloud Atlas most closely resembles one single movie, I'd say The Fountain is it. Especially as it seems to focus on a man and a woman whose love affair stretches out over generations and in different incarnations of themselves -- here Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, there Jackman and Rachel Wiesz. And if it does really resemble The Fountain, that's bad news for me, since I found that movie to be an interesting failure at best.

But then I return to the directors themselves, and consider some of the boundary-pushing movies they've made over the years. I mentioned The Matrix and Run Lola Run, but each director or directing pair has a second movie that I absolutely love -- in the case of the Wachowskis, even more than The Matrix, and in the case of Tom Tykwer, slightly less than Run Lola Run. The Wachowskis' Bound is among my 30 favorite films of all time, and Tykwer's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is probably among my top 50. Both movies mesmerize me, and both demonstrate that these directors or directing teams have the kind of range that could make them perfect choices for an ambitious opus like Cloud Atlas.

I will probably find out Sunday night. Until then, I will continue to marinate in a sense of wary anticipation about what kind of weird and potentially brilliant oddity lies ahead of me.

Credibility in brotherhood

There's something about hearing that two brothers are making a movie that seems to give it an extra boost of credibility.

I'm not sure why that is -- two heads are better than one?

But the latest example is The Square, a thriller directed by Nash Edgerton, written by and co-starring Joel Edgerton. My wife and I saw it yesterday. And if the quality of the Australian duo's first feature is any indication, perhaps "the Edgerton brothers" is a phrase we're going to have to get used to, just like "the Coen brothers" or "the Wachowski brothers."

What is it about teams of brothers that makes them get into making films together? It seems to be a unique creative partnership born out of the imaginary battles and adventures that played out in the backyards of their youth. I say "unique" because you don't really see other teams of family members making films, do you? There are no father-son partnerships. There are no brother-sister partnerships. There are no sister-sister partnerships. There are no mother-daughter partnerships. There are no uncle-second cousin once removed partnerships. Just brothers.

And there are numerous examples. Forthwith:

1) Joel & Ethan Coen. The most famous set of directing brothers has made 15 films together, most of which received great critical acclaim, and one of which (No Country for Old Men) won best picture. Depending on the film, they were either both credited for directing, or one was credited for directing and one for writing, or one credited for directing and both for writing, etc. (Actually, all the movies were listed as directed by Joel prior to The Ladykillers in 2004). There are obviously parallels between the Edgertons and the Coens, as The Square is a tightly crafted little thriller of downward-spiraling consequences, very much like the Coens' debut, Blood Simple. However, I feel quite certain that the reason many people are comparing The Square to Blood Simple is the fact that a team of brothers made both films. Fun fact: Joel is married to actress Frances McDormand. Best film: Raising Arizona. Worst film: Burn After Reading.

2) Peter & Bobby Farrelly. The Rhode Island comedy-directing duo took the world by storm with Dumb and Dumber in 1994, and have steadily been getting worse since then. They have been inseparable from the standpoint of their credits, each appearing alongside the other for all their writing, directing and producing gigs. Fun fact: They love casting Boston-area sports stars in their movies. Best film: Dumb and Dumber. Worst film: Fever Pitch.

3) Larry & Andy Wachowski. The Matrix made this pair household names; the sequels to The Matrix seriously called into question their narrative instincts. However, there's no doubt that they have a specific cinematic vision, which they've explored through projects they've directed as well as projects they've produced. Always credited alongside one another. Fun fact: Larry now lives as a woman named Lana. For the purposes of this post, I'll still consider him to be a brother rather than a sister. Best film: Bound. Worst film: The Matrix Revolutions.

4) Allen & Albert Hughes. No directing team in this post is as diverse as the Hughes brothers, who have done everything from a documentary about pimps (American Pimp) to a movie about inner-city gang violence (Menace II Society) to a period piece about Jack the Ripper (From Hell) to a post-apocalyptic action movie (The Book of Eli). What's interesting about this pair is that they have not let their status as African-American directors dictate the subject matter they've pursued. They are jointly credited on everything. Fun fact: They're twins. Best film: From Hell. Worst film: Dead Presidents (though I haven't yet seen The Book of Eli, which I understand could be a contender here).

5) Mark & Jay Duplass. These brothers have not yet reached the level of fame of the others on this list, but they are kings of the mumblecore world. Unfamiliar with the term "mumblecore"? It's a movement of films in which non-professional actors improvise their dialogue (for the most part) in search of a kind of hyperrealism, and the films are frequently about generally mundane occurrences. If done well, though, mumblecore films can be totally engrossing. Mark is always listed as a writer, sometimes listed as a director, and usually appears in the films; Jay is always the director, always the writer, but is not an actor. Fun fact: "Non-professional" actor Mark has started turning up in others' projects as well, including Greenberg (which also features mumblecore actress Greta Gerwig) and the TV show The League. Best film: The Puffy Chair. Worst film: Baghead. These are actually their only two films that I've seen. If I had to list the best film influenced by the Duplasses and starring Mark, it would be Lynn Shelton's Humpday.

That's all I can think of, but that's probably enough.

Sure, there are other teams that have worked together despite not being related. Right now, you've got Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who directed the Crank movies (and the unfortunate Gamer). Back in the 40's and 50's, it was Gene Kelly and Stanley Donan, with Singin' in the Rain among others.

But perhaps the brother partnerships have endured and ultimately been more successful for a simple reason: They're cut from the same cloth, and are less likely to have the creative differences that might push them apart. What's more, it's probably easier to share a credit with a family member. It speaks well of your whole clan. Whereas if you're sharing it with just some other dude, perhaps there's more of a competitive drive to prove that you're the one doing all the hard work, that you're the real talent while the other guy is just riding your coattails. Paradoxically, you'd think that impulse might be even stronger among siblings -- but it hasn't worked out that way for the partnerships discussed here.

We'll see what path the Edgertons take. I'm just glad to see Joel Edgerton prove to me he's more than the forgettable wimp who had the lead in the film Kinky Boots. He's plenty memorable here as a petty criminal in over his head, as is his brother Nash, a first-time director who has his head above water just fine, thank you very much.

The Wachowski brothers' best movie

When The Matrix first came out, most people looked at the poster and said, "V.I. Warshawski is directing a movie about Keanu Reeves playing an android? What's this then?"

Me? I said, "Oh, it's the new movie from the guys who made Bound."

That's still how I see The Matrix -- Larry and Andy Wachowskis' sophomore and slightly inferior follow-up to their brilliant neo-noir thriller, Bound.

What's that you say? The Matrix? Inferior? Whaaa?

You read right. One of the most influential and exciting films of the last 20 years is not as good as this film. That's how good Bound is.

I watched Bound again last night for the first time in at least seven or eight years. In fact, during the day, I had a similar moment of inspirational clarity to the one I had on Monday, when I went to pick up The 13th Warrior. Except I knew this time, the film wouldn't let me down. It wouldn't be less good than I remembered. Bound is as solid as they come, through and through, and I knew it would be just the "special" viewing experience I was looking for on my birthday.

(Yesterday was my birthday. Let's all stop and make a big deal out of me turning 36. Then again, let's not. If it gives you some idea what I think of celebrating my birthday in some grandiose fashion, I was looking forward to a quiet night with a movie. Then again, if my wife were in town, I'm sure we would have at least gone out to eat.)

Any serious fan of The Matrix should have already gone back and watched Bound, even though it's a totally different kind of film. It's like going back and checking out the early works of a band you love -- sometimes you find out that the earlier stuff was even better.

But I think the reason more people haven't discovered Bound is that it's easy to dismiss it as some kind of Cinemax erotic thriller. The title itself suggests sadomasochism, and the poster does nothing to discourage that idea. Plus, discovering that the two leads are lesbians (Jennifer Tilly's character is actually bisexual) pushes a person even further toward the conclusion that the film exists primarily to titillate.

The truth of the matter is, there are actual physical binds (ropes) that exist in this movie, but they are not used sexually. Rather, Bound as a title has more to do with the trust that must exist in order to successfully execute a criminal plan -- as well as the fact that people become unwittingly bound to each other as the plan adapts to real-world changes, even though they may enter the plan as adversaries. The title is a one-word summation of the script's dozens of smart ideas about trust, deception, desperation, obligation, the criminal code, and ultimately, love. It could be honor-Bound or duty-Bound or love-Bound. Or simply Bound for trouble.

Oh, and if you are interested in being titillated, there are two hot lesbian sex scenes that are not very graphic, but are quite sexy indeed because of how the Wachowskis set up the camera, the dialogue they use, and the tension they create.

So what is Bound about, exactly? I won't tell you too much, because that would spoil the fun. But it's useful to know that Gina Gershon plays Corky, a lesbian ex-con just released from five years in prison for theft. She's been hired to do a big renovation job in the apartment next door to where Violet (Jennifer Tilly) and Caesar (Joe Pantoliano) live. Violet is the arm candy for Caesar's mafiaso money launderer, but she longs to get out, and sees a path to her freedom in the tatooed handywoman working next door. She knows when there will be $2 million in her apartment that will be ripe for stealing -- as long as they can hatch the perfect plan that will cast suspicion on someone else. But when the money gets drenched in blood from an impulsive whacking, the plan must adapt -- or else they'll be caught. And the mob doesn't look too kindly on those who try to screw them over.

What I love so much about Bound is how clean and tight it is. I won't say it's simple -- in fact, some of the chess moves that are Bound's essence rely on thinking three, four, five steps ahead, and truly illustrate the characters' intelligence. However, the twists and turns themselves are simple to follow, always believable, and organic to the action. In fact, so clean is Bound -- taking place almost entirely in the two apartments -- that I could easily see it staged as a play. The only thing you would lose is the Wachowskis' camera work and unobtrusive visual pizzazz, which would become their signature in the Matrix trilogy. Because accolades tend to flow when talking about a movie I love, I'll continue: The dialogue is also sharp and clever, but totally naturalistic. And I'd be remiss in this short capsule review if I didn't point out that this is by far the best work Joe Pantoliano -- a.k.a. Joey Pants -- has ever turned in. Gershon and Tilly are also great, but Pantoliano's Caesar is the far more ostentatious -- and at times, downright hilarious -- role.

One more credit to Bound: The fact that it was a cheap-o press on the DVD didn't affect my enjoyment one bit. The image appeared in the correct aspect ratio, but was boxed on all four sides by blackness, reducing its total size on the screen by a third. That might have been resolved with an adjustment on my DVD player, but let's just say no other DVDs I've popped in have required such an adjustment. I also needed to significantly brighten the image, as contrasts were getting lost in the darkness. ("Fuckin' dark in here!" to quote Caesar early on in the movie.) What's more -- and I found this the most astonishing -- the actual title screen on the DVD was generic. Not even the title of the movie appeared -- just the choices (chapters, setup, etc.) and a generic background used by the company that pressed the DVD.

Gives you some idea just how undiscovered Bound really is. If there's any justice, a Criterion Collection edition will be forthcoming at some point in the future. But just as extra frills can't make a bad movie good, Bound would be a good movie even if you watched it on a 10-inch black and white TV.

There's little doubt that Bound is better than The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions and Speed Racer. The film the Wachowskis wrote (Assassins) and the film they produced and wrote (V for Vendetta) also figure to be losers in this head-to-head duel. And I don't really know about this Ninja Assassin they're producing, which comes out later this fall, but it doesn't seem that original. Plus, it's got a crap title.

But is Bound better than The Matrix?

You know what I think. I challenge you to rent it for yourself and find out ...