Out of "ennui," I went to see Terminator 3 today. Not a bad movie. There's little new to say about the Terminator universe. Arnold reprises his role with tired aplomb. The big attraction of the movie is Kristinna Loken, as TX--the girl terminator! She's every nerd's dream: a blonde young goddess with a permanent toolbelt! She can reprogram cell phones, conjur a drill bit out of her finger and a power saw from her forearm! And she's indestructable, which isn't bad either. I detected a slight bit of satire in her role, as this Barbie clone mainly wanders LA coveting and consuming. "I like your clothes," she says to a middle-aged socialite before bashing her over the head and swiping them. "I like your gun," she says to a cop, after pumping up her pneumatic boobs. A woman of few words, she's all action, in a hyper Winona Ryder sort of way....

The other movie I saw recently was "28 Days Later." It's best conceived of as a "thinking man's zombie movie," or perhaps "a thinking zombie man's movie." It recalls films as diverse as "The Omega Man" and "12 Monkeys." Costing something like $9 million to make, it's already shown a profit. After reading reviews, I went to the theater prepared to be scared out of my wits! Apparently my scare-o-meter is permanently redlined from years of Twilight Zones, Hammer films and Stephen King/Dean Koontz novels. While I found the film to be mildly disturbing, and craftily artificed, it just wasn't scary. The main idea of the film was that the humans, infected with a "rage virus," were rampaging, killing each other and generally leaving a lot of litter on the streets of London. Or, was it really the virus? Or just "people killing people, as they always have." When the hero goes berserk and starts slitting throats and gouging eyes out with his thumbs, is he "infected?" Or just doing the normal Homo Sapiens thing? The point was well aimed and well intended, but overal I found the film, by the same guy who did "The Beach," to be too art-house self conscious. As, who was it, Frank Capra, once said, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union!"