Overall, The Dirt feels fundamentally cheap not by design but by limitation. Some parts feel like a not-so-faithful parody of Spinal Tap, filmed on the budget of a VH1 documentary with scenes of overzealous drug use that're less visceral in a Trainspotting-kind of way and more like generic Unsolved Mysteries re-enactments. Others follow the half-assed biopic drama format, fueled by revisionist history and portrayals of women as simply tipped scales on the Madonna-whore complex. The constant narration and fourth-wall breaks…

"With its blend of Western existentialism, Eastern mysticism, and nods to postmodern thinkers (yes, that is a hollowed-out copy of Jean Baudrillard’s famous word-salad tome Simulacra and Simulation on Neo’s shelf; also the source of Morpheus’ “Desert of the Real” quote), The Matrix certainly threw enough philosophical darts at the board that at least one of them had to stick. Perhaps most curiously, several years after the film’s release, Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom published a paper in an issue of…