Drawing Restraint 9

While the significance of the imagery, including the slow disintegration of an immense piece of sculpted petroleum, is elusive, the strangeness of Barney's visual sense never fails to stimulate the senses.

Conveys an intense sculptural loveliness with something moving beneath it, maybe a sense of menace. And it's leavened, like once per hour, with a teeny dash of humor. This isn't nearly as immediately likable or showy as "Cremaster 3," but in a quiet way just as spectacular.

Ultimately, the scale of the production and the expectation built into the release don't entirely justify the effort.

Slow but rarely tedious.

Sad to say, the new Matthew Barney opus, Drawing Restraint 9, made in collaboration with his main squeeze, Bjork, doesn't advance the Barney oeuvre an inch past where he left it with his massive, megalomaniacal opus known as the "Cremaster" series.

As visually stunning as it is, "DR9" is also more than two hours and contains, at best, 10 lines of dialogue, an ear-piercing Bjork score and no discernible plot.

Anyone who puts production gloss above performance, plot, dialogue and editing may thrill to Drawing Restraint 9.