Rating: 
Summary: Amazing!!!
Review: My wife and I saw this opening day while we were visitng Toronto. I was suprised the theater wasn't packed with all the publicity this film got. Either way, it was a knockout. We loved this movie for all it's special effects and action. Although I'm not a Keanu fan, he did play admirably. Lawrence Fishbourne was the true star of this film. Once you watch this movie you'll be forever wondering if we are also part of a matrix.
Rating: 
Summary: Burroughs Re-Visited
Review: Naked Lunch, a novel by William Burroughs, described the events leading to the murder of a federal narcotics agent. Written in varying stages of substance abuse, especially alcohol and heroin, Naked Lunch attempts to present the bizarre alternate reality of the drug world, along with its rationalization of the crime. The agent had grown bad: simultaneously overzealous and corrupt. His addiction was the junkies of Washington Square Park, and he fed on them the way the centium programs in the Matrix fed on the sleeping humans of the 22nd century. The victim there was not an indestructible cyborg, but the killer in the Burroughs' novel was tacitly aware that the crime could potentially bring the formidable power of the Vietnam era federal government into the heart of their relatively secure underground world. Neo, the drug-awakened killer in The Matrix, conversely realizes that the murder of the guardian will almost immediately bring about the collapse of the machine government. According to the plot, at some point in the 21st century a war erupted between the people and the machines. The machines won, but their domination was incomplete: a single city, Zion, located so deeply underground that their energy source is radiation from the Earth's core, kept alive the resistance movement that Neo - ostensibly a computer programmer/hacker of the late 20th century - is fated to lead to violent victory. In the course of his drug-aided virtual-reality apotheosis, Neo ignores the attention of the female lead, a very sexy, kick-boxing, gun-toting ex-hacker. The film could use a little more romance and a little less violence, but that is beside its main point. The Matrix suggests that there is something very wrong with our humdrum lives, while making it abundantly clear that it questions American culture without providing any satisfactory alternative. As it film, it relies heavily on groovy special effects in its crazy-quilt re-presentation of liberal borrowings. I am inclined toward the harshest possible criticism of this film, however, many people (far more hip than I) think it is the cat's meow. Thus, it is likely that it is I who have become the automoton that needs to lighten up and enjoy an essentially old-fashioned low-budget American movie.
Rating:
Summary: Yes, the movie rocks, but what about the DVD?
Review: Needless to say, I loved this movie and was thrilled to get the widescreen edition on DVD. I give it 5 stars for THE MATRIX itself and 5 stars for the bonus features. If you're not into production notes or "Easter eggs," then buy THE MATRIX strictly for the movie, but the additional features are rather nice, including a short HBO documentary, commentary by Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity) as well as editor Zach Staenberg and visual effects supervisor John Gaeta, and a music-only track. Explore a little further, and you'll stumble upon a demonstration of Gaeta's "Bullet Time" effect from conception to final realization, not to mention a few other video goodies. As an aside, if you don't have home theater speakers for your DVD yet, THE MATRIX should give you an excuse to buy some. Or at least buy a subwoofer. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: A point of reference for action movies
Review: Neo (Keanu Reeves) is the real name of Mr. Anderson. On the one hand, he is a clerk who works for an enterprise, living the life of a current man. On the other hand, he results to be a hacker called like that. He meets an odd woman (Carrie-Ann Moss) who carries him away in order to meet Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne). They are a hidden group of people also called by unusual names, and Morpheus is the one who tells Neo the truth: the world where he lives isn't the real world, but one called Matrix which is made by machines for humans that don't know they are prisoners. However, they do know this, so their duty is to save human beings from there looking for someone special, chosen to be the one who will finish this war and let people be free. Morpheus believes Neo is that person, who's not sure of himself, but he must try to open his mind and see he's capable of everything now, even jumping over buildings. He will have to expose his life to danger to save Morpheus' and fight with the dreadful agents that will bring them in many problems.
So brilliant. Yes, this is the best action movie I've ever seen with no doubt because a lot of things. First, it doesn't deal about gunshots and explosions most of the time, but about martial attacks, one-to-one fights, assaults in the air and people being able to do more of what a normal human would do. The special effects are excellent, and the script as well, I mean, the idea of that the world where we live is not the real world, and the conflict established between human beings and machines. Another important thing here is the look of the characters, all in black, wearing sunglasses and carrying mobile phones of the new generation. I also liked their conversations.
You should watch it. There's no praise enough for this work, and I'm waiting anxiously for its sequel.
Rating:
Summary: The Matrix Is One Hell Of A Ride
Review: Neo has been looking for something. He doesn't know what, but he knows there is something not right with the world he lives in. By day, he is a computer programmer, working for a faceless corporation, by night he sells illegal "narcotic" software, living in a concealed world while searching for something more. It all changes when he meets Morphius and discovers that his world, that everything he has always questioned, is nothing more than an elaborate matrix developed by a computer technology that long ago took control of the world. The balance of the story becomes Neo's quest for understanding, as he learns to go beyond the boundaries set by the matrix and struggles for the freedom of mankind. This is one of the most stylized films I have ever seen. It is at once dark, sleek, paranoid, lavish, lush and abysmal. The world that is created in this film is so completely convincing, that moviegoers will be mesmerized by its epic style of storytelling and subtle blending of reality with the computer generated fantasy that Neo, Morphius and Trinity move through, while fighting to gain supremacy over the machines. The story itself is a common theme. Technology gains the upper hand on humanity and takes control. However, unlike so many of these stories, the Matrix goes beyond the simple narrative and instead pushes our limits to accept what we see as real, only to remove the veil and leave us pondering our own perceptions of reality. Filmed with state-of-the-art cameras, the special film effects are incredible. At one point, early in the film, Trinity is confronted by an entourage of police officers. As she fights for her freedom, she raises into the air, and as though frozen in time, the camera moves impossibly around her. For those who have seen this film, the forementioned scene, and others like it are explained in the "making of" portion of the DVD. Packed with many extras, the DVD will take you into the world of the Matrix and introduce you to the first installment of a film franchise which has been elevated by moviegoers around the world to something akin to a religious experience. So, enter the Matrix if you dare. You won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: A phenomenal movie, and a testament to the DVD technology.
Review: Never before has a movie been so appropriate to the DVD format, with incredible special effects and music, and excellent interactivity features. The Matrix is surely one of the greatest sci-fi movies of this decade, with a plotline so compelling that it will absolutely blow your mind upon first viewing. If you haven't seen this movie yet, whip out your credit card now. I guarantee you won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: CAMERA NEXT GENERATION
Review: NEXT GENERATION CAMERA ART
Rating:
Summary: Better than SW:TPM
Review: Next to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, this is probably the best "kung fu" movie out there. Well worth the hype! Go on, buy this dvd edition.
Rating:
Summary: Wow! 2122 reviews!
Review: Nice to know that my two cents will not be buried. . . . *The Matrix*, directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, is a purposefully non-user-friendly movie. The directors make no effort to reach out to a general audience: if you're not familiar with the terminology of "graphic" novels, geeky cyber-fi, and if you're under the age of, say, 40, then to hell with you. Besides, as the film studios well know, the biggest audience for movies are boys between 14 and 21, which begs the question: why BOTHER reaching out? If you don't fit the demographic, who cares? You're irrelevant. The movie is about a guy named Neo (get it? as in "One" -- this is typical of the depth of thought that went into this story) who is slowly awakened to the fact that the life he's been leading has all along been a fictional computer construct. For the benefit of those in the audience who'd been forced -- kicking and screaming -- to read "Alice in Wonderland" in college, Neo is shown the "true" reality by swallowing a red pill, provided by a small group of reality-renegades led by Laurence Fishburne. There are other allusive candies for the smart set: Neo, for reasons unclear to him, gets dragged away and interrogated by interchangeable bureaucrats (think Kafka); even the very ending hints at Wagnerian opera. But rest assured: there's nothing very intellectual going on here -- only proof that the Wachowskis received a liberal education. Needless to say, many of the plot elements fail to hold up under scrutiny. Just for starters, you would be a chronic cripple if you lay in a coma for 20 or so years, but that's just one minor item the story breezes over. The directors ask you to suspend your disbelief over a grand canyon of impossibilities, illogical plot mechanisms, on and on. To top it all off, we're given howlingly irrealistic special effects -- these characters commence flying all over the place; they get shot, fall down, dust it off, and continue kickboxing; they hang suspended in mid-air . . . evidently they're made to resemble the video-game characters whom the targeted audience spends so much time with. The Wachowski brothers aren't merely directing a movie; they're putting on The Greatest SHOW On Earth. Well, as P.T. Barnum once said, "There's a sucker born every minute."
Rating: 
Summary: Elementary Philosophy
Review: Nice try. I liked this film better the first time when it was called TRON. Stupid philosophical schmaltz passed off as the real thing. Is the idea of illusionary reality a new thing? For fans of the Matrix it may be. Go read some books and find out how watered down this movie really is. I hated it all the more due to its tedious marketing and hub-bub. Tron had Jeff Bridges, the Matrix has dumb-face. Tron had GOOD computer special effects that were unlike anything seen before. Matrix has off the shelf effects that we've seen before in about a thousand video games. Is this a film or a video game intro? A bunch of worhtless garbage. Go buy it and tell your friends how great it looks and sounds on your Sony.
|
