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91The Matrix slams you back in your chair, pops open your eyes and leaves your jaw hanging slack in amazement.
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90This wildly imaginative thriller is a futuristic head trip you most definitely want to take.
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90I'll just say to anyone lamenting the state of American cinema since the 1970s, if you're curious where the next generation of auteurs is coming from, look in the art houses and look in The Matrix.
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90Bill Pope's swooping, noir-inflected cinematography is wonderfully complemented by Owen Paterson's inventive production design, a great soundtrack and the best fight choreography this side of Hong Kong. And even if this isn't "Blade Runner," it is very cool shit.
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90The Wachowskis do it so playfully well, keeping The Matrix's potentially confusing plot intelligible, intelligent, and suspenseful, that it doesn't matter.
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90A wildly cinematic futuristic thriller that is determined to overpower the imagination, The Matrix combines traditional science-fiction premises with spanking new visual technology in a way that almost defies description.
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90The Wachowski Brothers have created some of the most unrivaled and imaginative sci-fi in years.
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88With its mix of Lewis Carroll and William Gibson; Japanese anime and Chinese chopsocky; mythological allusions, and machine-made illusion, offers a couple of hours of escapist fun.
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88Kinetic, atmospheric, visually stunning, and mind-bending.
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80This dazzling pop allegory is steeped in a dark, pulpy sensibility that transcends nostalgic pastiche and stands firmly on its own merits.
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80This full-tilt visual and aural bombardment is simply a lot of fun. It never lets up. Nor does it ever want to.
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80One of the more lyrical sci-fi action thrillers ever made, in which space and time become love slaves to the directors' witty visual fancies.
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80There's a kind of liberating, almost transforming energy in this film; it lights you up and sends you out all giddy with silliness.
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80One big, fat, honking comic book of a sci-fi-martial-arts adventure flick.
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78Doesn't just raise the bar on sci-fi and action films, it rips that sucker off and sends it spiraling into the sun.
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75A visually dazzling cyberadventure, full of kinetic excitement, but it retreats to formula just when it's getting interesting.
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The writing remains more intelligent than most thrillers, and the action is executed with such panache that even if you don't buy the reality of The Matrix, it's a helluva place to visit.
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75The plot switches gears every time it threatens to run out of energy, which keeps the show as lively as it is preposterous.
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75A dazzlingly original visual adventure.
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It's like animation come to three-dimensional life, and f/x addicts as well as sci-fi fans will not want to miss a split-second.
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75Where most effects-laden extravanganzas aspire to be nothing more than a live-action comic book, The Matrix sees things with the venturesome clarity of a graphic novel.
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75For those who have been waiting for movies to catch up with the graphic possibilities of comic books, wait no longer: The Matrix is among us.
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70It may bore you to death or blow your mind -- and it's long and convoluted enough to do both -- but it holds nothing back.
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70Aerves up so much visual wizardry and thought-provoking ideas that even the inevitable Silver touch -- a finale with more bullets than the opening of "Saving Private Ryan" -- can't destroy the magic.
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The martial arts stunts that are its single strongest selling point.
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70With an arsenal of cool f/x at their disposal, the Wachowskis have come up with a dizzyingly enjoyable junk movie that has just enough on its mind to keep the pleasure from being a guilty one.
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70Given a budget that encourages their kinesthetic skills, the filmmakers tend to go on a bit, but it's mostly a kind of quick, glancing hipness that's being indulged here.
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70An eye-popping but incoherent extravaganza of morphing and superhuman martial arts.
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63Even if a lot of adults have problems following this picture 100%, look for computer-savvy teen-agers to guarantee this sometimes original but too often derivative time-killer a shelf life.
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60The cumulative effect is perversely deflationary: long before it's over, the film has flushed the paranoia from its system.
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60An exercise in outrageous style over substance.
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58The real soullessness here is built into the production, a polished adaptation of Hong Kong-style filmmaking that, with its cast of depressive characters, allows for little Hong Kong-style joy.
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50Snazzy visuals, of which she (Moss) is one, carry The Matrix past its klutzy script.
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50There's not much humor to keep it all life-size, and by the final stretch it's become bloated, mechanical, and tiresome.
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25It's astonishing that so much money, talent, technical expertise and visual imagination can be put in the service of something so stupid.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 106 out of 126
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Mixed: 4 out of 126
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Negative: 16 out of 126
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KevinV.8What a concept! Although the movie is well executed, it is not exceptional. It makes for an entertaining ride.