The Matrix 1999

Mark Caro, Chicago Tribune: The Wachowskis and cinematographer Bill Pope take advantage of currently available technical trickery to create visually distinct levels of reality while setting high-speed cameras in motion to make the action sequences particularly dynamic and fluid. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: A 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. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: As Keanu says: Whoa! Read more

Keith Simanton, Seattle Times: Extremely violent, extremely preposterous, extremely entertaining, The Matrix succeeds at two extremely difficult tasks: as a vast, exciting virtual-reality movie and as a defibrillator for Keanu Reeves' big screen career. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: Given 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. Read more

Susan Stark, Detroit News: The Matrix is the coolest -- a journey into a genuinely original vision of our cyberfuture that will have you checking your own reality by the time it's over. Read more

Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News: The only things energetic about The Matrix are its special effects. Read more

Steven Rosen, Denver Post: The Matrix not only is a failure as a science-fiction movie -- long on explanation, short on inspiration -- but it doesn't do anything interesting with the futuristic vision that it takes forever to explain. Read more

Janet Maslin, New York Times: The most salient things any prospective viewer need know is that Keanu Reeves makes a strikingly chic Prada model of an action hero. Read more

Rod Dreher, New York Post: A more technically dazzling synthesis of action choreography and cutting-edge computer graphics has not been seen since James Cameron's T2. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: There's not much humor to keep it all life-size, and by the final stretch it's become bloated, mechanical, and tiresome. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: Where other films are done in by the freedom offered by computer effects, The Matrix integrates them beautifully. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: A blast of Holly-Kong glitz that never approaches the stylistic cohesiveness of, say, John Woo's Face/Off or the charisma of that film's propulsive star John Travolta. Read more

Ray Conlogue, Globe and Mail: For 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. Read more

David Hunter, Hollywood Reporter: A technologically stunning movie that furthers the genre and features crowd-pleasing performances to go with the frequent scenes of gunplay and violence. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: The movie is nonsense, but it does achieve a brazenly chic high style -- black-on-black, airborne, spasmodic. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The movie is kinetic, atmospheric, visually stunning, and mind-bending. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The Matrix did not bore me. It interested me so much, indeed, that I wanted to be challenged even more. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: The Matrix soars with its feet in the air -- the rest crash-lands. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: It may bore you to death or blow your mind -- and it's long and convoluted enough to do both -- but it holds nothing back! Read more

Bob Graham, San Francisco Chronicle: It's astonishing that so much money, talent, technical expertise and visual imagination can be put in the service of something so stupid. Read more

David Edelstein, Slate: Keanu Reeves makes a lean, strikingly beautiful tabula rasa hero, twisting out of the way of bullets that elongate like silver beads of mercury, and he's partnered by the equally hard, blank, and androgynously gorgeous Carrie-Anne Moss. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: Another slice of overlong, high concept hokum. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: A must-see among genre fans, especially guys in their teens and 20s, for whom the script's pretentious mumbo-jumbo of undergraduate mythology, religious mysticism and technobabble could even be a plus rather than a dramatic liability. Read more

Dennis Lim, Village Voice: Ultimately, The Matrix settles for technically dazzling comic-book shtick. Some might count this as a good thing, but I'm not a fan of the Wachowskis' more-is-more aesthetic. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: There's a kind of liberating, almost transforming energy in this film; it lights you up and sends you out all giddy with silliness. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: Special kudos to the mysterious Wachowski tag team, who have created a lurid, splashy nightmare for the end of the millennium. Read more