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DVD Review

After viewing the first five minutes of The Matrix in the theatre, I knew I would be buying this movie when it came out on DVD.  I was not disappointed.

Clarity and sharpness are excellent on this disc.  Though not the sharpest disc in my collection overall, many scenes are very crisp and clean, while a few look a bit softer.  Colors are very good, though the film contains mostly blacks and metallics.  Still, the contrast is excellent and the blacks are very black.   I didn't notice any visual anomalies on my first inspection.

The sound is really great.  The 5.1 mix is true, with marvelous channel separation.  Sound is clearly focused where it should be.  Dialogue is clear and a great soundtrack fills in the many spaces between dialogue.  Rear surround channels are well used and help to pull the viewer into this virtual world.

The special effect scenes come across nicely on this DVD, as I hoped they would.  In addition to the movie, which would be worth buying anyway, the DVD is loaded with cool extras.  The menu sets are top notch, with film animations taking you into the menu set and carrying you between menus.  Scenes access menus are animated.  A running commentary is provided, as well as a musical score/musical commentary.  

Cast & Crew Bios are the typical blah bios, but a special effects documentary as well as a  "hidden" brief documentaries entitled "What is Bullet Time?" and a conceptual drawing & idea documentary called "What is the Concept?" are pretty neat.  Also interesting is the "Follow the White Rabbit" Mode, where you can have a white rabbit pop on screen during selected SFX sequences.  If you press the Enter/Activate button on your DVD player you can view some behind-the-scenes footage and commentary then be returned to the movie -- pretty cool.

DVD-ROM content could certainly be improved, but it is better than most DVDs I've seen.  A "Are You the One?" interactive quiz is included as well as some short essays and a nice script and story board set that is hyperlinked to the film.  There is also a hyperlinked "Do You Know Kung-Fu" section, that will jump you to your favorite fight scene.  Also included are the prerequisite web links as well as the entire theatrical web site (as of June 1999).

In the word of the great Keanu Reeves, "Whoa!"

Movie Review

The entire world and everything you know of is an artificial reality created to pacify you mind while your body is used for the unthinkable.  You live inside of a complex computer program in world run by machines.  

The Matrix is a surprisingly fresh flick, taking the concepts of false perception and virtual reality to new dimensions and forcing us to question our very concept of reality.  A computer programmer called Neo (Keanu Reeves) searches for answers, but the answers find him as he is contacted by mysterious super-hacker Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne).

Morpheus works to convince Neo that he is "the one" who can help to defeat the machines that control the Matrix.  Together, Neo and Morpheus, with help from a band of human renegades, must fight to bring down the very Matrix of perception itself.  

Hailed primarily as a "special effects" film, The Matrix does contain some groundbreaking and stunning visual effects.  The movie is much more than that, however.  The concepts in The Matrix are deep and thought-provoking and the movie can only be truly enjoyed if these concepts are bought-into.  The few people I've met who did not like this movie were not able to buy-into, or understand the concepts behind "the matrix".  

Along with cool special effects, stunning cinematography and mind-perking concepts, The Matrix also contains a neat selection of kung-fu styled fight scenes and cool tech-Asian fashions.

If you missed this film in the theatre, there's not better second chance than on DVD.  Give it a shot -- I think you'll like it.  Oh, and remember, if you think the special effects are a bit cliché -- remember, The Matrix did it first, the others copied.