The Matrix

Though The Matrix ultimately overdoses on gloom-and-doom grunge, over-elaborate cool and especially running time, it's just clever enough to enable [the Wachowskis] to nix the sophomore jinx following 1996's Bound.

I know almost nothing of the intricate techniques that make The Matrix as eye-filling as it is brain-numbing, but I can tell you that... [its visuals] are wondrous to behold.

There's more form than content in The Matrix, but Bill 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.

Give [the Wachowskis] an A for effort and three A's for those effects. The Matrix is a dazzlingly original visual adventure.

Casting the robotic Reeves as the hope of humanity may be this oppressively long, self-satisfied movie's funniest gag, but it doesn't really make the game any fun. It means we get stuck with the least interesting player.

The Matrix's pleasures are considerable, but they're all purely visceral, too, lacking the mythology that would have elevated the movie. The movie is best taken as the first entry in a brand-new genre: post-modern sci-fi pulp.

The Wachowskis proceed to turn the world as we know it into a virtual reality landscape with a 20th century tech-noir look (lit with a sickly green hue, like the glow of an old IBM computer screen) and the physics of a video game.

A $60 million, high-tech assault on the senses and a pretentious insult to the mind.

A cyberpunk thriller that's so much fun to watch, it could single-handedly reboot the genre.

The Wachowskis seem to be saying that while state-of-the-art effects speak for themselves, loud and clear, there's still room amid all the kicking and shooting and shouting for the carefully observed human emotion.